Paris Climate Change Limits Won't Work If We Keep Destroying Tropical Forests, Say Scientists

Dense and intact tropical forests actually work as a sink to such CO2 from the environment while also nourishing trees to grow bigger. However, the study discovered that only 20 percent of the world¡¯s tropical forests could be considered intact.

Monit KhannaUpdated: Feb 24, 2020, 17:41 IST
4 min read
Indiatimes

Today, our world is in a really delicate state, environmentally. With carbon emissions skyrocketing, we are relying on the green patches on the planet to absorb the carbon dioxide and provide us with fresh oxygen. However, many are still continuing with deforestations and destroying natural habitats for plants and animals.

Reuters

In tropical regions specifically, human activity is endangering 80 percent forests and this loss is having a dangerous impact on the forest-dwellers as well as biodiversities that actually support 50 percent of the world¡¯s biodiversity.

The Wildlife Conservation Society recently published a study in journal Science Advances that revealed that intact tropical forest loss from 2000 to 2013 can amount to over 626 percent of long-term carbon emissions through 2050 that was previously imagined.

This shocking number has come across after researchers revised the emissions that would be removed from the air if tropical forests were untouched, along with factors from selective logging, defaunation and carbon stock degradation at forest edges -- somethings that were overlooked in previous studies.

Study co-author Tom Evans reveals that forest conservation was regarded as utmost important for mitigating climate and adapting to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. However, countries haven¡¯t taken it seriously.

Intact tropical forests: sinks for carbon emission

Evans stated, ¡°We knew that large forest blocks should be getting a great deal of attention for their role in climate change mitigation and adaptation, but we saw that wasn¡¯t happening, with most programs focused on frontier forests.

Dense and intact tropical forests actually work as a sink to such CO2 from the environment while also nourishing trees to grow bigger. However, the study discovered that only 20 percent of the world¡¯s tropical forests could be considered intact.

These are responsible to store 40 percent of over-ground carbon that are found in tropical forests. Moreover, a 2011 study revealed that such forests remove approximately 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

Reuters

Staggering loss of intact tropical forests

However, this won¡¯t work if the forests are being cut down left, right and centre. As per the study, there were 549 million hectares of intact tropical forests during the end of 2013 -- that was 49 million hectares less than the number in the year 2000.

Evans further stated, ¡°The value of intact forests becomes clearer as we count toward the long-term 2050 milestone when humanity should be transitioned from net emissions to net sequestration. Without keeping our intact forests, it will be impossible to implement our climate goals outlined in the Paris Agreement.¡±

Factors affecting the loss

What¡¯s worse is that most of the carbon loses haven¡¯t really occurred yet and are predicted to emerge over the coming decades as the edge of the forests is slowly transcending into a bigger impact.

Evans said, ¡°When near forest edges are created, there¡¯s the problem of increased human access with grazing animals and fires from farmland penetrating the forests that causes increased degradation and deforestation. But even more than that, just by creating the edge, the cooler, dark, humid understory ecosystem is replaced with a hotter, drier environment that causes carbon stocks to decrease as large, dense trees are replaced by smaller, less dense ones.¡±

According to Evans, there are three remaining major blocks of the intact tropical forest -- The Amazon basin, Central Africa and Papua New Guinea -- along with several smaller blocks in Southeast Asia, Central America and Madagascar. However, out of these, the Amazon basin has taken the biggest hit -- which has been responsible for absorbing five percent of human-caused emissions annually.

In the past few years however, the numbers have gradually reduced, with record-breaking droughts in the regions that have spiked tree mortality rates.

Reuters

Losing the Amazon Basin

According to Carlos Nobre, a leading expert on the Amazon rainforest, ¡°Widespread forest degradation and deforestation in the southeast Amazon region reduces the resilience of the forest to fires and drought. When you start degrading and fragmenting the forest, you have more solar radiation hitting the forest floor; the plants dry out and the entire forest becomes more flammable and carbon losses increase.¡±

Its time we took safeguarding tropical forests seriously or else it could cause irreversible damage to not just human lives, but also the flora and fauna that rely on these tropical forests for their lives.

23/11/2024 7:54:7
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