• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska March 14, 2023
U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse March 14, 2023
$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’ March 14, 2023
UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’ March 9, 2023
Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions March 9, 2023
Next
Prev

Week 22, June 1: Regenerative Forestry

May 31, 2020
Reading time: 5 minutes

ben britten/Flickr

ben britten/Flickr

5
SHARES
 

This is one of the 26 segments of Guy Dauncey’s Climate Emergency: A 26-Week Transition Program for Canada. Excerpted by permission.

It is not our emissions as such that are causing the climate emergency: it is our accumulated emissions. Our world therefore faces not one but two climate challenges:

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe
  • Challenge #1: to reduce our annual human-caused atmospheric pollution emissions to zero.
  • Challenge #2: to reduce the atmospheric burden of carbon to its pre-industrial level, from 900 to 600 Gigatonnes (Gt), where 300 Gt. of carbon equate to 1.1 trillion tonnes of CO. Such a reduction can be achieved by increased carbon sequestration in forests, farms, ranch lands, wetlands, peatlands and marine ecosystems, by the use of timber, hempcrete and other carbon-storing building products, and by technological means such as Climeworks with secure geological storage.

When a country announces that it will plant trees or protect forests to absorb its emissions it muddles the two challenges. Each country needs to reduce its emissions to zero AND contribute to sequestrating the excess carbon already in the atmosphere, based on its available land area. Terms such as ‘carbon neutral’ and ‘net zero carbon’ confuse our thinking by wrongly implying that planting trees to capture carbon can offset the need to reduce emissions.

The global land area is 150 million square kilometres. 20% is covered with snow and ice and 33% is desert, leaving 45% (67.5 million square kilometres) to sequestrate the surplus carbon. Canada has 10 million square kilometres of land, of which 50% is permafrost, so in an ecologically rational world we would be working to re-absorb 7.5% of the 300 gigatonnes of surplus atmospheric carbon over the next 100 years, or 225 million tonnes a year, which illustrates the size of the challenge. If we default on our role, other countries will have to capture more than their land-share.

Canada has 8.75% of the world’s forested area (3.47 million square kilometres), all of which stores carbon:

  • BC’s coastal old-growth forests store 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare in above-ground and below-ground biomass.
  • Cool temperate west coast forests store 625 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
  • The boreal forest stores 100 tonnes per hectare.
  • The older a forest, the more carbon it captures and stores. Temperate forests add two tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.

When a forest is clearcut in the Pacific Northwest it takes 13 years before the newly growing forest absorbs more emissions than are released from the cut area. In BC, sequestration dead zones that follow clearcutting occupy 3.6 million hectares. On Vancouver Island, the old-growth forest is being logged at a rate of 9,000 hectares a year (25 hectares a day), causing a loss of nine million tonnes of carbon a year, less the carbon stored in long-lasting timber products. Wildfires and pest outbreaks, amplified by the climate emergency, are causing further losses. Between 1993 and 2002 BC’s forests stored an additional 120 million tonnes of carbon, but between 2003 and 2012 they lost 70 million tonnes.

In Ontario, 10% to 23% of reforested areas are not growing new trees due to road-building and full-tree harvesting, the debris from which inhibits forest renewal. Over 30 years, 650,000 hectares of forest have been lost, representing 16.5 Mt of lost opportunity for carbon sequestration; deforestation rates are 50 times greater than official federal reports. In 2017, the National Resources Defense Council reported that clearcutting in Canada’s boreal forest was releasing 26 Mt of CO2 emissions a year. These forest-related emissions and removals are not currently included in our federal and provincial GHG accounting.

In 2017, the forestry sector contributed $24.6 billion to Canada’s economy (1.4% of GDP) and employed 210,000 people, mostly in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario (1.1% of total employment). Changing the way the forest industry works so that our forests store carbon instead of losing it, becoming a solution to the climate emergency rather than a contributing cause, is a challenge we must urgently embrace.

Evidence indicates that clearcutting destroys carbon in the soil and trees, causes erosion and dramatic flooding, and destroys wildlife habitat. Ecological forest management methods that use small canopy openings protect the soil, watersheds and habitats and increase forest carbon, while still supporting a forest industry. Evidence for this approach can be found in the Harrop-Proctor community forest in BC, the Lubeck community forest in Germany, and elsewhere. Forest Europe has developed six criteria for sustainable forest management, including the maintenance and enhancement (a) of the forests’ contribution to global carbon cycles, (b) of forest ecosystem health and vitality, and (c) of their productive functions (wood and non-wood), (d) their biological diversity, (e) their protective functions, and (f) other socio-economic and cultural functions.

To reduce Canada’s forest carbon emissions:

  • Starting in 2022, we will commence annual accounting of carbon emissions and storage in Canada’s forests, reporting these annually alongside our other reported emissions.
  • We will work with Canada’s provincial governments, forest companies and non-profits to make a transition to Ecological Forest Management Methods, maximizing the forests’ ability to sequestrate atmospheric carbon while also fulfilling other critical functions.
  • We will establish a Forest Carbon Commission, with a mandate to establish a methodology for measuring forest carbon, study different forest management methods including in countries such as Finland, and recommend ways for forest companies to make the transition to ecological methods of management.
  • To assist with the change, we will offer $500 million in Ecological Forestry Training and Transition Grants. Cost: $500 million one-off (#42)
  • In keeping with our Just Transition Act (Week 2), skilled and professional forest workers will receive free training in ecological forest management.
  • When the forest carbon measurement tool is ready we will require forest managers with more than 1,000 hectares of forested land to submit a forest carbon report every five years.
  • We will apply a $25 per tonne forest carbon tax on lost carbon, rising each year, using the income to support the transition.
  • We will offer $100 million in Bioeconomy Development Grants to increase the number of jobs generated per 1,000 cubic metres of timber harvested, both in value-added products and in the production of ecologically sustainable forest bioproducts. Cost: $100 million one-off (#43)

Tree Planting: Researchers at ECH University in Zurich have calculated that Earth could support 4.4 billion hectares of continuous tree cover, 1.6 billion more than the current 2.8 billion hectares. Once mature, the new forests could absorb and store 205 billion tonnes of carbon (128 tonnes per hectare), or two-thirds of the 300 billion tonnes humans have released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

  • We will participate in the global drive to plant a trillion trees by 2030. In 2019, Ethiopians planted 350 million trees in a day. Australia has pledged to plant a billion trees by 2050; Ireland to plant 440 million trees by 2040. We have pledged to plant two billion trees by 2030. The ECH study determined that Canada has the third-greatest potential to plant trees in the world – 117 billion trees over 78 million hectares, at a rate of 1,500 trees per hectare, representing 11.7% of the global target. In areas where deer are not major browsers, one way to achieve such a huge number might be by airplane or drone-delivered seed bombs.
  • We will provide $1 million in Tree-Planting Research Grants to establish, plan and cost the best ways to plant this many trees in Canada. Cost: $1 million one-off (#44)



in Biodiversity & Habitat, Canada, Carbon Levels & Measurement, Community Climate Finance, Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics, Forests & Deforestation, International Agencies & Studies, Jobs & Training, Soil & Natural Sequestration

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr
Oil & Gas

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
82
David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr
Community Climate Finance

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
123
EcoAnalytics
Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
92

Comments 2

  1. Eli Pivnick says:
    3 years ago

    Hi

    Fascinating article with some solid and important info. However, in the second half, the author (unnamed, and that is not helpful) keeps talking about what ‘we’ will do without ever identifying who the ‘we’ is. At first I thought it was the Canadian govt and then I thought it was ‘The Energy Mix’. Neither is actually possible so I have to assume that this is more of suggestions of what should be done. This is very confusing and this lack of clarity does reduce the credibility of the article and the organization. Please clarify !

    Reply
    • Mitchell Beer says:
      3 years ago

      Thanks, Eli. This is an excerpt from Guy Dauncey’s 26-week climate emergency plan, and the “we” is a hypothetical federal government in whose voice 26 Weeks is written. You make a really good point — we signpost the source of the material in our e-digest, but not on the page. We’ll get that fixed.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Behrat/Wikimedia Commons

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
360
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board/flickr

$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’

March 14, 2023
174
David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
123
U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
82
moerschy / Pixabay

Fringe Conspiracy Theories Target 15-Minute City Push in Edmonton, Toronto

February 22, 2023
1.6k
EcoAnalytics

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
92

Recent Posts

Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Purolator Pledges $1B to Electrify Last-Mile Delivery

March 14, 2023
60
United Nations

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
90
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions

March 10, 2023
177
jasonwoodhead23/flickr

First Nation Scorches Imperial Oil, Alberta Regulator Over Toxic Leak

March 8, 2023
368
MarcusObal/wikimedia commons

No Climate Risk Targets for Banks, New Guides for Green Finance as 2 Federal Agencies Issue New Rules

March 8, 2023
236
FMSC/Flickr

Millions Face Food Insecurity as Horn of Africa Braces for Worst Drought Ever

March 8, 2023
247
Next Post
Marlborough.News/Twitter

UK Hosts ‘Couldn’t Deliver a Pizza, Let Alone COP 26’, Ousted COP President Charges

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}