Forests are absorbing ever more CO2, but emissions are growing at a faster pace
Environment — di Tommaso Perrone
Forests and plants around the world are doing their utmost to absorb ever more CO2, but the ultimate solution remains in our hands.
Forests are absorbing ever more CO2, but emissions are growing at a faster pace
Forests and plants around the world are doing their utmost to absorb ever more CO2, but the ultimate solution remains in our hands.
To counter the rise in CO2 emissions and global warming, the vegetation covering the Earth is truly doing its utmost. Over the past ten years, trees and plants around the world are estimated to have stored an additional four billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, largely thanks to reforestation projects in China, an increase in forested areas in some countries of the former Soviet Union, and an expansion of vegetation in certain tropical areas of Australia, Africa and South America where the prevailing habitat is savanna.
The research led by Yi Liu of the University of New South Wales and published in the journal Nature Climate Change under the title Recent reversal in loss of global terrestrial biomass analysed satellite data collected over a twenty-year period and found that, despite deforestation (both legal and illegal) continuing to affect vast areas of Brazil and Indonesia, the CO2 stored by vegetation is on the rise.
"From this research, we can observe that these plants can help absorb some of the CO2, but there is still a great deal of it in the atmosphere," Liu told the news agency Reuters. "If we want to stabilise the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and avoid the consequences of global warming, there is still a need to reduce emissions produced by fossil fuels."
The research therefore provides no pretext for continuing to burn coal and oil, or to develop land at today's rate, given that four billion tonnes of CO2 is a small figure compared to the 60 billion released into the atmosphere by human activities over the same period (2003–2013).
Liu is also not convinced that this trend can be confirmed going forward, given that geography and rainfall levels are subject to increasingly rapid changes as a result of climate change. While on the one hand the thawing of permafrost — the permanently frozen ground found at the poles — could contribute to an increase in vegetation, on the other hand the encroachment of green areas into the savanna must be considered ephemeral. The real risk is that arid zones and desertification caused by drought will come to prevail across large parts of tropical regions.
The priorities emerging from the study therefore remain the same. To counter climate change, it is essential to stabilise CO2 in the atmosphere by reducing the use of fossil fuels and better protecting tropical forests.