CoAct Database

Protecting Primary Forests is Essential for a Safe Climate (Wild Heritage, CLARA)

FORESTS STORE MORE CARBON THAN IS CURRENTLY IN the atmosphere (and more than known oil and coal reserves combined). Forests are therefore a critical component of climate solutions because there is enough carbon in forests that if burned or otherwise released into the atmosphere, it would trigger dangerous warming, even if we eliminate fossil fuel emissions

Although industrial activity is incompatible with the maintenance of primary forest values, we do know the range of activities that are compatible with primary forest protection–from protected areas to indigenous and community conservation to payments for ecosystem service schemes. It is vital that climate funding shift to primary forest protection, ecological restoration and natural regeneration. Improved logging practices or plantations will not generate the mitigation necessary to avoid 1.5°C of warming and is only helpful if it linked to improved primary forest protection and restoration and does not have adverse impacts on indigenous or local communities.