World Forest Day丨Carbon Absorption and Sequestration, Climate Regulation, Global Forest Ecosystem Protection and Restoration, and These Significances!

The branches are dressed in new clothes, and the shoots are sprouting from the branches. March belongs to spring and belongs to green. On March 21, World Forest Day is coming. As an important food, money, reservoir and carbon reservoir on land, forests not only bring multiple social and cultural values such as recreation and aesthetics to human beings, but also absorb and store carbon sinks that are indispensable factors in coping with global climate change. In the view of experts, the protection and restoration of forest ecosystems is not only conducive to capturing forest carbon sinks, but also an important way for countries to create economic value by platform enterprises participating in international governance.

Protecting terrestrial carbon absorbers to alleviate the climate crisis

What does it mean to expand forest cover today? In addition to adding greenery, using trees to absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions, is the most well-known answer.

Forest land is an important "carbon sink", and forest plants can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fix it in vegetation or soil, thereby reducing its concentration in the atmosphere and forming a forest carbon sink. While no scientists claim that trees alone can solve the climate crisis, there is evidence that trees can play an important role. This also means that forests, which silently play a role as carbon sinks in nature, deserve more attention.

"Increasing forest area and improving forest quality will help steadily improve the carbon sink of forest ecosystems, which can not only promote the improvement of a variety of ecological service functions, but also help to transform ecological advantages into economic and social advantages, drive local balanced development, and promote inclusive common prosperity, which is an important part of the value realization mechanism of ecological products." Zhu Chunquan, head of the World Economic Forum's Nature Initiative in Greater China, told reporters.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that the world's forests contain about 662 billion tonnes of carbon. Among them, the Amazon rainforest in South America, which traverses eight countries including Brazil, Colombia and Peru, is the world's largest and most species-rich tropical rainforest, accounting for 20% of the world's forest area. The soil here stores about 150 billion tonnes of carbon and plays a key role in stabilizing the world's climate.

But accounting and trading of forest carbon sinks also requires systematic planning and monitoring. Forests can only function as carbon sinks when they fix more carbon than they emit over a period of time, and when trees are cut down, fires occur, or forests die and rot naturally, the carbon released by forests can become a source of carbon.

"It is important to note that there is also a question of cost in the capture and protection of forest carbon sinks, and in general, the unit cost of capture and protection is lower in the tropics. However, from the perspective of sustainable forest management and management, Germany's 'near-natural forestry' management has a lot of reference for the improvement of forest ecological quality in China, especially in the comprehensive transformation and quality improvement of low-quality and low-yield forests and single-species plantations. Zhu Chunquan said.

It is understood that near-natural forestry is a kind of forestry activity that follows the natural conditions under the premise of ensuring the self-preservation ability of the forest structure relationship, which can effectively protect the natural growth ability of the forest and enhance the ecological role of the forest.

Promote international governance through the protection of forest ecosystems

In fact, greening and the protection and restoration of forest ecosystems are not only an important means of capturing forest carbon sinks, but also a platform for countries around the world to participate in international governance.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 40% of the world's land is already degraded, and droughts are occurring more frequently and intensively around the world due to climate change and the way people manage their land. A quarter of the world's population is already affected by drought.

As an important part of ecosystems, forest carbon sequestration not only provides habitat, food and water resources, but also maintains the earth's water cycle and maintains ecological balance. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Convention, and the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December.

"The international community should work together to play a role in large-scale scientific greening and ecological restoration. Chen Peng, vice chairman of the China Green Foundation, told reporters.

China has played a pioneering role in this. In 2022, the "9th National Forest Resources Continuous Inventory Report" released by China pointed out that the total carbon storage of forest vegetation in China will reach 9.186 billion tons of carbon, the annual water conservation will be 628.950 billion cubic meters, the annual soil consolidation volume will be 8.748 billion tons, and the annual absorption of air pollutants will be 40 million tons.

