Forest management in Europe needs a long-term, sustainable approach that can move beyond the current focus on short-term profit. A new EFI report sets out in detail how carbon farming – a set of land management practices that help capture and store carbon dioxide in soil and plants – can best be managed so as to maximise its climate potential and reduce the growing risk of forest fires.

A new EFI report, “Carbon Farming in The European Forestry Sector” (Carbon Farming in the European Forestry Sector), shows how EU forests, which cover 40% of the bloc's land area, can increase their long-term carbon sequestration capacity and help the EU meet its target of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

This depends on one crucial factor – abandoning practices geared towards short-term profit. As almost half of Europe's forests are privately owned, forest owners need better incentives to make long-term management their priority. By introducing a form of temporary carbon credit that takes account of the impermanent nature of carbon stocks in natural ecosystems and that is re-measured each year, owners could raise the capital to move away from practices that deliver quick financial returns while degrading the environment, such as logging or clearing land of forest.

Tommaso Chiti, a professor at the University of Tuscia, said: “Temporary carbon credits are designed to address a problem that nature-based solutions sometimes face, namely that carbon storage is not permanent, by offering carbon credits for carbon stored over a single year. Rather than making one-off up-front payments, the flexibility and repeatability of temporary carbon credits ensures that the credit accurately reflects the amount of carbon sequestered, increasing trust and transparency among buyers on the carbon market.”

The report recommends that temporary carbon credits be used as a financial contribution to climate action rather than as an offsetting instrument. It also recommends expanding geospatial monitoring and third-party verification to ensure that carbon credits generated by carbon farming projects genuinely reflect their climate benefits.

It concludes that forest restoration and the establishment of new forests – afforestation – is the most effective method of storing more carbon over the long term. Diversifying tree species, lengthening harvesting rotations, agroforestry and wetland management are also identified as important methods for counteracting the effects of unsustainable land-use practices, which have degraded more than 60-70% of Europe's soils.

Dr Ana Rey, of the Spanish National Research Council, notes: “Forests are the best natural CO₂ removal technology available to us, yet in the fight against climate change they are increasingly threatened by forest fires, drought and storms. At present most of Europe's forests are managed for timber production, and the carbon sequestration benefits are merely an add-on to short-term profit rather than a matter of maintaining long-term health and resilience. Forests must be the very highest priority so that they can safeguard biodiversity, serve as an important water reservoir and improve air quality for people.”

If the European Union is to make full use of the potential of its forests to sequester carbon and reduce climate risks, the report calls on policymakers to review the frameworks for effective carbon farming measures. While the EU supports the use of timber in construction and energy, some national governments fund measures to reduce timber harvesting. Aligning policy so as to build resilience against climate threats will help the EU achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

Authors:

Tommaso Chiti, University of Tuscia, Italy
Ana Rey, National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN), National Spanish Research Council (CSIC), Spain
Jens Abildtrup, National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), France
Hannes Böttcher, Oeko-Institut, Germany
Jurij Diaci, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Oliver Frings, AgroParisTech, France
Aleksi Lehtonen, Natural Resources Institute Finland
Andreas Schindlbacher, Austrian Research Centre for Forests (BFW), Austria
Miguel A. Zavala, University of Alcalá, Spain