The deforestation toll continues to worsen despite the global economic slowdown due to the pandemic, according to our partner The Conversation.
However, the forest, along with the marine environment, is one of the planet's main “carbon sinks”.
The analysis of this phenomenon was carried out by Serge Muller, professor and researcher at the Institute of Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity of the National Museum of Natural History.
The publication at the end of March 2021 of the deforestation report for the year 2020 by the World Resources Institute is again alarming.
According to this document, the loss of forest cover reaches 25.8 million hectares, or more than 0.6% of the global forest area, estimated at more than 4 billion hectares by the FAO (with 45% of tropical forests, 27% boreal forests, 16% temperate forests and 11% subtropical forests).
Forests represent about 31% of the land surface area of the globe.
This decline particularly concerns tropical forests, where the loss reached 12.2 million ha, including 4.2 million primary humid forests - this is 12% more than in 2019 and this despite the slowdown in l global economy imposed by the pandemic.
Brazil is the country responsible for the majority of deforestation of primary humid forests (1.7 million ha), with a 25% increase in destruction in this country in 2020 compared to 2019.
Distribution of forest types in the world © MNHN (via The Conversation)
Forests, these precious "carbon sinks"
Still according to FAO data, the world's forests mobilize around 662 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon in 2020 (against 668 in 1990), with an average density of 163.1 tonnes of C / ha in 2020 (against 158, 8 in 1990).
The forest thus constitutes, along with the marine environment, one of the main “carbon sinks”.
VIDEO:
The forest, the first solution against climate change, with Jean Jouzel (Reforest'Action / Youtube, 2019)
It is understandable that the destruction of forests contributes to reducing this function of carbon fixation.
However, this destruction is continuing at an accelerated pace: according to the FAO, it represents 178 million hectares of forests (all types combined) for the period between 1990 and 2020;
in the tropics, the expansion of agriculture and animal husbandry is the main cause.
According to Global Forest Watch, from 2002 to 2020, there was a loss of 64.7 million hectares (M ha) of primary tropical rainforest (i.e. a loss of 6.3% of its area);
this corresponds to 16% of the forest loss in the world.
Protected tropical forest of the La Trinité national nature reserve, in Guyana © Olivier Tostain / ECOBIOS, CC BY-NC-ND
Forests are also the victims of climate change, in particular cyclones and storms, droughts and especially fires.
FAO puts forward the figure of 98 M ha of forests affected by fires in 2015. In recent years, 18 M ha have burned in Australia for the period 2019-2020 and 21 M ha have gone up in smoke in Siberia in the first 6 months of 2020.
Fight against imported deforestation
How to reverse these deleterious trends?
The first action to be taken is obviously to act on voluntary deforestation, in particular that of primary forests in tropical areas, because it is these primary forests that are by far the home of the highest biodiversity.
This particularly concerns the states that are home to these forests, but also countries that import products from deforestation, including Europe, considered by WWF to be responsible in 2017 for 16% of deforestation due to its consumption of food from deforestation. deforestation;
it is this phenomenon that we call "imported deforestation".
France adopted an ambitious national strategy against imported deforestation in 2018, but it is struggling to be implemented.
In a recent communication, WWF identified the products imported by France which present the most challenges - and corresponding to a potential annual deforestation area of 5.1 million hectares.
WWF infographic on imported deforestation © WWF
With other NGOs, WWF also proposed at the end of 2020 ten concrete actions to fight against imported deforestation;
and the EU is also expected to come up with a law this year.
Debates around “massive reforestation”
A second action concerns the restoration and reforestation of degraded and deforested areas.
In this area, the “Bonn challenge” adopted in 2011 adopted the objective of restoring 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2020. Objective raised to 350 million hectares in 2014 at the Summit of the United Nations on the climate ... but also postponed to 2030.
These measures have been endorsed to date by over 100 governments, civil society organizations and businesses;
restoration and planting commitments have been made by 43 countries.
But scientists were alarmed in 2019 by the proposals for mono-specific plantations - in no way corresponding to natural forests and not presenting the same interests for biodiversity and the climate - made by certain countries (Brazil, for example, for 19 M ha, or 82% of its catering commitments).
