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Climate’s tree solution is catching fire
This summer saw forests around the world burn, and climate
change means those infernos are likely to be repeated.
By KALINA OROSCHAKOFF 12/13/18, 11:02 AM CET Updated 12/14/18, 11:14
AM CET
KATOWICE, Poland — Here's what seems like an easy way to
combat global warming: plant lots of trees to soak up carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere.
It's an idea favored by many forested countries including
Poland, the host of this year's global COP24 climate conference.
The problem? Climate change is making wildfires more
frequent and more ferocious — sending lots of those carbon-absorbing trees up
in smoke.
“Human-induced climate change is fueling fires, fires speed
up climate change — it’s time to break the cycle,” said Anton Beneslavskiy with
Greenpeace Russia.
According to the Joint Research Center, the European
Commission's research arm, there were 496 large wildfires across the EU between
January 1 and August 6 this year — a 36 percent increase compared with the
10-year average for that period.
"The hot and dry conditions induced by climate change
result in more severe fires and a higher frequency of small fires growing to
become uncontrollable," another JRC report found.
That's an issue for forest advocates in Katowice, as the
Polish presidency promotes the role of trees in the fight against climate
change.
"During COP24 Poland wants to show other countries how
to achieve a balance between emissions and removals, using innovative solutions
in the field of forest management and the natural process of CO2 absorption by
soils and forests," says the Polish statement.
The Poles fought hard to include emissions abatement through
forests in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Warsaw and its forested allies argue that
without such measures there is no way to bring greenhouse gas pollution under
control without paying an impossible economic price.
Jan Szyszko, Poland's controversial former environment
minister, appeared at a COP24 side event on Tuesday to argue that the cost of
removing a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere is only €2.50 when done by forests —
compared to the EU emissions permit price of almost €20 per ton. He argued that
the money saved could be plowed into projects like greening the Sahara desert
to get it to absorb more CO2.
But environmental groups see the Polish enthusiasm for
forests as a way of doing as little as possible to cut emissions from
activities like coal-fired power stations, and worry that the Poles want to
burn more lumber in power plants as a biofuel — also causing emissions.
"The Polish agenda behind this declaration ... falls in
line with a broader push to offset continuing fossil emissions and expand the
use of bioenergy 'combustion technology' that will replace fossils — fueling
the hunger for biomass and biofuels — and lead to a decrease in natural carbon
stocks," said the Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance, a grouping
of NGOs.
Green ideas
Forests also play a major part in the EU’s future climate
strategy, which the Commission published in late November and charts a path
toward absorbing as much greenhouse gas as is emitted by 2050.
But this summer's forest fires put those plans in jeopardy.
Normally boggy Scandinavian forests near the Arctic Circle
went up in flames, as did forests in Greece, where a period of national
mourning was declared.
The U.S. West Coast also saw massive forest fires, although
the damage in California did little to change the climate skeptic views of U.S.
President Donald Trump. According to California's Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection it was the most destructive wildfire season on record.
The wreckage of a car is pictured in a burnt property of the
seaside resort of Mati, eastern Attica region, are pictured on July 27, 2018
after the deadly wildfires east of Athens that left at least 87 people dead |
Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP via Getty Images
“Fire is part of a natural cycle in California [but] those
fires are no longer natural," Bishop Marc Handley Andrus of the U.S.
Episcopal Church, said in Katowice. "Our tree population is under stress
due to drought. This is a global effect, it’s not a local effect.”
That's bad news for global efforts to meet the Paris
Agreement's climate goals, since burning forests spew greenhouse gas emissions
back into the atmosphere, helping drive climate change.
Experts point to unsustainable forest management practices,
the degradation of ecosystems, as well as planting highly flammable forest tree
species as helping "fire ignition" and "the spreading of
wildfires," which are largely caused by humans.
Greenpeace International last Wednesday published a report
warning that wildfires have a large impact on climate change, and major forest
countries Russia, Brazil and Indonesia "fail to adequately monitor or
report emissions from them."
Scientists also caution that planting trees is no panacea
for more painful and expensive actions to actually cut emissions from industry,
transport and housing.
"Forests shouldn’t be an excuse for rich countries to
slow emissions reduction efforts," said Glen Peters, research director
with Norway's Cicero International Center for Climate Research.
This summer's infernos are likely to be repeated as the
world continues to get warmer.
The EU's JRC found "a clear trend towards longer fire
seasons compared to previous years, with fires now occurring well beyond the
dry and hot summer months" from July to September and in countries such as
Sweden, Germany and Poland, "which have historically seen very few."
Paola Tamma contributed reporting.
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