Forest plantations or managed natural forests for carbon sequestration in tropical countries?
1999
Luukkanen, O. (University of Helsinki, Helsinki (Finland). Dept. of Forest Ecology)
In its suggested measures related to forests, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol of the global climate convention does not fully reflect the achievements in global forest policy development since the Rio 1992 Earth Summit. The Protocol seems to strengthen the biased view of tropical forests seen solely as plantations acting as carbon sinks. For the industrial countries, the prevailing interpretation of the Protocol completely ignores the massive sink effect of the growing timber stock in their non-tropical forests. Consequences of the Kyoto Protocol may become serious and unfortunate, if the industrialized countries are encouraged to carry out activities in developing countries that in reality may reduce than strengthen the tropical forest-related carbon sink effects. After Rio, the global forest policy and institutional development has proceeded rapidly. The final 1997 report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Forest (IPF) is now the most authoritative and a very operational plan for action in all global forests. Instead of referring to the state-of-the-art in forestry development as represented by the IPF report, the Kyoto Protocol represents outdated views that grossly underestimate the potentials and development needs existing in tropical natural and semi-natural forest. A total of 98% of tropical forests consist of natural or semi-natural forests and only 2% of plantations. Much more emphasis than before is needed for actions to reduce the carbon emissions caused by deforestation in tropical natural forests, especially since these actions are already sufficiently well known. Using tropical forest plantations for complete sequestration of the present annual increase in the atmospheric carbon pool would require a plantation area of the magnitude of 1000 million ha, as contrasted to the total of 32 million ha now existing in the tropical zone. Technically, economically, and socially, this is an impossible task
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