Nurturing forests, peatlands will help resist global warming: UNEP

Terra Daily, via Agence France-Presse: Fixing deforestation, preserving peatlands and ending reckless agricultural methods could be a major weapon in tackling climate change, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Friday. Biological systems, if responsibly managed, can absorb billions of tonnes of the dangerous carbon gases that fuel the greenhouse effect, the agency said in a report coinciding with World Environment Day.

…Around 20 percent of annual greenhouse-gas emissions are imputable to logging, farming and burning of peatlands, according to scientists. UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said major countries had earmarked tens of billions of dollars in investments in carbon capture and storage technology, by which CO2 is siphoned off at power stations and then pumped underground or under the sea.

"But perhaps the international community is overlooking a tried-and-tested method that has been working for millennia -- the biosphere," he said. "By some estimates, the Earth's living systems might be capable of sequestering more than 50 gigatonnes [50 billion tonnes] of carbon over the coming decades with the right market signals."

The report touched on areas that are up for debate in talks to craft a new global pact on climate change. The accord, scheduled to be sealed in Copenhagen in December, will be take effect from the end of 2012….

Deep in the woods on a long walk, shot by Ivan from Serbia, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License