UNESCO: Human activity, climate change turn World Heritage Forests into carbon emitters

UNESCO researchers have discovered that human activity and climate change-related disasters have changed ten of the world's internationally recognised forests, often known as World Heritage Sites, from carbon absorbers to carbon emitters. According to a UNESCO report, these sites can absorb 190 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, which is about half of the United Kingdom's annual fossil fuel emissions. However, several of these sites have increased their emissions in the last 20 years, and some exceeding the amount of carbon emission compared to the amount they were absorbing.

A report by CNN says that the researchers are of the opinion that forests are changing from sinks to sources due to two key factors: Extreme weather conditions caused by climate change, such as wildfires, storms, and drought; and human land-use pressures, such as illegal logging, wood harvesting, and livestock grazing. Taking the scale of these forests into consideration, Tales Carvalho Resende, a project officer with UNESCO's natural heritage unit and a co-author of the report, believes this is becoming a worldwide issue that requires global action. He stated that this is not necessarily a problem exclusive to a single country or region, but rather a global problem.

"The 10 sites, that have become carbon sources, are scattered across the world which implies that a global action is urgently needed," Resende was quoted as saying by CNN. The planet's 257 World Heritage Forests cover more than 170 million acres of land, from the Congo Basin to the Redwood National and State Parks. However, the report shows that extractive industries, environmental degradation, and climate change have been observed in about 60% of World Heritage sites since 2000, resulting in the loss of more than 8.6 million acres of forest, an area greater than Belgium. Three of the ten sites that have turned into carbon emitters are located in the United States. 

'World Heritage Forests stored nearly 13 billion tonnes of carbon'

The findings of the report serve as a timely reminder of the limitations of trees and forests as climate solutions. Protecting forests and planting trees has immense potential to absorb carbon from the atmosphere, but in a fast-changing world of wild weather, trees in regions prone to wildfires may become part of the problem, not the answer, as these UNESCO sites demonstrate. The researchers, for the very first time, have quantified how the world's forests store atmospheric carbon dioxide. They noted that the World Heritage Forests have stored nearly 13 billion tonnes of carbon over the centuries, which is more than Kuwait's total carbon stocks. 

Majority of carbon-sequestering sites found in tropical & temperate climates

The majority of the carbon-sequestering sites were in tropical and temperate climates, such as South America and Australia. As some sites are still sequestering carbon, researchers believe these are hints that more of them will follow the suit and become carbon sources. In recent years, wildfires, in particular, have devastated large portions of these forests. Fires are an important component of the forest ecosystem, with many plant species relying on them to disseminate their seeds. But experts warn that they are becoming more intense with time, putting the carbon stored in the soil and trees at risk of being released. Warming temperatures and dry conditions have prepped much of the environment for wildfires to ignite in the last decade. The report cited numerous major fires in World Heritage sites in the recent decade, including one in Russia's Lake Baikal in 2016, and another in Australia's Tasmanian Wilderness and Greater Blue Mountains Area in 2019 and 2020.

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