Building on the recent IPCC 1.5oC Warming Report, The United Nations Environmental Program issued an Emissions Gap Report. It highlighted the substantial gap between the Nationally Determined Contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and what is required to keep global average temperature from rising beyond the goals set by the Paris Climate Agreement.
But to avoid additional temperature increases requires that the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere be stabilized at a level that can only be achieved by also removing and sequestering substantial additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Natural ecosystems including forests, wetlands, soils and the ocean currently remove and sequester slightly over half of all carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, industry and land use changes. Significantly more could be removed by reducing land use changes, restoring degraded forests, wetlands and soils and increasing carbon sequestration by existing natural systems.
Results/Conclusions
This paper will propose empirically based criteria for selecting forest and wetland ecosystems that have the potential to increase sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Peatlands and coastal wetlands sequester approximately as much carbon as global forests ecosystems. Preserving and restoring wetlands is thus an essential part of any carbon sequestration strategy. Significant forests loss currently results from misguided biomass and biofuels policies wrongly labeled as “renewable resource” strategies, and altering these policies in favor of forest preservation also has great potential. The paper assesses the degree to which these strategies can fill the global carbon sequestration gap, and what policies can be most effective in doing so.