Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13876
Summary: Avoiding further loss and degradation of primary forests and intact forest landscapes, and allowing degraded forests to naturally regrow, would reduce global carbon emissions annually by about one gigatonne or 1 Gt, and reduce another two to four Gt of carbon emissions through just allowing natural regrowth.
If greater negative emissions are to be realized, they will require an expansion of forest area, greater efficiencies in converting harvested wood to long‐lasting products and sources of energy, and novel approaches for sequestering carbon in soils.
Key excerpts:
- “…we estimate that stopping deforestation and allowing secondary forests to grow would yield cumulative negative emissions between 2016 and 2100 of about 120 PgC, globally.”
- “Extending the lifetimes of wood products could potentially remove another 10 PgC from the atmosphere, for a total of approximately 130 PgC, or about 13 years of fossil fuel use at today’s rate.”