Policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation ...

chapter 2
Background
Forests and the Carbon Cycle
Forests play an integral role in mitigating climate change. Not only are forests one
of the most important carbon sinks, storing more carbon than the world’s oil reserves,
they also constantly remove carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis,
which converts atmospheric carbon to organic matter. Covering more
than 30 percent of the global land area in 2005, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) estimates that global forests store 638 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon (C) in their
ecosystems, compared with approximately 750 GtC stored in the atmosphere. Of this forest carbon,
283 Gt (44 percent) is stored in forest biomass, and the remainder is stored in soil (46 percent),
dead wood (6 percent), and forest litter (4 percent) (FAO 2006).
While forests are constantly removing carbon from the atmosphere, deforestation is pumping
carbon right back into it. For many of us familiar with temperate forests that are stable or increasing
in size, it is hard to imagine the magnitude of deforestation in the tropics. Carbon-rich
tropical forests are shrinking at a relatively rapid rate and emitting carbon once stored within the
organic matter. Annually, deforestation removes 13 million hectares (ha) of forest, or 0.2 percent
of total forest area (FAO 2006). In the tropics, the annual deforestation rate is approximately 0.6
percent, three times higher than the global rate. In the period 1990–2005, 8.3 percent of tropical
forest area was lost (FAO 2006; Butler 2007).
Carbon Emissions from Deforestation
Deforestation in developing countries is frequently driven by agriculture, logging, and road expansion.
Rising prices for soy, palm oil, and beef make it increasingly cost-effective for developing
countries to clear their forests and convert the land to agriculture. Often, burning is the cheapest
and easiest way to clear the land. When forests are logged, only a fraction of the wood becomes
dimensional lumber for eventual use in housing and other structures. The majority of the forest
vegetation ends up as waste, and thus the majority of the carbon from the forest ends up in the
atmosphere. Further, policies that expand road infrastructure provide access for loggers, farmers,
and homesteaders to the previously inaccessible forest interior.
Deforestation and land-use activities including burning, decomposiiton of waste forest mattter,
soil degradation in cleared lands, and other land-use activities, emit approximately 1.6 GtC,
1 Policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries