MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter Spring 2019

52 MLCM WINTER/SPRING 2019 more traditional tool for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere happens to be growing all around us. A single mature tree packs away 50 pounds of carbon dioxide a year; an entire forest can offset the emissions of a small country. Unless, of course, it’s logged, in which case the tool becomes a weapon. A UN special report on climate change in 2000 found that deforestation caused nearly one third of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution. Today, deforestation still accounts for about 15 per cent of annual global emissions. Much of that is from burning tropical rainforests. You don’t have to burn a tree to send its carbon dioxide skyward either; decomposition does the same job, just a bit slower, while waste from logging (slash piles, sawmill waste/ emissions) also releases that carbon. “It’s handy to think of deforestation in terms of climate debt and deficit,” says Joseph Pallant, Director of Climate Innovation for Ecotrust Canada. “Our total debt is made up of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere from two centuries of deforestation; our annual deficit is what we add with each year’s additional logging.” This, says Pallant, makes protecting a forest as impactful as planting a new one—even more so in the short term, since it takes a seedling decades to become the carbon-eating machine mature forests are already full of. “Through improved forest management and conservation, we can reduce the annual carbon deficit. Through reforestation, we repay the carbon debt.” That’s the principle guiding a host of international agreements aimed at slowing, and ultimately reversing, deforestation around the globe. You can google REDD+, the Bonn Challenge, or the New York Declaration on Forests, to name just a few of the complex schemes to keep forests in the ground from Ghana to Guatemala. Or, you can go for a walk at the south end of Whistler and check out the Cheakamus Community Forest (CFF) for yourself. Covering 33,000 hectares in and around Whistler, the CCF was established in 2009 when the Lil’wat Nation, Squamish First Nation, and Resort Municipality of Whistler partnered to take on a Community Forest tenure from the BC Ministry of Forests. The three partners reached out to Ecotrust Canada to develop an Ecosystem-Based Management Plan. Among other things, the plan called for smaller cut blocks, doubled riparian buffer zones, and a total reduction of more than half the annual harvest. The partners liked the plan, but it wasn’t cheap so they brought in Brinkman Climate (a subsidiary of Brinkman & Associates Reforestation Ltd, the tree planting behemoth) to help figure out how to pay for it. That’s when climate change came to the rescue. “The Government of British Columbia, under then-Premier Gordon Campbell, had recently committed to going carbon neutral,” recalls Pallant, who was working for Brinkman Climate at the time and helped devise the CCF’s offset program. “For every ton of carbon dioxide any government entity emitted, they had to purchase a corresponding carbon offset. The CCF was a perfect candidate.” BC committed to buying a majority of the CCF’s offsets; Whistler, which also decided to go carbon neutral, bought much of the rest. As a result, 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be logged each year remains sequestered in Cheakamus conifers. It’s just one more gust in the gale. But community forests and carbon offsets are gaining traction the world over, and unlike some other solutions, this one’s tested and true. If there’s one thing trees know how to do, it’s scale up. TREES KILL CARBON DEAD! Mother Nature makes carbon scrubbers too Replanting an old forest fire burn with Western Red cedar saplings. TODD LAWSON A