ScienceDaily (July 17, 2008) — A key aspect of the international climate change agreement slated to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 focuses on reducing carbon emissions due to deforestation and degradation (REDD). But most REDD discussions focus on tropical deforestation while ignoring the potential carbon savings that could be realized from reduced forest degradation.

Botanist Francis Putz and colleagues argue that by ignoring evidence that better forest management practices can substantially reduce carbon emissions, negotiators are missing an obvious and cost-effective approach to mitigating the effects of global climate change. This oversight is troublesome, the authors write, because "carbon losses due to degradation could be of the same magnitude as those from deforestation."

Logging practices can be designed to minimize ecological impact, but even when trees are picked selectively there is often collateral damage--ten to twenty times the number of harvested trees are destroyed through human error and poorly designed procedures for locating and removing correct targets. Putz et al. argue that worker training in directional felling and better planning of timber extraction paths can reduce these effects by at least 50%.

In long-term studies of conventional versus improved forest management practices in Malaysia and Brazil, improved management reduced carbon emissions by approximately 30%, compared to conventional logging. Using data on intensities and intervals of logging, areas of production forest (managed for timber and forest products), and their estimates of carbon loss, the authors estimated that global implementation of improved forest-management techniques would save 0.16 gigatons of carbon per year.

While emission policies in one area can sometimes have the unintended effect of raising emissions in another--for example, economic restrictions in one country can give its neighbor a competitive advantage--Putz et al. argue that better logging techniques have no negative impacts on production and can even improve financial yields, making this rearrangement of emissions, or "leakage," a non-issue.

"Incentives to retain more forest carbon through improved management would represent a big step toward sustainability in the vast area of tropical forests outside protected sites," the authors argue. "Although many details on measuring, monitoring, and compensating carbon sequestering by individuals, companies, communities, and governments need to be sorted out, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from tropical forest degradation should be given a high priority in negotiations leading up to the new climate c hange agreement to be formulated in Copenhagen in 2009."

Journal reference:

1. Putz et al. Improved Tropical Forest Management for Carbon Retention. PLoS Biology, 2008; 6 (7): e166 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060166

Related Stories

Having The Climate Cake And Eating It, Too (Nov. 30, 2007) — Is it possible to solve climate change, reduce poverty and save biodiversity at a single stroke? It might seem like a dream, but this is exactly the issue that is being discussed at the United ...  > read more

Using Forest Residues Reduces Soil Carbon Stock (May 21, 2008) — The use of harvest residues for energy production decreases soil carbon stocks. These changes in soil carbon stocks are remarkable compared to the other greenhouse gas emissions caused by the use of ...  > read more

Tropical Forest Sustainability: A Climate Change Boon (June 19, 2008) — Improved management of the world's tropical forests has major implications for humanity's ability to reduce its contribution to climate change, according to a new article in ...  > read more

Plan To Conserve Forests May Be Detrimental To Other Ecosystems (June 18, 2008) — Conserving biodiversity must be considered in plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, researchers warn in Science. The UNFCCC is currently discussing ways of Reducing Emissions ...  > read more

Researchers Propose Way To Incorporate Deforestation Into Climate Change Treaty (Apr. 23, 2008) — Researchers have proposed a new option for incorporating deforestation into the international climate change treaty. The approach would provide carbon credits for developing countries that both set ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Our Changing Climate