"Schemes that protect forests to create carbon credits that polluters can buy to offset their emissions have been popular in the rush to green the economy, but they can threaten biodiversity and Indigenous land rights."
"SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt—The U.S. Center at the COP27 climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh hosted a panel Monday focused on ending global deforestation by 2030, but the reality on the ground in the nation’s forests looks quite different. Just hours before the discussion, conservation groups released a report showing that federal agencies are considering multiple logging projects, including on about 370,000 acres with mature and old-growth trees that remove planet-heating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The latest discussions in Egypt came a year after 145 countries, including the United States, signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, pledging to conserve forests and accelerate their restoration to slow global warming. But U.S. plans to log federal lands show it’s easier to make non-binding climate promises than to keep them.
Forests are a crucial part of slowing the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases because they have the potential to remove up to one-third of human emissions of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a 2019 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But recent increase in wildfires, as well as research on forest health, suggest that those calculations may not be accurate. Some stressed and overheated forests could soon emit more carbon than they store."
Bob Berwyn reports for Inside Climate News November 15, 2022.
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