Myth: “Deforestation accounts for 25 percent of all man-made emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.”
That statement comes from a 2005 press release from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. A year later, FAO had decided that the figure was too low:
in fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year … is caused by deforestation.
In its 2007 report, the IPCC estimated that deforestation accounted for 17% of emissions.
Two years later, in a paper published in Nature Geoscience, Guido van der Werf and colleagues, argued that the figure was actually closer to 12%. While estimates of the rate of deforestation globally are fairly steady, emissions from burning fossil fuels are increasing rapidly. As such, the percentage of emissions from deforestation is falling.
A graph in the paper illustrates this clearly:
At the end of 2012, research teams from Winrock International and Woods Hole Research Center produced a joint study. Their conclusion was that,
“Tropical deforestation accounts for about 10 percent of the world’s heat-trapping emissions.”
The figures for deforestation used to produce this figure were between 2000 and 2005. Since then emissions from fossil fuels have increased and deforestation accounts for a lower percentage of global emissions today.
Of course this does not mean that the problem of deforestation is solved. Far from it. But deforestation accounts for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions – a number that is falling.
On its website, UN-REDD still uses the 20% figure:
Deforestation and forest degradation, through agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development, destructive logging, fires etc., account for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.
I’ve written to the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat and asked why they continue to use a figure that is almost double the most recent research. I’ll post their response in the comments.
This is the first in an occasional series of REDD myths on REDD-Monitor. If you have suggestions for other “REDD myths”, please let me know in the comments.
PHOTO Credit: NASA.
Thanks for this series posts
I wanted to know if these myths exist in Spanish
Good post. IPCC AR5 should have the most recent figures. Here are some suggestions for myths: “offsetting schemes generate emission reductions” (zero sum game); “carbon markets are a tool to financing developing countries’ mitigation efforts” (they are not climate financing at all, their function is to facilitate compliance of mitigation commitments by developed countris); “a ton is a ton” (meaning a ton of CO2eq in forests are the same as a ton of CO2eq from fossil fuels); “REDD = forest governance” or “REDD = forest financing” (talk about missing the forest for the trees…); “you need markets to finance forests” ….
Yes, I agree this issue needs to be covered. However there is an enormous unnoticed Elephant here, which I actually wrote of last week:
http://fivetrilliontrees.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/more-treeconomics/
Year, on year, on year, on year, on year, on year, on year, on year………………………………. going back over ten thousand years.
Cheers Chris. I really appreciate your toils in producing your REDD critiques, they are an invaluable record,
Chris Hemmings
O/C FTT
Wales
@Yvonne Yanez – Thanks for this question. The answer is that this series is not available in Spanish (at least not yet), but I think it’s an excellent idea. If and when I manage to get it translated I’ll let you know.
You were right: IPCC AR5 WGIII: FOLU accounted for 11% of world´s emission in 2010(Figure SPM.1 p. 7), with uncertainties of around %50 , which means it was between 5.5 and 16.5%… The higher estimations seems unlikely as the tendency was the lowering of emissions.