Tropical deforestation now emits more CO2 than the EU

To stay under 2 degrees Celsius of warming and thereby stave off the worst effects of climate change, more funding must be allocated to forest-focused global warming mitigation strategies. That’s the takeaway from a new analysis by Global Forest Watch (GFW) this month. The numbers suggest that forests, harnessed effectively, could be a powerful climate mitigation tool, but “forests have long been overlooked as a climate change solution,” said Nancy Harris, Research Manager for GFW.

Deforestation is now one of largest emitters of 

 carbon dioxide, ranking just below the U.S. and 

significantly higher than the EU.

One consequence of this oversight, according to climate scientists, is that the contributions of deforestation and forest degradation to climate change have received less attention than fossil fuel emissions. Tree cover loss contributes to global carbon emissions because trees naturally capture and sequester atmospheric carbon as they grow. When the trees are consumed by forest fires or cleared and burned to make way for pastureland, carbon that took decades to store is released back into the atmosphere near-instantaneously.

Read the story from Mongabay  by Rachel Fitts - “Tropical deforestation now emits more CO2 than the EU.”