What can the Glasgow Declaration on Forests bring to global emission reduction?

Yakun Zhu (1) , Daju Wang (1) , Pete Smith (2) , Philippe Ciais (3) , Shilong Piao (4) , Wenping Yuan (1) , Zhangcai Qin (1)

1 School of Atmospheric Sciences [Zhuhai]
2 University of Aberdeen
3 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
4 Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences

The Glasgow Declaration on Forests signed at the recent UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26) committed to halting forest loss by 2030. 141 countries and regions, collectively covering over 90% of global forest, endorsed this declaration. Avoiding forest loss can generally contribute to climate change mitigation; however, the impacts of the declaration on global carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) emission reduction are still unclear. Here we show that the Glasgow Declaration, if implemented fully and in a timely fashion, could reduce 123 Gt CO$_2$ of emission from 2021 to 2050. This study also highlights that any delays in implementing the declaration would decrease the avoided emission. Although the Glasgow Declaration is a milestone for mitigating climate change, the more ambitious afforestation plan is urgently needed to keep the global temperature rise to below 1.5°C relative to pre-industrial levels.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère; Interfaces continentales, environnement

Yakun Zhu, Daju Wang, Pete Smith, Philippe Ciais, Shilong Piao, et al.. What can the Glasgow Declaration on Forests bring to global emission reduction?. The Innovation, 2022, 3 (6), pp.100307. ⟨10.1016/j.xinn.2022.100307⟩. ⟨hal-03791020⟩