Canada is underreporting total carbon dioxide emissions from the forestry sector by more than 80 million tonnes a year–the equivalent to the emissions of all buildings in Canada–according to a new report by Canadian and international environmental groups: Environmental Defence Canada, Nature Canada, Nature Québec, and NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).
“Canada has adopted a biased approach to counting and reporting forest-sector carbon that is masking the large climate impacts of logging,” says Michael Polanyi of Nature Canada. “By giving the logging industry a free pass on its emissions, Canada is undermining the credibility of our climate plan and jeopardizing its leadership at COP.”
The report, “Missing the Forest: How carbon loopholes for logging hinder Canada’s climate leadership,” documents several ways Canada is failing to accurately measure, report and regulate forest sector emissions, including:
- Using an unbalanced, biased accounting approach that ignores emissions from wildfires but claims credit for the CO2 captured by older trees.
- Failing to measure and report emissions related to logging roads and seismic lines.
- Adopting an arbitrary and generous “reference level” baseline for the forest sector that gives Canada a free “accounting contribution” towards its 2030 emission reduction goals.
- Exempting the logging industry’s emissions from carbon pricing regulations on other sectors.
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