Our take: President Obama releases Priority Agenda for Enhancing Climate Resilience.
Photo by Dave Nixen
This week, the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience Climate and Natural Resources Working Group, released a 79–page report that “identifies four priority strategies to make the Nation’s natural resources more resilient to a changing climate.”
We commend the Obama administration for recognizing the positive role that forests and other lands play in addressing climate change, and we commend the report as a significant compendium of current climate-related federal programs that affect natural resources, if not yet a true way forward to harness these resources to mitigate climate change. On one hand, we at the Pacific Forest Trust are very pleased that our priority goals as an organization are being recognized and mirrored at the highest level of U.S. government. Over the last 20 years, we’ve advocated conservation and good forest management for our wood, water, wildlife, and healthy climate, as well as fostering robust sustainable forest economies and recreational opportunities. It’s gratifying to see this message echoed by our Nation’s President. On the other hand, we had hoped that the President’s Priority Actions, at this stage in our collective understanding of climate change, would include setting goals for emissions reductions from—and increased carbon stores in—forests. Forest loss and degradation is a real threat to our climate and water security. Providing a clear way forward with specific, quantifiable goals for our Nation’s forests is critical in our opinion, to make real progress against the intense pace of climate change.
The Good:
- The Agenda’s first goal, to foster climate-resilient lands and waters, promotes conservation at scale with a focus on conserving important landscapes and cultivating resilience. It advocates climate-smart natural resource management to support vital ecosystems. Like PFT’s mission, the President’s report emphasized clean air, clean, secure water supplies, wildlife habitat, food, fiber (wood products) and recreation. We are in hearty agreement that these efforts need to be applied at the landscape level.
- The Agenda acknowledges that retaining and restoring forests are crucial to climate change, and goes as far as to cite that America’s private forests account for roughly 59 percent of the Nation’s forest carbon stores.
- The Agenda prioritizes the management and enhancement of U.S. carbon sinks with a holistic approach to what we at PFT are advocating as “biocarbon”: carbon stored naturally in forests, soils, grasslands, wetlands and coastal areas.
- It seeks to establish common metrics, with a focus on inventory, assessment, projection, and monitoring. The report repeatedly mentions developing baselines for our carbon stocks.
- The Agenda identifies the need to help resource managers, landowners, and communities optimize their natural resource management decisions in a changing climate. Acknowledgement at this level for our private landowners is a huge win for private working forest conservation moving forward. We believe it helps make our case for private landowner incentives that much stronger.
- It promotes forest conservation and restoration, emphasizing complementary markets for sustainably harvested wood products and urban forestry. The Agenda goes on to promote incentives for retaining and restoring forest carbon through providing life cycle analysis, as well as technical and finance assistance.
The Could Be Better:
- Neither the Agenda, nor the President’s priority actions actually address material reductions in CO2 emissions from forests, and neither sets a target for reducing forest loss. This is, in our opinion, a glaring omission. We have been losing our U.S. forests at a rate of 1-1.5 million acres a year for the last 15 years—a troubling number that’s now currently on the rise. On average this represents nearly 229 million tons of CO2 emissions every year. The Agenda does not cite forest loss as a direct problem, though the USDA has frequently cited this. In Washington and California, for example, forest loss and depletion are the 2nd and 4th largest sources of CO2 overall.
- They make no mention of declining forest carbon sinks in the US, and set no goal for reversing depletion of forest carbon stock, nor do they recognize that the quality and health of the forest is key to climate and watershed health. We know we can do more, because U.S. forests today hold on average, between 10 and 50 percent of the carbon they can naturally.
- There is no goal identified for forest restoration, other than those separately undertaken by non-governmental organizations.
- One of the President’s priority actions does endorse the use of wood in building as an option for lower carbon intensity than building materials like steel. And we agree: carbon remaining from forests after harvest and in the wood products themselves are lower impact, especially if they come from well managed conserved forests. But this action doesn’t address the steps we need to take to reduce emissions and increase sequestration. At best, product-carbon represents 40% of the carbon in an intact forest—it is what remains longer-term as a residual pool of carbon stock.
While the Priority Agenda is a great way to set the stage to address climate change with our natural resources, we know we can and must do more with forests and other natural land to meet the climate crisis. Can we reduce emissions over 1.25 million acres of land per year? 1.5–million acres? Those are the kinds of numbers we need to be thinking about to see real improvements. We hope this is just the beginning of the conversation of how to bend the curve of emissions from forests and other natural lands. We need to take key actions that make a material difference. We need a plan that clearly outlines what needs and must be done.