Deforestation and Global Warming

Tropical Forests are home to a disproportionately large part of the planet’s biological and genetic diversity and they also store globally significant amounts of carbon by utilizing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere in their growth. The loss of Tropical Forests is far more profound than simply the loss of areas of great beauty and the consequences are not merely local but global and far-reaching. The local consequences include: soil erosion and silting of rivers and water sheds, changes in local climate and rainfall, and loss of local fauna populations (including pollinators). The global effects include: the loss of bio-diversity (both species and genetic), disruption of global hydrologic, carbon, nitrogen and other geochemical cycles, and acceleration of climate change (global warming) due to the release of the carbon which is stored in the trees and forest soils. This carbon is released as CO₂ - the gas mainly responsible for global warming.

“Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.” From: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis3.

Most of the world’s leading climate scientists now agree that global warming is occurring and is caused mainly by the increasing concentration of atmospheric CO₂ due largely to human activity. According to a recently released Report from the IPCC³, this increase in global CO₂ concentration results from burning fossil fuels and land use change (mainly deforestation).

Global deforestation has contributed significantly to the record global average CO2 levels recently reported by the United Nations WMO4. Today, ongoing Tropical deforestation is estimated to cause 25% to 30% of the world’s annual emission of global warming gases5. Tropical Forests are usually cut down to make way for crop land or pasture and typically much (or all) of the vegetation is burnt releasing most of the carbon contained within as CO2. In addition, the ongoing absorption of CO2 by the tree due to its growth is lost. Conserving the remaining Tropical Forests and planting New Tropical Forests could help reduce the rate of CO2 emission and buy more time while better alternatives to burning fossil fuels are developed.

MicroForests protect a vital Ecological Asset... our remaining Frontier Forests, Mature Forests and established Secondary Forests.

Carbon Dioxide Carbon in various organic and inorganic forms moves between the atmosphere, the oceans and the terrestrial biosphere in continuous, complex exchanges known as the Global Carbon Cycle. Most important of these forms of carbon is a colorless, odorless gas called carbon dioxide (CO2). Oceans, terrestrial vegetation and soils are large reservoirs of carbon and they actively exchange CO2 with the atmosphere. The total carbon contained in vegetation and soils is more than three times greater than the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and the carbon stored globally in soils is much greater than that stored in vegetation. Climate changes are being induced by elevation of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere mostly as a result of fossil fuel burning. Fossil fuels are made of carbon that was locked away by plants in permanent, inactive storage deep in the earth many millions of years ago in the form of coal, oil and natural gas. These fuels are being extracted from this inactive storage and burnt thereby re-releasing the carbon (mainly as CO2) into active participation in the Global Carbon Cycle again. The released CO2 flows into the atmosphere from car exhaust pipes and chimney stacks throughout the world and this increasing level of CO2 is the driver of the recent climate change known as global warming. Deforestation is also major contributor to the increasing level of CO2. Terrestrial plants grow through photosynthesis, a process which uses the energy from sunlight to combine water with CO2 removed from the atmosphere to make new plant stems and leaves. A tree can convert about 4lbs of CO2 into 3lbs of oxygen (O2) which is released into the atmosphere and 1lb of carbon (C) which is stored away as wood. The rate at which CO2 is captured from the atmosphere varies widely and depends on the growth rate of the tree which in turn depends on many factors including: species, maturity, climate, soil and management. In the tropics, trees can grow much faster than elsewhere and therefore absorb CO2 at a higher rate. Deforestation results in most of this stored carbon being re-released into the atmosphere.

Until recently, it had been generally assumed that no net absorption or emission of CO2 occurs in Mature Forests, however according to some recent work Mature Forests still actively absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Using sophisticated measurement techniques, studies carried out in Forests located in the USA6, Canada7, Europe8 and South America9 have confirmed that Mature Forests continue to actively grow and sequester CO2. The European group claim that old, Mature Forests actually accumulate more carbon than young plantations suggesting that conservation of old Forests is a better policy for tackling global warming than planting new ones8. Furthermore, some authorities believe that the rate of this carbon sequestration is likely to increase as the global level of CO2 continues to rise due to global warming — an effect known as carbon fertilization10.

The TerraVerde Foundation MicroForests Program offers a unique and secure way for individual investment and ownership of some of the world’s vitally important remaining Forest assets. This ensures these existing Forests will remain intact and forever protected from disturbance or destruction and that the stored carbon is not released to add to the global warming problem. The Program is described in more detail here.

James Hansen, leading climate scientist and longtime director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, believes that global warming is accelerating and "The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes are now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface." Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. Source: CBS Program “60 Minutes” broadcast March and July 2006.

³Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Paris, February 2007.
⁴United Nations World Meteorological Organization Greenhouse Gas Bulletin for 2005.
⁵FAO Newsroom, 4 September 2006, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
⁶Paw U, K.T. et al.,Ecosystems; cited by Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change, Tempeh Arizona USA.
⁷Environment Canada BERMS Project (Boreal Ecosystem Research and Monitoring Sites)
⁸From CarboEurope as reported in The New Scientist, Oct. 28, 2002.
⁹ECCM Technical Note 2002, The Edinburgh Center for Carbon Management.
¹⁰Sherwood, Keith & Craig Idso, 2005 Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempeh Arizona USA.