On this year's Arbor Day, the "2023 Communiqué on China's Land Greening" released by the Office of the National Greening Committee shows that in 2023, China will complete afforestation of 3.998 million hectares. The "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Comprehensively Promoting the Construction of a Beautiful China" released not long ago also mentioned that China is committed to increasing the forest coverage rate to 26% by 2035. In this process, the sustainable management of forests, the participation of the whole people, and the transformation of inefficient forests are all issues that need to be paid attention to.

"The practice of Chinese enterprises participating in ecological restoration and protection is a vivid example of telling China's ecological story well. Chen Peng said.

Florian Vernaz, head of the World Economic Forum's Global Trillion-Tree Leaders Initiative, told reporters, "China has always had systemic advantages and outstanding achievements in afforestation and sustainable forest management, and these pioneering actions need to be shared more widely with the international community to promote global development and climate and sustainable development goals." ”

Zhu Chunquan introduced that in the early days, China used certain international funds to support the protection and restoration of forest ecosystems, and continuously improved the level of protection and restoration in exchanges and practices. With the development of society, the use of market participation mechanism to mobilize social capital has become an important trend in the conservation and restoration of international forest ecosystems.

"In the future, in order to promote global participation in the protection and restoration of forest ecosystems, we should strengthen dialogue and exchanges, share experiences, promote the participation of social capital, and establish a set of guiding policies, practical tools, technical routes, flagship projects and other 'combination punches' to mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate. Zhu Chunquan said.

There is a huge space for enterprises to help protect forest ecosystems

"The value of global forests is valued at about $15 billion, which is twice the market value of global equities. That's the data presented in a Boston Consulting Group report.

Behind the huge numbers, for companies, participating in the protection and restoration of forest ecosystems can not only help them strengthen their environmental resilience, but also help improve their overall profitability and better achieve their growth goals: increasing customer loyalty and stickiness with a relatively small capital cost, thereby bringing sustainable returns. This is especially true for businesses that are highly dependent on forests and land across their operations and up and down their supply chains.

However, even in developed European markets, only 5% of funding for terrestrial ecosystem restoration currently comes from the private sector. The action plan of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) aims to promote awareness of ecological restoration in business.

Over the past three years, the World Economic Forum has launched the "Global Trillion Tree Leaders Initiative", which has promoted more than 100 enterprises around the world to participate in the work of the platform, strengthen inter-regional dialogue and exchanges, and promote the growth of international partnerships and the sharing of ecological restoration knowledge.

In China, although the area of forest resources ranks among the top in the world and the area of planted forests ranks first in the world for many years, it is still facing challenges such as improving the ecological quality of forests and market-oriented protection and restoration. In January this year, China launched the National Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Trading Market (CCER), which provides a new path for enterprises to participate in conservation and restoration.

"Due to the long-tail effect of emission reduction after carbon peaking, the use of carbon sinks captured by forest ecosystems is often the optimal solution for the 'unnecessary' part of the emission reduction. China's gradually improving carbon sink market not only provides a participation mechanism, but also greatly enriches the diversity of enterprise participation and stimulates the enthusiasm of participation. Wang Chunfeng, executive deputy director of the International Cooperation and Exchange Center of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, told reporters that the successful implementation of greenhouse gas emission reduction, depends on the active and effective participation of enterprises, carbon trading and other market incentive mechanisms are undoubtedly the right choice and institutional innovation to promote the active and effective participation of enterprises, practice has proved that the win-win situation of enterprise attention and environmental benefits can be achieved, and should be continuously improved.

At the same time, it should also be noted that to promote the participation of enterprises and all sectors of society in land greening and sustainable forest management, we cannot rely on just one mechanism, but need a variety of incentive policies at the same time, constantly innovate the system and policy supply, create a variety of cooperation platforms, and build participation methods that meet the characteristics of different enterprises, so as to continue to stimulate the willingness of enterprises to participate. Wang Chunfeng said.