CDR deep dives: Forest-based solutions
This post is intended as a twitter thread, you are warned of massive emoji use and 140-character-long ideas.
To read it in twitter form:
https://twitter.com/jvanpeborgh/status/1362119969308295174
Deep dive into forest based CDR solutions 🌱🌳:
Forest based carbon removal solutions 💨🌲🌲 use natural processes to store carbon out of the atmosphere, through biomass growth (mostly trees) and soil capture.
(Based on the great work done by the CDR primer team -s/o to @carbonplanorg, @jwilceclab, @BenKolosz- read at: https://cdrprimer.org/)
They take advantage of a technology that evolution has optimized for millions of years: photosynthesis ☀️🌱, which combines sunlight, CO2 and water to produce organic compounds (plant growth) and oxygen. (thx @carbon_180 for the image)
Not only do these processes store carbon in biomass, they also have the potential of increasing biodiversity and water safety.
Forest based solutions can be divided into:
1️⃣ Afforestation and Reforestation: growing new forests where they did not exist before (afforestation) and restoring forests where they used to grow (reforestation)
2️⃣ Improved Forest Management (IFM): changes in land practices to increase the quantity of carbon stored in forests (e.g, modifying harvest schedules)
⛔ Don’t know much about CDR? Read this thread first:
https://twitter.com/jvanpeborgh/status/1358792466158215169
Focusing on nature based solutions is a smart move 🧠 since nature already removes around half of our greenhouse gases each year. Land sinks capture around 25% of our CO2 emissions annually (~10 GtCO2eq/yr), and forests account for almost all of it (~90%).
It’s clear forests have a huge potential for further CO2 removal, especially if managed with CDR objectives in mind. (s/o to @globalecoguy for the chart)
❗ It’s important to note that stopping deforestation 🚫🪓 is crucial as a climate change mitigation strategy since it has a much larger benefit per area than reforestation projects, and thus will have a faster positive impact than tree planting approaches.
It’s much easier to avoid emissions by using conservation tactics and stopping deforestation than the time it takes for forest-based CDR approaches to have an effect, which might be in the order of decades and sometimes hundreds of years. Conservation also provides the co-benefits associated with forests, like increased biodiversity.
Most estimates indicate that it will be more costly to restore forests than to preserve existing ones, emphasizing the critical role of reducing deforestation compared to planting new trees.
Improved forest management (IFM) for CDR refers to changes in forestry practices to promote greater forest biomass and carbon storage.
IFM strategies increase the age and carbon storage of the forest, and reduce biomass lost to fires.
These include:
🪓✋ Lengthening harvest schedules
🔥✋ Improved fire management
🌱✋ Thinning and understory management,
🌳✋ Improved tree plantation management
IFM, afforestation and reforestation should play an important role in near-term CDR given that these approaches don’t depend on any new technological developments to be effective. Nature has already proven it is really robust at capturing CO2 from the air.
Recently, forest based CDR projects totaled an estimated 90 MtCO2eq per year, and make up the majority of carbon offsets, this number is still too low for the amount of CO2 we emit per year: 40 GtCO2 (~400 times more).
Globally, the CDR potential for IFM + afforestation and reforestation has been estimated between 4–12 GtCO2/yr (around 10–25% of current CO2 emissions), at a carbon price between 20–100 $ per tonne of CO2.
The 4 biggest differences of forest based approaches in relation to other CDR solutions:
🔴 Tree growth takes a long time, usually decades, to sequester large amounts of CO2
🔴 Trees have a permanence of around 100 years in best case scenarios
🟢 Forest projects have immense co-benefits beyond carbon storage (biodiversity, conservation, ecosystem goods, and services like water purification and pollination)
🟢 Trees are a proven method to capture CO2 from the atmosphere efficiently (they’ve been doing it for millions of years)
Some concerns surrounding forest based solutions:
1️⃣ Since afforestation and reforestation require large amounts of space (~ 30 Mha for 1 Gt of CO2 removed) it competes directly for other essential uses of land, like food production. Some land constraints could be reduced through agroforestry (integrating trees into agricultural systems 🐄🌳🌾) with crops like coffee and cacao, but it would be challenging to do so with crops like wheat, maize and soy for example. With IFM, land competition is rarely an issue, as the land is already used for forestry.
2️⃣ Climate change is endangering forest stability and permanence, which risks their effectiveness at removing carbon. Fires, hurricanes, droughts and pests are a natural part of many ecosystems and should be considered when evaluating forest-based projects.
Unfortunately, climate change is also greatly altering and increasing some of these disturbances (hello fire season 🔥), which decreases the carbon storage potential of these types of solutions.
3️⃣ In addition, forest-based CDR’s effectiveness can be affected when forest managers change their practices and interrupt monitoring or release carbon back to the atmosphere.
Opportunities for Reforestation projects (according to the CDR Primer)
Interesting examples of companies working on enhancing forest-based CDR projects:
@PachamaInc https://pachama.com/
“Harnessing AI to drive carbon capture and protect global forests.”
They’re building the marketplace for forest carbon credits to standardize verification and efficiently connect supply and demand. They use satellite imagery + AI to provide automated and trustworthy monitoring without large upfront costs to landowners.
CEO @dsaezgil
@Living_carbon https://www.livingcarbon.com/
“We are very special trees”
They address climate change by meaningfully reducing atmospheric carbon using biologically modified trees that better capture and store carbon, while simultaneously producing more durable wood-based products
CEO @Maddiehalla
@TF_Global https://www.terraformation.com/
“Forest technology to take on the climate crisis. Scaling-up carbon capture for a livable planet.”
They provide off-grid modular hardware and software solutions that enable forest projects to scale rapidly.
Some of their solutions are:
🌱 Restoration seed bank: solar-powered modular seed banks to process and store millions of seeds
🌳 Nursery build kit: All-in-one kit that includes everything needed to grow strong seedlings
☀️ Solar-powered desalination: To solve freshwater shortages
💻 Open-source software: For seed collecting, seed banking, tree planting and more
