Saving our forests from the effects of climate change

By Ana LaRue

Most people are still navigating through the data of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, but it’s overall message is clear: anthropogenic (or human-made) climate change is already taking its toll on the life on this planet.

In a series of blogposts, Maximpact will be looking at what the IPCC’s findings mean for different parts of the impact investing sector. In the first of the series, we focus on forestry.

What do the findings mean for our forests?

Global warming is the best-known consequence of climate disruption, and its effects will probably intensify other global problems including damaging the health of our forest ecosystems. Forests play a key role in the mitigation of climate change but they are also highly affected by the stresses that result from it. Deforestation creates a vicious cycle: increased deforestation leads to increased greenhouse gas emission and increased climate change, which in turn poses additional threats to forest ecosystems.

The IPCC report covers several aspects of climate change that impact directly on forests.

Increases in CO2 emissions: With no doubt, concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased to levels that are unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. This may not necessarily be a negative thing for our forests. Given sufficient water and nutrients, increases in atmospheric CO2 may enable trees to be more productive in mitigating climate change.

However, given the substantial role forests play in the global carbon cycle, there are other considerations. Deforestation and forest degradation through agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development, destructive logging and fires account for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to a United Nations initiative that uses market and financial incentives to combat deforestation (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), the world’s forests are disappearing at the alarming rate of one football field’s-worth every few seconds. This means that meeting the UNFCCC’s (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) target of 2 ºC rise will be practically impossible to achieve without also reducing emissions from the forest sector.

Changes in precipitation: The IPCC predicts the contrast between wet and dry regions will continue to increase, with wet areas getting wetter and dry regions growing more parched. This will likely change the availability of water, altering forest growth cycles due to higher drought in some areas and extreme precipitation and flooding in others. Although forests can be resilient to some degree of change, more pronounced episodes could wipe out more sensitive local tree species. Variations in precipitation can also lead to natural disasters such as monsoons, extreme winds, floods, cyclones or extreme droughts. This could make ecosystem recovery even more challenging.

Increases in temperature: Twelve of the warmest years in recorded history occurred during the last fifteen years; and the IPCC report predicts that it will only get more intense. When it comes to our forests, variation in temperatures can alter growing seasons and shift geographic ranges. Forests facilitate food, water and air production, help to minimize storm damage and produce a wide range of natural medicines. A shift in the growing seasons could mean extinction of certain tree species that could no longer adapt to these changing conditions. Changing temperatures may also be responsible for additional threats to forests, such as pest outbreaks, fires, and drought.