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Forests & Climate Solutions
BC’s coastal forests are among the best carbon storehouses on the planet and one of world’s most powerful tools in the fight against climate change. They have the potential to become a vitally important part of a low-carbon economy, providing jobs, carbon sinks and species habitat.
BC’s coastal forests are among the best carbon storehouses on the planet and one of world’s most powerful tools in the fight against climate change. They have the potential to become a vitally important part of a low-carbon economy, providing jobs, carbon sinks and species habitat. Learn more.
Unfortunately, BC is not making good use of this potential. Emissions from BC's forests are already equivalent to 77 percent of the province's official emissions. This is mostly caused by intensive harvesting, which churns up the soils and releases stored carbon.
Right now, the government is not even considering this huge addition to our climate impact. Tucked away as a "memo item" in the latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, the whopping 51 megatonnes of CO2 from forestry is neither counted as part of BC's total nor addressed in our reduction targets.
This data on massive emissions from BC’s forest lands show that we need a paradigm shift in forest management. In the face of climate change, we need to manage our forests in a way that enhances their resilience to the many pressures and stresses they will be facing -- from changing seasons, shifting water and fire patterns, to opportunistic outbreaks of pests.
Improved forest management practices like selective logging
and
longer rotation also allow for more employment than industrialized
clear-cutting. Forest industry unions and leading environmental groups have united
behind a plan that calls on the BC government to conserve more forest,
halt rampant wood waste and promote wise use of forest products — all
as part of a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Managing BC’s Forests for a Cooler Planet: Carbon Storage, Sustainable Jobs and Conservation, was released jointly by the CCPA with a coalition of unions and environmental groups, including Sierra Club BC. Learn more.
The Cooler Planet report comes within weeks of the release of a Sierra Club BC report on the state of BC's coastal forests which found that decades of old growth logging have left an alarming 50 percent of all forest ecosystems on Vancouver Island and the South Coast at a high risk for species extinction and loss of carbon storage
“We must quickly change the way we manage B.C.’s coastal forests to ensure on-going employment in a stable industry--based on sustainable forest management, increased manufacturing here at home and an end to raw log exports,” said Sierra Club BC Executive Director George Heyman.
For the sake of both climate and jobs, a provincial plan how to reduce emissions from our forest lands through improved management should be the highest priority.
For more information on our Forests and Wilderness campaign, please click here.
