Climate mitigation schemes may cause deforestation
A new study published in the Science Journal on 29 May shows that one-eyed focus on industrial carbon in greenhouse gas protocols may result in massive deforestation as well as inefficient carbon emissions reduction.
With the global focus on reducing industrial emissions, there is a tremendous pressure to switch from fossil fuels to bio-energy crops. The incentive for converting forests into biofuel cropland is very strong. But in the conversion process, large amounts of carbon is released.
If greenhouse gas reduction schemes do not take the carbon contained in forests into account, high deforestation rates may result, reducing the real efficiency of switching to biofuels in mitigating climate change.
Conversely, including land-based carbon in greenhouse gas control strategies not only ensures maximal efficiency of the applied policy tools and preserves the forest. It will also reduce the overall cost of implementing carbon mitigation schemes, the study found.
Source: Red Orbit
