Africa’s forests transformed from carbon sink to carbon source, study finds | Climate crisis

Africa’s forests have transformed from a carbon sink to a carbon source, according to a study that highlights the need for urgent action to save the planet’s great natural climate stabilizers.

This alarming change, which has occurred since 2010, means that the planet’s three main rainforest regions – the South American Amazon, Southeast Asia and Africa – have gone from being allies in the fight against climate change to becoming part of the problem.

Human activity is the main cause of the problem. Farmers are clearing more land for food production. Infrastructure and mining projects exacerbate vegetation loss and global warming – caused by the burning of gas, oil and coal – thereby degrading the resilience of ecosystems.

Scientists found that between 2010 and 2017, African forests lost around 106 billion kg of biomass per year, which is equivalent to the weight of around 106 million cars. The tropical hardwood forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and parts of West Africa have been hardest hit.

The study, published Friday in Scientific Reports, was carried out by researchers at the National Center for Earth Observations at the Universities of Leicester, Sheffield and Edinburgh. Using satellite data and machine learning, they tracked more than a decade of changes in the amount of carbon stored in trees and woody vegetation.

They found that Africa gained carbon between 2007 and 2010, but since then widespread forest loss has tipped the balance so that the continent emits more CO.₂ in the atmosphere.

The authors said the results show that urgent action is needed to halt forest loss, otherwise the world risks losing one of its most important natural carbon buffers. They say Brazil has launched an initiative, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), which aims to mobilize more than $100 billion (£76 billion) for forest protection by paying countries to leave their forests intact.

However, so far only a handful of countries have invested a total of $6.5 billion in the initiative.

Professor Heiko Balzter, lead author and director of the Institute for Environmental Futures at the University of Leicester, said the study showed the importance of rapidly scaling up the TFFF.

“Policymakers should respond by putting in place better safeguards to protect the world’s tropical forests,” Balzter said.

“Four years ago, at Cop26 in Glasgow, world leaders declared their intention to end global deforestation by 2030. But progress is not being made fast enough. The new TFFF is intended to pay forest nations to keep their trees rooted in the ground. It is a way for governments and private investors to counter the drivers of deforestation, such as mining for minerals and metals and the appropriation of agricultural land But more countries must contribute to it for it to work.