Björksäter 3 October 2022
At the weekend, Sverker Lenas wrote in DN about how forests in the Nordic and Baltic countries are going from carbon sink to emission source. The rate of felling is increasing while the forest's ability to bind carbon is decreasing.
In Estonia, the forestry sector has become an emission source in its own right. Logging volumes have increased significantly to meet the demand for fuel pellets in several European countries, including Sweden. The forest is literally being burned. This is also the fate of the Latvian forest.
In Finland, the forest sector's carbon sink has decreased dramatically and, together with the agricultural sector, Finnish land use is now an overall source of emissions. Here, too, a sharp increase in harvesting and a too young forest are cited as reasons. Nevertheless, everyone in the forestry sector is shocked by the negative development.
In Sweden, net sequestration is decreasing and should be increasing due to increased harvesting and decreased growth. Some researchers do not believe that the forestry sector in Sweden could become a source of emissions, provided felling volumes do not increase further. Others warn that there has already been a break in the trend and that there are no signs that the rate of felling will stop.
At the same time, the Swedish Forest Agency's new in-depth evaluation of the Living Forests environmental objective shows, like the five previous evaluations, that the objectives will not be achieved with current measures. Moreover, the trend is negative and the development is going in the wrong direction. This is due to the loss of natural values associated with forests with long continuity (old-growth forests).
When such values are lost, they cannot be recreated in the foreseeable future. With the forestry sector's methods of clear-cutting old-growth forest, bulldozing and harrowing the land, planting with bred seeds of one tree species and regular clearing and thinning of all trees other than those that provide the desired fiber raw material, it is never, ever possible to restore.
The loss of genetic diversity in old-growth forests with trees hundreds of years old and all ages in between is devastating not only for biodiversity, but also for forest resilience. The old forest with centuries-old trees and fungi can withstand even severe drought years and continue to store carbon, even if the storage is temporarily reduced.
The new plantations of spruce and pine will not meet the future challenges of climate and ecosystem collapse. Research after the 2018 drought shows that a fast-growing spruce plantation in Skåne in its 40th year lost its entire net carbon storage due to the stress that the plantation cannot cope with. This effect also persisted in subsequent years with normal weather.
There is a risk that despite the gloomy results and projections, the models used by the forest sector to calculate carbon sequestration and release from forests still underestimate the negative trend. It is not possible to equate carbon balance in forest soils with growth volume and loss volume in tree biomass.
The forest ecosystem is more complex than the forestry sector's analysis of plus and minus timber volumes can show. Instead, some researchers assume that the largest carbon store (70%) in our boreal forests is in the soil. They point to the crucial role of soil fungi in the forest ecosystem's ability to sequester carbon.
Research based on actual measurements of carbon balance with high masts in the forest has shown that spruce plantations that are in their maximum growth phase at the age of 40-50 years can still become a source of emissions. The soil's ability to sequester carbon is dramatically altered because the soil fungal flora is out of balance and does not receive sufficient nutrients from the young spruce trees. Instead, the soil releases carbon due to decomposition processes.
It is high time that such research is taken seriously and that estimates of the forest sector's carbon debt are modified. I am convinced that an analysis based on actual measurements, and not relying on calculations based on timber volumes, will show that the forest sector is already a source of emissions. A problem that the forest sector will then have to address is how to deal with afforestation that is a source of emissions. Can we afford 'forests' that leak carbon into the atmosphere?
Will government and industry take responsibility? The prospects for change in the forestry sector seem non-existent. There are a bunch of cookie jars of cheap raw material (old-growth forest) that can fill the coffers. The jar lids are being opened at a furious pace and thrown away. The old-growth forest in the cookie jars shimmers like irresistible green gold just waiting to be grabbed. And who can eat the cake and still have it?
The only way to stop depletion is to lock up the last cookie jars of old-growth forest in a secure safe. Decisions on nature reserves are not safe in the long term. Sweden's Risk Day already made this clear last spring, when it approved the Environment and Agriculture Committee's announcements to facilitate the lifting of forest protection and to increase measures against the spruce bark beetle in protected areas.
If you, along with many others, want to secure some precious cookie jars of old-growth forest for the future, Natural Heritage's forest acquisition is the safest option. It is the fundraising foundation's statutes that lock in the cookie jars with acquired old-growth forest in perpetuity, protected from logging, other forestry operations and from future sales.
It costs money to buy forests. Money that is collected from many people. Your contribution is therefore crucial. Together we preserve the precious Life on Earth!
Lo Jarl, Operations Manager, Ecologist, Naturarvet