According to a number of environmental groups, the true carbon cost of the forestry industry is being obscured by government accounting. Last month, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, an independent government watchdog within the auditor general’s office, upheld their long-standing argument.
The government “did not provide a full and transparent picture of how Canada’s forests remove carbon from the atmosphere or contribute carbon to it,” noted the report from the environment commissioner. It also cited specific concerns: Emissions from the logging industry were not reported separately, frequent recalculations kept changing the numbers, and there was weak oversight of emissions projections.
“Canadians kind of are given the impression that industrial logging on a large scale is carbon neutral and the whole policy framework for the government seems to be based on that false assumption,” said Michael Polanyi of Nature Canada.
“In fact it should be treated as a high emitting sector and be required to reduce its emissions.”
Polanyi’s group has tried to calculate the emissions related to forestry from figures in Canada’s national inventory report, the annual accounting of the countries greenhouse gas emissions. For 2021, they estimate forestry emitted 73 megatonnes of CO2-equivalent – roughly the same as emissions from the province of Quebec.
Canada’s inventory report has no separate category for the forestry sector. Instead, it uses a category called land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), which is in line with UN reporting standards, and includes detailed information on all the carbon emitted and absorbed from land use – managed forests, croplands, wetlands, wood products from logging.
In 2021, the report said the LULUCF sector was, overall, not a source of emissions but rather a carbon sink of 17 megatonnes.
By looking specifically at forestry, the environmental groups’ estimate includes the amount of carbon contained in trees that have been logged in the ‘managed’ forest – the parts of forest that see human activities like logging, wildfire suppression and pest control.
They deducted the carbon removed from the air by replanted trees on previously logged areas and the carbon stored in long-lived wood products that are still in use.
However, the estimate doesn’t include trees that the environmental groups argue are being unfairly used to offset the emissions from forestry: trees that have regrown naturally after wildfires and other disturbances, and reached commercial maturity – roughly 80 years old or more.
In 2021 the national inventory estimated these trees removed 79 megatonnes. The disagreement lies in whether these trees, left standing, should be included in the totals – making forestry appear as an emissions sink.
“Right now there’s quite a prevalent myth that’s perpetuated by the logging industry and also kind of perpetuated by the government that forestry including logging is a climate solution,” said Polanyi.
He said it is important to calculate forestry emissions separately so that “government policymakers can base their policy decisions on solid evidence about what are the emission levels from all sectors of the Canadian economy.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/forestry-emissions-logging-boreal-1.6831088