Carbon is taken up by forests through the photosynthesis process – carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere by foliage and converted to wood and tissues. Carbon release occurs through plant respiration, disturbance (especially fire) and harvest. Mature forest ecosystems tend to balance uptake and release, although the pattern varies greatly. Climate change in itself, mainly through global warming and increased carbon dioxide concentrations, has an effect on forest growth patterns and rates of carbon uptake and release. Overall however, at the global scale, forests have a net uptake of carbon dioxide.

Ireland, in common with parts of Europe, North America and other developed parts of the world suffered widespread deforestation over several centuries, prior to a process of recovery in the 19th, and especially the 20th centuries. Most of the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere prior to the mid 20th century was in fact due to loss of forest cover. But since the 1940s, emissions from fossil fuels have far outstripped those from deforestation, and are the largest contributor to climate change, as the table below shows (data is representative of the year 2000 and is based on the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - as summarised in Forestry Commission Information Note: Forests, Carbon and Climate Change –the UK Contribution, Broadmeadow 2003).

Global warming
Global warming is caused by increases in the levels of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly carbon dioxide. Burning of fossil fuels and destruction of forest cover are the main sources of the increase. Greenhouse gases act like a blanket around the planet. Effectively they stop energy escaping from the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. If levels rise too high, excessive warming can distort natural climate patterns. As greenhouse gases are emitted from fossil fuel burning and deforestation, they build up in the upper atmosphere, trapping the loss of heat from the earth’s surface, leading to a rise in temperature – global warming. Levels of carbon dioxide continue to increase each year at a rate of about 1.5 parts per million (ppm), as the graph below shows (data from CSIRO Australia, reproduced with permission). Current levels are about 370 ppm - a 30% increase over pre-industrial conditions. Emissions of carbon dioxide at any one point add to overall global concentrations – hence the need for concerted global action to tackle the problem.

International response
Tackling global warming at the international level is the responsibility of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Almost all countries, including Ireland, adopted the convention in 1992. It acknowledged that there was a problem with global warming, that it was associated with increases in greenhouse gas levels and that it posed a threat to human well-being and health. A weakness of the convention was that it did not set targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This was addressed when the Kyoto Protocol to the convention was negotiated in 1997. The target is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below the level they were in 1990, over the 5-year period, 2008-2012.

After a protracted period the protocol is set to enter into force on the 16 February 2005, 90 days after Russian ratification on the 18 November. From the February date the protocol will become legally binding for its 128 Parties. In addition thirty industrialized countries will have legal obligations to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets. Carbon trading will become more active as Parties will use the various mechanisms in the protocol, such as emissions trading on the path to achieving target compliance.

Ireland’s role and national targets
Ireland, under an overall EU reduction of 8%, has an emission-reduction target of 13% over the 1990 figure, during the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012). However, due to rapid economic expansion over the past decade and a half, emissions are now about 31% above the 1990 level, with further increases likely in the absence of action. Severe penalties will be levied if the target is not reached.

The National Climate Change Strategy, published in 2000, sets out the government’s climate change policy. Central to what is proposed in the strategy is the prediction that unless action is taken, Ireland will exceed its reduction target by 13 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum. However recent policy changes in the CAP have resulted in considerable reductions in the national herd, with consequent reductions in the methane emissions. A fortuitous closure of the Arklow fertiliser factory has also considerably reduce annual emissions. Nevertheless, Ireland will have to buy somewhere in the region of 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year to comply with its target, at a cost of about €10/tonne - a hefty bill of some €175 million over the 5-year Kyoto period.

Domestic measures to reduce emissions in some of the sectors identified in the strategy are as follows:

1. Energy
2. Transport
3. Built environment and residential
4. Industry, commercial and services
5. Agriculture

The role of forestry in Ireland’s climate change policy In the national climate change strategy the target for forestry is to sequester 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year over the period 2008-2012, about 6.5% of the reduction target of 15.4 million tonnes. Therefore the benefit to the state of a robust afforestation programme is tangible and has a real value. Most of the forests in Ireland are well below their full carbon storage potential and are actively sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Current COFORD estimates are that the national forest is sequestering close on one million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year – net of harvest. In the time it takes you to read this article Irish forests will have removed about 130 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (before harvest). Each year the rate at which carbon is stored is increasing, due to the record afforestation programmes of the past decade and a half. Not all of the carbon that is sequestered is eligible for the issuance of credits. In the Kyoto negotiations the contribution of forestry was confined to afforestation, reforestation and deforestation since 1990, and net increases in carbon stocks arising from forest management in forests that were in existence prior to 1990.

COFORD has developed a computer model to calculate annual changes in carbon stocks in ‘Kyoto eligible’ forests (Article 3.3) over the period 2008-2012. Present indications – see table blow – are that the one million tonnes per annum national target will be exceeded, possibly by a factor of two.

COFORD’s current best estimate of carbon dioxide sequestration rates in Irish forests complying with Article 3.3 of the Kyoto Protocol, over the first commitment period, using historic afforestation rates and an annual afforestation rate of 15,000 ha per annum out to the end of 2012.

Policy makers need to more aware of the climate change benefits of the current afforestation policy. Not only does it provide forests that sequester carbon in amounts that will be a significant benefit to the taxpayer but these forests also provide wood products that are a carbon store. Thinnings and residues sourced from these forests can also make a real contribution to renewable energy targets. Again policies are required that will unlock this potential. This will create a new assortment for Irish forestry: wood energy, while at the same time creating sustainable jobs in rural areas.

Looking to the future
Delivering the forestry climate change targets in the period 2008-2012 and beyond depends on a vigorous afforestation programme, care in avoiding any deforestation, and a verifiable and transparent forest carbon accounting system. The national forest inventory, which has recently been approved by government, will be a key component of this system. But above all, forestry needs continuity of funding so the confidence that is already there and growing in the farming community in forestry continues to prosper. At a national level, new policies are needed that will ignite the wood energy potential that is out there in both state and private sector forests. Now is the time for action, there are enough reports and analysis.

Finally the forest industry needs to continue the excellent progress that it has made in moving wood from what some regarded as yesterday’s material, to being the material of today and the future. No other material comes close in environmental performance, whether in embodied energy, insulation performance (of timber frame) and of course as a carbon store in its own right. That is a message that bears constant repetition.

Dr Eugene Hendrick is Director of COFORD, the National Council for Forest Research and Development based at Sandyford in Dublin, and is a member of the EU’s forest sink experts’ group, which is involved in international climate negotiations on forests.