Peter Holmgren, a forestry advisor, has prepared a report on the climate benefits of forestry in response to three representatives of the organisation Protect the Forest, who argue that climate work should be supplemented by atmospheric carbon sequestration.
Three passionate forest conservation activists want to reduce Swedish forestry by 50%, estimating that 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide will be stored in forests over the next 80 years. They claim that commercial forests are standing idle, making no contribution to solving climate change. Their plan would be an appropriate Swedish sacrifice for a fair global response to climate change, according to an opinion piece by Kjell Prytz (Kjell Prytz), Ida Sellstedt (Ida Sellstedt) and David van der Spoel (David van der Spoel). According to the authors, if the forest industry were partially closed down, this amount of biogenic carbon dioxide would not be emitted, as it is assumed that it remains in the forest. The impact of such a measure on society as a whole has not been considered.
The most striking thing about this strange proposal is its very low climate goal. In the last 30 years alone, we have stored 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 in Swedish forests, while simultaneously producing a great deal of timber and increasing nature conservation, for example, through a rapid increase in the number of old trees. Therefore, the participants in the discussion want to slow down the rate of carbon sequestration in forests by about 25%. This would be very unfortunate, as in that case we would still not have taken into account the climate benefits created by forest products, which are also essential in the transition process.
Used forests are not standing still; rather, it is quite the opposite. Most of Sweden's forest net carbon stocks are held in actively managed forest stands. Studies based on objective measurement data clearly show that actively managed boreal forests, such as those in Sweden and Finland, store significantly more carbon than less intensively managed or unmanaged forests in Canada or Russia.
Long-term investments in forest management promote growth and the formation of timber stocks and protect forests from damage by fire, insects and storms. These investments, in turn, depend on long-term demand for timber, which determines the value of the forest. For more than a hundred years, Swedish forest policy and forestry have operated in accordance with this motto. A positive side effect: forests are therefore a very powerful carbon sink.
The most serious aspect of the activists' article is the fact that the authors belittle the task of reducing fossil emissions. Approximately 80% of the world's climate change impact is caused by fossil fuels and process emissions, such as cement production. 20% is caused by land use, which is completely dominated by agriculture, including deforestation in the tropics. Therefore, we must focus on fossil emissions, where renewable forest products have an important role to play. (...)