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A Simple Step To Reduce Climate Change: More Trees

Draft decisions for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which are supposed to include countries’ negotiated agreements on how to deal with man-made climate changes, contain language that focuses on using and protecting nature to help reduce future heat.

The document “emphasizes The iIt is important to protect, preserve and restore. NatureAnd For the achievement of this goal, ecosystems must include forests as well as other terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Paris Agreement temperature target by serving as sinks or reservoirs for greenhouse gasses Bio protectionDiversity is a good thing.E Social and environmental safeguards. The natural methods of absorbing and storing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are called “sinks” and “reservoirs”.

Paris Agreement is designed to hold the increase in the global average temperature by 2100 to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. A more aggressive effort is also made to stop the temperature rising. 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Near the beginning of COP26, on November 2, the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration of Forests and Land use was issued in support to the goal of using nature-based strategies to combat climate change. To date, 137 nations have signed the Declaration of Glasgow Leaders on Forests and Land Use. These countries represent approximately 91 percent, or more than 14,000,000 square miles of world forests. However, many countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia with vast forest areas have reversed their endorsements after the declaration was made.

Forests can indeed absorb and store large amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) recent analysis of global forest lands’ carbon dioxide emission and removal trends between 1990–2020. This analysis shows that forests can absorb and store large amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide.Annual emissions from eforestation were approximately 3 billion tonnes carbon dioxide Globally in the time period starting from 20162020. At the same time, the remaining forests sequestered some 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, resulting in net emissions of about 0.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year from forest lands to the atmosphere.

The good news is that the global rate of deforestation has been slowing over the past three decades. The FAO finds that the rate of annual net forest loss declined from 7.8 million hectares (30,000 square miles) in the period from 1990–2000 to 5.2 million hectares (20,000 square miles) between 2000–2010, reaching 4.7 million hectares (18,000) between 2010–2020. For reference, 18,000 square miles is a bit more than double the area of New Jersey. As the global rate of deforestation fell, carbon dioxide emissions from forests dropped by about one-third from 1990–2020, falling to about 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year in 2020.

The FAO report finds that through deforestation Brazil The Democratic Republic of the Congo annually releases approximately 600 millions Tones of carbon dioxide and Indonesia produces around 200 million tonnes. The other side is the China (605 million tonnes), Russia (622 million tons), USA (350 million tons), Brazil (303 million tons) and Brazil (335 million tons) are the countries with the highest carbon dioxide amplification.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its most recent inventory. It shows that American forests stored and absorbed 775 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2019. This is more than twice the FAO estimate. This reduced U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by almost 12 percent.

Unconventionally, a group of Swiss researchers estimated in 2019 that there could be a vast area around the world suitable for planting one trillion trees. That many trees could absorb as much as 100–200 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help keep global average temperatures from rising by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levelsBy 2100

The U.S. has bipartisan support for a natural-based solution to climate changes. The Trillion Trees Act introduced in Congress earlier this year has numerous Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. This bill aims explicitly to establish forest conservation practices through management and reforestation that lead to sequestration.