Of Rainforests, Policy Making and Climate Change Mitigation

by Hank Hayden
Climate change is a global concern, and over the past few decades it has become an
increasing problem, as well as a noticeable problem. Global Warming is a term used to
describe the trend in rising temperatures worldwide. This warming effect is caused by the
buildup of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the
atmosphere. The overabundance of the gases creates a barrier that reflects thermal energy
radiated from the planets surface back toward the surface, effectively trapping the heat and
increasing the temperature. This greenhouse effect is a natural process, but it has been
exacerbated by anthropogenic factors such as deforestation, transportation, and gases released
from manufacturing.
As the temperature rises, it will have numerous effects on the planet. The EPA provides
a listing of predicted outcomes on their website. Among these are:

Change in the patterns and amounts of precipitation

Melting of the polar regions; reduced ice and snow cover, as well as permafrost loss

Rising global sea level

Increased acidity of the oceans

This represents a significant threat to all living things. As the face of the globe changes, life

will have to change with it or perish as its habitat is melted away, flooded, or otherwise altered.
This adaptive process has always been a fact of life, the evolutionary process illustrates how
even subtle changes in environment can result in large amounts of species variance. However,
the exponentially increasing rate of environmental pressures we are currently experiencing on a
global scale is not a fair comparison to the millions of years that have shaped the species we see
today. Arctic species are endangered as their habitat melts or drifts away and their life cycle is
disrupted. As the oceans acidify, more species find it difficult to survive, especially shellfish,
which cannot form their protective shells in waters that are too acidic and perish. But there are
studies which show that climate change does not spell doom for every species, in fact tropical

rainforests may benefit more from global warming than ever previously thought possible
(reference article).
Forests are an important factor in a climate change discussion. The deforestation activities
that occur today contribute about one-sixth of global carbon emissions. But when managed
sustainably, they produce woody biomass that can be utilized as a more benign alternative to
fossil fuels in terms of emissions. Most importantly; forests have the potential to absorb about
one-tenth of global carbon emissions projected for the first half of this century into their biomass,
soils and products and store them. This is a benefit that will carry on for the entire lifespan of the
forest, so maintaining forest and rainforest health is highly beneficial to offset emissions,
This sentiment is supported by Professors Atkin and John Lloyd, at James Cook University,
who were involved in a study examining the impacts of climate change on tropical rainforests. In
the most extensive study of its kind, the international team of scientists simulated effects of
greenhouse gas emissions on the amounts of carbon incorporated into tropical forests across the
Amazon region, Central America, Asia and Africa through to 2100. They compared the results of
22 different global climate models teamed with various models of land-surface processes. In all
but one of these simulations, rainforests across the regions of concern retained their carbon
stocks despite atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increasing steadily throughout the
century.
Their findings overturned a 2000 Nature paper, led by co-author Professor Peter Cox at
the University of Exeter that predicted climate change would lead to the demise of the Amazon
rainforests. His paper summarizes that as the level of CO2 rise, the rainforest would experience a
phenomenon called carbon fertilization. This is the process by which plants add to their mass
by utilizing available Carbon Dioxide in the environment. However, while this increased growth
would help maintain the canopy, it would not be enough to combat the extreme temperature rises
and the drying effect on the rainforest predicted in the first half of the 21st Century. These factors
contribute to die-back of the forest, the term for abrupt losses of forest fraction and population.
Cumulatively, die-back has a larger impact on the rainforest biome and unless there is a global
trend in decreasing emissions or otherwise mitigating global warming, the Amazon will begin to
disappear, according to Cox. His fear at the time he published this research was that the Amazon

