Land sinks not enough to beat global warming

• Greenhouse gases (GHG) are constantly released into the atmosphere and are removed by natural ‘sinks’ such as the land and oceans.
• Land sinks which include ecosystems like forests, grasslands, and wetlands act as sinks and remove a part of the CO2 emitted through human activities like burning fossil fuels.

Key points:

• 56 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by humans is absorbed by the oceans and land out of which is about 30 percent by land and the rest by oceans.
• As per a report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land use accounted for 13 percent of anthropogenic C02 emissions during 2007-2016.
• Land absorbs around 11.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to 29 percent of the total CO2 emissions during 2007-2016.

Initiatives and efforts to improve the role of Land:

• The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has recognized the role of land (forests and agricultural land) as a mitigation pathway to reduce CO2 emissions in 1992.
• The Kyoto Protocol in 1997 endorsed that such mitigation could be set against requirements for reductions in emissions from fossil fuel consumption along with governments employ policies to enhance the land carbon sink capacities of their territories.
• In 2011, the Bonn Challenge was launched by IUCN to restore 150 million hectares of the world's degraded and deforested lands by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030.
• In March 2019, the UN General Assembly declared 2021-2030 as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to “prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide”.
• Many big corporates have signed the ‘one trillion tree’ initiative to plant a trillion trees by 2030 and “accelerate nature-based solutions in support of the UN *Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
• In the recent summit of the G7 countries in May 2021, they have pledged to conserve or protect “at least 30 percent of the global land and at least 30 percent of the global oceans by 2030 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and address climate change.

Challenges:

• Increasing heat level which adds to the moisture stress in forests and leading to widespread burning.
• Deforestation which reduces the role of land as sinks for the CO2 released from fossil fuel burning
• Natural factors such as climate variability in the sunshine, temperature, and rainfall can cause a variation in the strength of the land carbon sink.