Scientists for the first time calculated the volume of absorption of CO2 by world reserves

Every year, forests located on the territory of World Heritage sites absorb 190 million tons of carbon dioxide, UNESCO experts have calculated. However, about 4% of the reserves turned out to be net air pollutants

What’s going on

• Experts from UNESCO, the World Natural Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have for the first time estimated the levels of carbon dioxide absorption and emission in forests at World Heritage sites from 2001 to 2020. It turned out that annually these territories absorb on average about 190 million tons of CO₂.
• The study combined satellite data with monitoring data for 257 separate forest areas covering about 69 million hectares.
• The total amount of carbon accumulated by these forests was about 13 billion tons – if all this carbon were emitted into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, this would be comparable to one third of the total annual emissions of mankind.
• One third of the total carbon sequestration over the past 20 years has come from five reserves: Tasmanian Wildlife (Australia), Te Wahipounamu (New Zealand), Amazon Central Reserve (Brazil), Salonga National Park (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Canadian Rockies Parks ( Canada).
• However, the conclusions drawn from data from ten of the 257 forests are worrying – in their territory, the amount of COXNUMX emissions₂ over the past 20 years has exceeded its absorption, primarily due to human activities, large-scale forest fires, and other extreme weather conditions.
• UNESCO experts are calling on national governments to better manage World Heritage sites and their surrounding landscapes so that forest areas can continue to fulfill their important ecological role as a carbon sink and store.

What does it mean

The UN estimates that forests cover 31% of the Earth’s area and are biodiverse ecosystems that play an important role in the planet’s carbon cycle by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Despite the fact that forests in general are powerful net carbon sinks, some of them, due to anthropogenic factors, have turned into sources of CO emissions.₂, even despite the status of a protected area.

It is worth noting that the forest cover of the Earth is not properly protected – the problem of deforestation is still on the international agenda, including under the pretext of so-called sanitary felling. In addition, government failure to protect protected areas has resulted in Amazon rainforest conservation areas being sold on the Facebook marketplace and likely other marketplaces and offline.

However, the problem has long gone beyond the reduction of forest cover: ten forest areas are already sources of COXNUMX emissions.₂, disturbing the carbon balance of the planet, and in the absence of effective measures for the management of protected forests, their number may increase, thereby exacerbating the effects of climate change.