Forests Have Role to Play in Resolving the Carbon Conundrum

Re-posted with permission by Dr. Robert Falls:

As British Columbians consider the potential benefits and risks associated with growing the province's capacity for natural gas and oil production and transportation, carbon emissions and climate change have been illuminated as key issues. And so they should - CO2 (carbon dioxide) is the most voluminous and challenging of the greenhouse gases to be managed. Several million additional tonnes of CO2 per year would result from proposed LNG facilities, and natural gas and oil pipelines proposed for B.C. over the next decade.

With the conclusion of the Pacific Carbon Trust model having been recently announced, a fresh look at B.C.'s priorities around climate mitigation and carbon stewardship is timely. When British Columbians do so, they might be pleasantly surprised to find a scenario in which at least two important B.C. industries, as well as interior communities, and the environment, could be winners.

The first point to acknowledge in any fresh look at CO2 is that carbon is not inherently "bad". In fact, carbon is the mineral of life, providing the molecular backbone of all living organisms. Without carbon, there is no life as we know it.

Next, recognize that carbon is continuously being shunted and cycled around the globe - in and out of the atmosphere, in and out of ecosystems, in and out of the earth's crust. Carbon might reside in any one location anywhere from seconds, to billions of years.

Carbon dioxide is naturally released to the atmosphere through the breathing of all living things, from people, to trees, to grizzly bears. But it is also released to the atmosphere when remnants of ancient ecosystems (transformed into geological deposits), are mined (coal) or drilled (oil and gas) in order to fuel our vehicles, warm our homes, and power our industrial processes. Today, fossil energy makes up 82 per cent of the world's energy mix, and consumption is expected to rise for decades.

Carbon dioxide has become an issue as releases to the atmosphere from natural sources and fossil fuel combustion consistently exceed removals by photosynthesis. Since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen from approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) to more than 390 ppm. Most scientists agree this growing concentration of the greenhouse gas represents a significant risk to the global environment.

Within this context, resource rich B.C. is doubly blessed and doubly challenged. Large energy reserves, especially natural gas, are expected to represent an increasingly significant part of the province's economic future. And yet, developing, processing, and transporting gas and oil products will have substantial impacts on the environment, including significantly increased CO2 emissions.

At the same time, B.C.'s forests, once the cornerstone of our economy, have been devastated by pine beetle infestations. Since the outbreak, approximately 16 million hectares of B.C.'s forests, including parklands, have been destroyed. Consequently, interior mills are closing one after another. Unless these forests are restored, future generations living in B.C.'s interior forestbased economies could face a bleak economic reality.

The good news? Restoring and managing forest ecosystems is the only practical means known to science to remove large, measurable tonnages of CO2 from the atmosphere. Over the past 20 years, forest scientists and carbon accountants have devised, tested, refined and validated robust tools to measure and substantiate those benefits. There is no question that restoring our forests and harnessing their capacity to bring dead atmospheric carbon back to life in living forest ecosystems, represents a huge opportunity to create long-lived, carbon removal and storage mechanisms of immense proportions.

So, why not link the challenges of managing increased CO2 emissions from the energy industry, with opportunities to restore carbon-hungry forests? There will be multiple winners - a strong, responsible energy industry, a restored and robust forest sector, thousands of new jobs, and most important, a diverse, increasingly sustainable B.C. economy to be enjoyed by current and future generations. And let's not forget the restored forest ecosystems, with their rich endowment of wildlife, fish and flora.

B.C. has virtually all the pieces of a comprehensive solution, including leadership in forestry education, reforestation capacity, advanced satellite technologies and systems for monitoring forest and carbon dynamics, innovative carbon management policies, and world-class forest carbon project management know-how.

Are there challenges? Of course. For example, restored forests don't "turn on" with the flip of a switch. Removals start small and then grow exponentially for many decades. These are long-term projects with long-term benefits, and it is critical that deliveries of environmental and economic benefits to future generations - primary tenets of sustainability - be recognized, valued, and accounted for in provincial carbon offset policies, regulations and programming.

Would this removal of CO2 through the restoration of B.C.'s forests solve all the issues associated with the construction and operation of new pipelines and LNG facilities? Not completely. But such an approach clearly represents one very positive, innovative step that would result in a multitude of benefits, as British Columbians undertake with renewed care and purpose, the stewardship of the province's extraordinary endowment of natural resources, for current and future generations.

Dr. Robert Falls is a resource management scientist and serves as Adjunct Professor supporting remote sensing research and carbon stewardship at UBC's Forest Sciences Centre.

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