Only oil and gas and transportation exceed the climate pollution emitted by Canada’s logging industry, concludes a new report that challenges federal measurement methods for forestry.

“This study dismantles the industry and government narrative that the current scale of clearcut logging is sustainable,” said Michael Polanyi, policy and campaign manager, nature-based climate solutions at Nature Canada. “Federal and provincial governments must take immediate action to reduce the logging sector’s significant carbon footprint and ensure genuinely sustainable practices.”

Nature Canada releases a logging emissions report every year, attempting to counter federally-released data that it says use an accounting method favourable to the industry. The government’s tally gives a “biased treatment” that misrepresents the true level of emissions, such as by failing to factor in wildfire emissions while giving credit for carbon stored in trees that haven’t been logged, the organization says.

Wildfire seasons have become particularly severe in Canada in recent years. In addition to the devastating impacts wrought on communities and ecosystems, the record-breaking area of Canadian forest burning each year is releasing ever greater quantities of carbon into the atmosphere.

Using what Nature Canada says is a skewed approach to emissions accounting, the government’s reporting allows the industry to promote a false narrative of sustainability that can undermine efforts to reform destructive practices, the report states.

But this year’s federal rendering of forestry emissions includes a significant change in measurement technique, recalculating the historic area that has been logged to about double what was measured in previous years. With that increase, the government’s greenhouse gas inventory now shows the sector as a source of emissions, after years of proclaiming forestry was a carbon sink.

This change in accounting also affected Nature Canada’s calculations and made the report’s conclusions even stronger. The organization now says the logging industry is the third-highest emitting sector in the country, following the oil and gas industry and transportation.

Net emissions from logging stood at 147 megatonnes (Mt) in 2022, compared to 217 Mt from the oil and gas industry and 156 Mt from transportation. Logging also produced more average emissions than transportation between 2005 and 2022.

Nature Canada says that, by trying to set the record straight, the report could encourage better accountability and forestry practices.

“The logging industry’s climate impact is right there in the numbers; the government has simply chosen to look away,” said report author Jennifer Skene, global forest project manager at the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council. “This disavowal of reality doesn’t change the fact that much of the logging in Canada is out of alignment with climate-safe practices and, increasingly, out of alignment with marketplace expectations for sustainability.”