Tribune. The climate emergency is now so serious that it is imperative to act, to act quickly but to act well. Reports from major international organizations such as the IPCC or the UN never cease to alarm us about the need to rapidly and drastically reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. This sobriety must remain the priority, but they also invite us to promote actions that store carbon. Few credible solutions exist for this, but investing in the forest is one of them.
The forest offers the double advantage of capturing CO2 through photosynthesis and tree growth (carbon sequestration), then to conserve it in the long term in the form of biomass in trunks, branches and roots (carbon storage), or even a few decades in wood-based products.
It therefore appears very clear that a massive effort to protect, preserve and restore but also to extend wooded areas must be accomplished, as proposed by initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge. [lancé en 2011] or the United Nations Decade for the Restoration of Ecosystems, but which are still too much at the stage of promises. Faced with the extreme complexity of implementing such international policies, it is necessary to be more pragmatic and to act locally, making France an example.
Three fundamental principles
We therefore propose to promote, as of now, a new form of plantation forests, entirely dedicated to the objective of mitigating climate change.
These “plantations for the climate” must respect three fundamental principles to effectively trap atmospheric carbon without causing any nuisance.
1.- The new “plantations for the climate” should not replace existing forests, which should be preserved since they already store carbon at present, and more generally for areas of ecological interest such as natural meadows. , moors or current forest increases.
They will have to be established only on abandoned agricultural lands, brownfields, degraded environments or in urban and peri-urban areas, in order to increase the wooded areas without encroaching on other natural ecosystems. Tens of thousands of hectares of this type are available in France to accommodate these trees.
2.- Plantation species should be chosen on the basis of their ability to survive, grow and adapt in stressful climatic conditions (hotter and drier), in particular thanks to their genetic diversity.
You have 52.21% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.