Northern forests

The protection of forests did not figure high on the UN climate convention’s COP28 agenda last December and it really seems negotiators are waiting for Brazil’s COP30 in 2025.

EU Member States and the European Parliament recently agreed on the Regulation on deforestation-free products, which aims to promote the consumption of forest-friendly products and reduce the EU’s impact on global deforestation and forest degradation.

AirClim’s Northern Forests and Climate Change project aims to increase the visibility of Northern forests in the international climate debate. 

According to the last forest inventory of 1993, forest land makes up 459,900 ha, of which over 73 per cent or 334,100 ha is covered with forest. Overall, the inventory showed forest coverage of 11.2 percent for the country.  However, the inventory was done before the economic turmoil of the 1990s and there have been notable changes in the forest cover since then. International organisations have made more recent estimates of the forest cover in the country and they have given much lower estimates – approximately 7–8 per cent.

The most important factor influencing plants and wildlife distribution is climate. At the northern limit of tree distribution in the forest tundra of Siberia the mean annual soil temperature is -1 to -3°C. Around a hundred days a year have air temperatures above +5°C, and only 57–70 days are above +10°C. 

They occupy about 40 per cent of the territory of the country and have exceptional importance at the national, regional, and global levels. 95–98 per cent  of the Georgian forests have natural origin. 60 per cent  of the forest belongs to the Black Sea and 40 per cent  to the Caspian Sea basins. 

AirClim’s Northern Forests and Climate Change project aims to increase the visibility of Northern forests in the international climate debate.

In the last month, fires have ravaged forests in both Canada and Russia. This is just the latest of many similar examples.

Russia has one fifth of the global forest area. This area has remained relatively constant in recent decades, but clear cutting and wildfires are altering the species composition.