U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council has taken issue with Canada’s commitment to climate leadership through a new report that says Canada is largely failing to measure and report carbon emissions from clear-cutting in the boreal forest with potentially huge global ramifications.

Canada needs to both “live up to its rhetoric” and “ratchet up its ambitions,” said report author Josh Axelrod, an NRDC policy analyst, ahead of the annual UN climate change conference. This year’s conference, known as COP 23, is underway in Bonn, Germany.

Natural Resources Canada, however, has taken issue with the report and says Canada estimates and reports on emissions from logging annually.

The NRDC report followed the release of the UN’s latest emissions gap report, which showed global climate targets established in 2015 at the Paris conference aren’t nearly ambitious enough to prevent global average temperatures from rising 2 C above pre-industrial levels — considered an upper threshold if the world wants to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

At the same time, some countries — including Canada — aren’t on track to meet their existing targets, the UN report concludes.

Canada committed to reduce emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 in Paris, but the UN report shows Canada’s on track to exceed its target by almost 30 per cent. The NRDC report suggests that margin could be even wider due to emissions from clear-cutting in the boreal forest.

“At the rate it’s currently happening, clear-cutting in the boreal forest across Canada is creating a net carbon source that’s not being counted in Canada’s greenhouse gas inventories,” Axelrod said. “It’s a new source that the world needs to know about and deal with if we’re going to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.”

According to Jocelyn Argibay, a spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada, Canada has estimated and reported emissions from all forest harvesting through its annual Greenhouse Gas Inventory for more than a decade. It also tracks emissions that are stored or released by wood products, she said in a statement.

In 2017 Canada reported emissions estimates from forest harvesting to the UN as well, Argibay said. Those emissions, however, are not counted in the national totals.

The boreal forest ecosystem, which covers large swaths of Canada, is a critical carbon sink, which means it has the potential to hold more carbon in its soils and trees than it releases.

“It’s one of the most important ecosystems in terms of … carbon storage globally,” said Jennifer Baltzer, the Canada Research Chair in forests and global change.

She said Canada should be looking for ways to conserve the carbon stocks in its boreal forest, which can be released through fire, pest infestations and logging.

The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and the Ontario government, meanwhile, say forestry — which contributed $23 billion to Canada’s nominal GDP in 2016 — can help mitigate the effects of climate change.

“In Ontario, protecting forests does not necessarily result in the creation of a carbon sink,” Jolanta Kowalski, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, said in a statement. “Forests of all ages are affected by natural disturbances such as fire or insects and disease resulting in immediate and long-term carbon emissions.”

FPAC’s senior vice-president Bob Larocque made similar comments.

“If you leave the trees there they will emit carbon because they will burn and they will get infected with pests,” he said, adding that the NRDC report doesn’t consider the carbon that’s stored in wood products.

“In order to do carbon counting and carbon reporting you have to look at full life cycle,” he said.

The NRDC report doesn’t account for the carbon stored in wood products, though it does say the science isn’t conclusive that it would account for the emissions released to create those products.

While Axelrod said most people think of forests as a renewable resource and that emissions from logging are balanced out by new growth from replanted forests, which eventually return to absorbing and storing carbon. He said “what we found is that there’s a certain level of cutting at which that’s not true, because the forest is kind of always in a debt and it’s not regrowing fast enough to repay that debt and get back to a neutral state.”

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Argibay though said boreal forests in Canada have acted as a sink on average between 1990 and 2015.

On its website Natural Resources Canada says that while Canada’s managed forests have acted as sinks, in some years in recent decades they have acted as sources of carbon when large areas are burned.

Baltzer added that it’s unclear how climate change will affect boreal forests’ recovery after logging or other disturbances like fires, but it could take much longer than we expect.

The NRDC study, which focused on emissions from logging, found an average one million acres of boreal forest are logged each year in Canada, releasing an estimated 26 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, based on its own modelling. That’s equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 5.5 million cars, they say.

The organization is not, however, advocating for an end to forestry in Canada. Rather it’s calling for Canada to measure and report emissions resulting from forestry and to work to implement what they call “climate-safe forest practices.”

Argibay said “clearcutting is generally the most ecologically appropriate way to harvest and renew the boreal forest. This is because it most closely resembles the large natural disturbances, such as fire, wind, floods and insects, which are common in the region.‎”

Larocque said the industry is not planning to move away from clear-cutting, but it is working to ensure more of the trees, including branches that are often burned after an area’s been logged, are used. They’re also working to plant trees that grow faster and provide better yields, he said.

The federal government did not respond to questions about the NRDC findings by deadline, but the province’s forestry ministry did say Ontario’s climate change action plan commits the province to developing a land-use inventory by 2020 that would help assess emissions and carbon storage capacity in the land-use sector, which includes forestry

It’s critical we understand how different ecosystems, including the boreal forest, affect the climate, said Baltzer.

“We’re at a point now that we need to be making rapid progress in terms of reducing emissions or we’re going to be at a pretty terrifying state in my opinion,” she said, adding that she’ll be watching the climate meetings for the latest updates on how we’re doing and what additional commitments countries make.

Update - November 23, 2017: This article was edited after publication to include response from Natural Resources Canada about the NRDC findings. The federal ministry had not initially responded by deadline time.

Ainslie Cruickshank can be reached at acruickshank@thestar.ca.

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