In July 2019, a publication in the journal
Science
caused a stir, estimating that it would be possible to increase the global forest area by 0.9 billion hectares;
which would make it possible to store 205 Gt of additional carbon.
But in a commentary published two weeks later, other experts considered those estimates to be very flawed.
An erratum followed these comments.
The idea of "massive reforestation" has however gained ground, taken up for example in early 2020 by the World Economic Forum in Davos, with a project to plant 1000 billion trees, with the objective of capturing most of the emissions. of CO2.
This proposal was quickly considered unrealistic due to evaluation errors and the impossibility of carrying out such plantations without strongly impacting agricultural land and open ecosystems (such as savannas).
Protected temperate forest (ash-maple grove) in the valleys of the limestone plateaus of Lorraine © Serge Muller / MNHN, CC BY-NC-ND
Boreal forest (fir to balsam fir) in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon © Serge Muller / MNHN, CC BY-NC-ND
A year of global mobilization
In January 2021, the World Summit on the Future of the Planet, the “One Planet Summit”, marked the start of a series of events in favor of the preservation of the environment and biodiversity in particular.
This fourth edition will have notably seen the relaunch of the project of the great green wall of the Sahel.
The Alliance for the Preservation of Tropical Forests will also have received a lot of attention during the event.
Next September, the World Conservation Congress will be held, organized by the IUCN in Marseille;
then in October, the UN conference on biodiversity (COP 15) scheduled for Kunming, China.
One of the objectives of these conferences is to encourage States to strengthen protected and restored areas in the world, the UN having declared the decade 2021-2030 as that of “ecosystem restoration”.
Let us hope that its future results will be more satisfactory than that of the previous decade, both for climate and biodiversity, none of the 20 “Aichi targets” having been fully achieved.
How to restore hundreds of millions of hectares of forests?
On the more specific theme of forest conservation and restoration, two international conferences mobilized scientists and decision-makers at the start of the year: “Reforestation for biodiversity, carbon capture and livelihoods”, from London and “Global Forest Summit ”, from Paris.
The London meeting will have made it possible to present the 10 golden rules to guide forest restoration operations;
they had been the subject of a recent publication.
The ten rules of reforestation
It is primarily a question of protecting the existing forests; working with local populations; maximize the restoration of biodiversity; select the appropriate surface for reforestation; favor natural restoration; choose tree species that maximize biodiversity; use resilient tree species that can adapt to the changing climate; plan ahead; learning by doing ; make operations profitable.
At the Global Forest Summit in Paris (whose slogan was “Protect faster, Restore stronger”), priority was given to the protection of remaining forests, stressing the need to stop deforestation and then to carry out operations corresponding to deforestation. real restorations of “natural forests”, different from mono-specific woody plantations with a single production objective; it was also a question of developing partnerships with the actors of the territories concerned.
Co-organizer of the Global Forest Summit in Paris, Reforest'action has funded since its creation in 2010 the planting or regeneration of more than 11 million trees in 30 countries around the world.
Many other structures are involved in such actions, in France first and foremost the National Forestry Office, which manages nearly 11 million hectares of public forests there, more than half of which in the Overseas Territories (Guyana in the lead).
VIDEO:
Report on a reforestation action in the Paris region (Department of Yvelines / Youtube, 2019)
Achieve carbon neutrality
In its biodiversity strategy, the European Union has also set out an objective of planting 3 billion trees in its territory over the next decade, while respecting ecological principles.
It is however obvious that this component of restoration and especially of plantation of forests - currently very appreciated by the companies under the title of the “carbon offsetting” - must not be done to the detriment of the priority efforts necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse, essential to hope to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050.
Our "DEFORESTATION" dossier
These efforts are acclaimed by the mobilizations of a growing number of citizens, such as in France the Citizen's Convention for the Climate and the “Affair of the Century”.
The stake is neither more nor less than the living conditions for the human species during the second half of the 21st century!
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This analysis was written by Serge Muller, professor and researcher at the Institute of Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN).
The original article was published on The Conversation website.
Declaration of interests
Serge Muller currently chairs the National Council for the Protection of Nature (CNPN). He is an associate member of the Environmental Authority of the CGEDD and a member of the Group on ecological town planning (GUE) of the Sorbonne-University Institute for Environmental Transition (SU-ITE).
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