rainforest are a major carbon store and their die-back would result in the release of huge amounts
carbon into the atmosphere that would accelerate global warming.
However, the new study - also led by Cox and published March 2013 in Nature
Geoscience shows that tropical rainforests in Africa, Asia and the Americas could grow in size
as increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contributes to carbon fertilization at a higher rate
than Cox originally anticipated.
"On its own, higher temperatures as a result of climate change will probably have a
detrimental effect," says Lloyd, "but because CO2 stimulates photosynthesis and plant growth,
this negative impact is more or less offset." Lloyd says the increase in tropical rainforests should
slow global temperature rise by incorporating some of the surplus CO2 in the atmosphere into
their plant matter throughout the 21st century. "What these forests do in the future matters," he
says. "If we are able to maintain these forest canopies, the rate at which carbon dioxide increases
in the atmosphere will slow and the world is not going to heat up quite as fast."
Atkin adds that the new findings highlight the importance of increasing "dialogue between
different members of the scientific community". He says that in the past scientific models were
developed by physicists and mathematicians without much input from experts in fields like plant
physiology and tropical ecology. But, in the past 15 years there have been enormous
breakthroughs in understanding how plants will adapt to climate change and the new study more
accurately reflects that, he says.
This is an excellent point because going forward; research into the effect of climate change
on the rainforests will not ensure their survival. According to National Geographic, the past 40
years have seen 20% of the Amazon rainforest cleared away. This is more deforestation than has
occurred in the past 450 years, since European colonization of the Americas began. The
rainforests will not be able to function in a way that is globally beneficial, as outlined in the
Nature Geoscience study, if they are being attacked by logging companies and left without a
meaningful population of trees able to do the work of offsetting the planets greenhouse
emissions.
Coupled with the scientific research must be, as ever, a policy to regulate and protect the
forest. Even if this does not mean conservation, a more restrictive forest management program

could still do some real good to protect endangered forests. The Food and Agricultural
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has outlined a Nation Forest Policy (NFP)
construction process that could be implemented by nations in the regions where the Nature
Geoscience study took place.
The first step of the process is to identify the issue the policy will address, as well as the
challenges to overcome. To this end, specific and relevant evidence must be collected and
analyzed. The March 2013 study could be viewed as a large portion of this step. While it does
not provide all the evidence that is likely necessary to move forward in the process, it has done a
considerable amount to set the groundwork for the necessary research.
The second step in creating an NFP is to begin the planning process. Key stakeholders work
alongside the appropriate governmental bodies to identify issues of interest and prioritize them.
Response proposals and options developed, then negotiated upon by the various groups. Finally,
through formal actions such as announcement of a policy or legislative amendment (in the case
of the Governments) or similar action (in the case of other stakeholders) the strategies agreed
upon by all the stakeholders will be pursued.
Once options have been narrowed down and a strategic direction established, the next step
can be worked on; implementation. Administrative and executive agencies, as well as other
organizations of public or private stakeholders, are responsible for implementing policy
decisions on national and/or sub-national levels. This means taking the conclusions reached in
the negotiations during planning and translating them into meaningful legislation, regulations or
other context than can be utilized and enforced. Enforcement is very important, if not paramount,
to the implementation process of any policy. If you have a brilliant policy that is unenforceable,
it becomes no better than an inferior policy which can be enforced.
The final stage in creating the NFP is monitoring and evaluation. This means collecting data
from monitoring sources, doing independent research and evaluating the result of the
implementation of the planned courses of action. This helps to identify whether the planned
action is serving the interests for which it was chosen. It also helps to reveal deviations from
objectives and to inform policy-makers whether corrections are warranted, or even required.
Evaluation is done periodically to ensure goals are still appropriate and methods are still cost-

effective. If the evaluation shows unsatisfactory results, policy-makers will have to return to the
drawing board and find a way to rework the policy for the sake of all stakeholders.
This process outlined by the FAO is a good tool to use for policy-making in general. It
provides a sound formula for taking all areas and groups into consideration when drafting
legislation that will impact them. It is especially relevant for the issue of an NFP in rainforest
regions. The logging companies will presumably have an economic interest, but what of tribal
groups that have cultural and traditional roots in the forests? Or the environmental groups that
want to see the rainforests preserved? The new international study published in Nature
Geoscience provides strong evidence that the rainforests provide a benefit to the entire planet by
mitigating some of the effects of climate change and global warming. But the rainforests must be
maintained, protected and in some areas restored if they are to stand long enough to provide the
benefits researchers have indicated they will in the coming decades.