The world’s forests make a significant contribution to keeping carbon dioxide (CO2) levels down to acceptable limits. They contain more carbon, in the form of their living biomass, soils and associated wetlands, than all the world’s fossil fuel reserves put together. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the problem of climate change can be solved without addressing our management of the world’s forests, but they are virtually ignored at the policy level.
We usually assume that the countries that consume the greatest amount of fossil fuels make the greatest contribution to global warming. But what really matters is a country’s net carbon emissions—its total emissions, regardless of origin, minus the carbon that is fixed back down to earth again, mainly by plants.
Seven to 12 per cent of the emissions attributed to the EU’s consumption of fossil fuels are permanently sequestered away again by its forests. Conversely, although Indonesia is responsible for only about 87m tonnes of carbon emissions annually—1 per cent of global emissions—those due to forest clearance and fires are believed to be in excess of 2bn tonnes a year, occasionally even more. This is probably greater than the net emissions of the US.
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