Climate-Change Mitigation in the Forest-Based Sector: A Holistic View

Abstract

AbstractForests and wood use can contribute to climate-change mitigation by enhancing carbon sinks through afforestation, reforestation and improved forest management, by maintaining carbon stocks through natural or anthropogenic disturbance prevention, by increasing offsite carbon stocks, and through material and energy substitution by changing the industry production structure and enhancing resource efficiency. As forests grow fairly slowly in Europe, increasing the wood harvesting intensity decreases the carbon stocks in aboveground biomass, at least in the short to medium term (0–50 years) compared to a baseline harvest regime. The key issue is the time frame in which the decreased carbon stock in forests can be compensated for by improved forest growth resulting from improved forest management and the benefits related to wood utilisation. Thus, there is a need to address potential trade-offs between the short- to medium-term and the long-term (50+ years) net emissions. An optimal strategy needs to be tailored based also on regional specificities related to, for example, local climatic and site conditions, the state of the forests, the institutional setting and the industry structures. This chapter presents a way to assess the effectiveness of forest-sector climate-change mitigation strategies across different contexts and time horizons, combining the climate impacts of forests and the wood utilisation of the technosphere. We identify potential ‘no-regret’ mitigation pathways with minimum trade-offs, and conclude with the research and policy implications.