EU forests can not help climate to fight: study

Europe can not count on its forests to counter the effects of climate change, experts warned on Wednesday, calling on countries to protect their natural resources from global warming.

The current road map to mitigate the effects of climate disasters encourages EU countries to use their forests to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

But European scientists now claim that no approach to forest management is in line with the objectives of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which aims to limit the rise in global temperature to "well below of two degrees Celsius (36 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

They warn that attempting to use forests to store larger amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could have unexpected side effects, including darkening the surface of the Earth, resulting in high temperatures. higher surface area, and that it would be better to protect forested areas from climate change.

"The amount of carbon captured over the next 90 years by trees – about 2 parts per million (ppm) – would be small compared to the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere in the most likely scenario – 500 ppm" Guillaume Marie, a climate scientist and environmental scientist at the University of Paris-Saclay, told AFP.

Marie and the team examined models of different forest management strategies at the European level to limit climate change.

These include trying to maximize the amount of carbon that forests can store and increasing the amount of sunlight that is reflected in space to reduce surface temperatures.

They uncovered a Catch-22 on climate.

The forestry plan says "maximizing the cost of the sink", which would save the equivalent of 8 billion tons of CO2 by the end of the century, would require converting an area from the size of Spain, from deciduous forest to coniferous forest.

The authors of the study, published in the journal Naturethus darkening the landscape would offset any relative gain in carbon reduction in temperature.

"The classic mistake is to think that capturing and storing CO2 equates to global cooling," said Marie.

"It's true if we do not change the optical, chemical or physical properties of the planet, it's not the case for forests, because we would change much of the Earth's surface.

"If you prefer coniferous to deciduous forests, you darken the color of the leaf, which is an important factor in the calculation of the atmospheric temperature," he said.

Trees use photosynthesis to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lighter leaves reflect more sunlight, helping to keep temperatures to a minimum.

Endangered woodlands

European forests cover more than 180 million hectares (1.8 million square kilometers), more than 40% of the continent's land area.

As a result of the Paris Agreement, the 28 EU Member States have committed to reducing their national greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, of which about one-quarter should come from the use of soils and forests.

But the bloc has struggled to preserve its forests, which are threatened by extreme drought, storms, insects and even by the actions of individual nations.

The Supreme Court of the European Union ruled in April that the Polish right-wing government had broken the law by logging in one of the last remaining virgin forests on the continent.

Poland must hold vital climate talks at the UN in December, during which countries must develop a legal framework to implement what has been agreed in Paris.

The report recommended that governments focus their efforts on "adapting forest cover to future climate in order to support the provision of wood and ecological, social and cultural services" that forests provide "while avoiding the effects climate change on fires, winds, pests and drought ".

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More information:
Sebastiaan Luyssaert et al. Compromise on the use of European forests to achieve climate goals, Nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038 / s41586-018-0577-1