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Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon

Plans to triple the area of plantations will not meet 1.5 °C climate goals. New natural forests can, argue Simon L. Lewis, Charlotte E. Wheeler and colleagues.
  1. Simon L. Lewis

    1. Simon L. Lewis is professor of global-change science in the Department of Geography, University College London, and the School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK.

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  2. Charlotte E. Wheeler

    1. Charlotte E. Wheeler is a forest researcher at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, UK.

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  3. Edward T. A. Mitchard

    1. Edward T. A. Mitchard is senior lecturer in forest-change mapping at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, UK.

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  4. Alexander Koch

    1. Alexander Koch recently completed a PhD in the Department of Geography, University College London, on forests and the global carbon cycle.

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Keeping global warming below 1.5 °C to avoid dangerous climate change1 requires the removal of vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as drastic cuts in emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that around 730 billion tonnes of CO2 (730 petagrams of CO2, or 199 petagrams of carbon, Pg C) must be taken out of the atmosphere by the end of this century2. That is equivalent to all the CO2 emitted by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and China since the Industrial Revolution. No one knows how to capture so much CO2.

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Nature 568, 25-28 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01026-8

References

  1. Lewis, S. L. Nature 532, 283 (2016).

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  2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Global Warming of 1.5 °C (IPCC, 2018).

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  3. Griscom, B. W. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 11645–11650 (2016).

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  4. Poorter, L. et al. Nature 530, 211–214 (2016).

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  5. UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 (FAO, 2015).

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  6. Chazdon, R. L. & Guariguata, M. R. Biotropica 48, 716–730 (2016).

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