Last May, at the 45th session of the joint FAO/UNECE Working Party on Forest Statistics, Economics and Management, governments held a thematic discussion on climate change and northern forests.
Representatives from the countries covered by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (which includes North America, Europe and Russia) discussed the importance of protecting and conserving the temperate and boreal forests of the northern hemisphere, with the aim of providing an input into discussions on forests and climate change at COP29 (Baku) and COP30 (Belem).
AirClim, representing the Northern Forests and Climate Change project, was invited to give a keynote address to the meeting. In its presentation, a strong plea was made for recognising the important role northern forests play in limiting climate change, promoting biodiversity and protecting indigenous peoples’ rights. The keynote address also called for increasing the protection and conservation of northern forests, implementation of the conclusions of the First Global Stocktake (GST) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which calls for halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030, and shifting logging practices to close-to-nature forest management.
While many governments welcomed these proposals, it became clear that the FAO/UNECE Working Party is still very much oriented towards traditional forest management and that the concept of increasing the conservation of forests in the northern hemisphere is a contentious issue, despite the fact that overall the percentage of protected forests is much lower in developed countries than in developing countries. Several government representatives made the point that for them forest management (and in particular harvested wood products) is still an important (if not “the most important”) part of any land-based carbon removal strategy.
Figure: Protected areas by region compared to overall forest cover
| forest cover (million ha) |
forest cover(% global cover) |
protected forests (million ha) | protected forests (% of global cover) | |
| Africa | 636.64 | 15.7% | 157.83 | 21.7% |
| Asia | 622.69 | 15.3% | 144.20 | 19.9% |
| Central & South America | 874.48 | 21.5% | 267.61 | 36.9% |
| Oceania
|
185.25 | 4.6% | 29.12 | 4.0% |
| North America | 722.42 | 17.8% | 69.27 | 9.5% |
| Russia | 815.31 | 20.1% | 18.58 | 2.6% |
| Europe | 202.15 | 5.0% | 39.20 | 5.4% |
| Northern forests | 1,705.07 | 42.0% | 127.05 | 17.5% |
Source: FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020
In the subsequent discussion AirClim stressed the importance of conservation and restoration, as evidenced in the below slide from the presentation which shows the regional land-based mitigation potentials. The country‐level map shows cost‐effective mitigation potential density (potential per hectare in 2020–2050), while the bar charts show the regional mitigation density by category (cumulative potential divided by total land area per measure per region) for 2020 to 2050. Note the very high potential for protection of forests and other ecosystems in the developed countries group.
Further, strengthening the concept of lacking synergies between different UN institutions and processes, country representatives did not provide clarity on how they are planning to implement the GST conclusions, which by adding “forest degradation” to the conclusions clearly imply action from developed countries. At the same time, awareness of the negative impact of climate change is high, and participants recognised the importance of action to adapt northern forests to current and future impacts of climate change, thereby welcoming the information contained in the Climate Analytics report on “Climate Impacts in Northern Forests”, developed as part of AirClim’s Northern Forests and Climate Change project.
At the end of the session, the Joint Working Party requested that the UNECE secretariat should coordinate with member states on the development of a substantive document on “UNECE Forests and Climate Change” as well as further climate change related outputs and activities.
Climate Analytics report: https://ca1-clm.edcdn.com/publications/Climate-impacts-in-northern-fores...
Figure: Country‐level map of cost‐effective mitigation potential density (potential per hectare in 2020–2050). Bar charts show the regional mitigation density by category (cumulative potential divided by total land area per measure per region) for 2020 to 2050. “Protect” measures in Developed Countries show high density due to the very small land area associated with high potential from peatland protection
