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Published on: August 3, 2014
Carbon dioxide removals by tropical moist forests offset most land-use emissions across 18 Afrotropical countries
William W M Verbiest1,2,3, Marijn Bauters2, Simon L Lewis4,5
1Department of Environment, Laboratory of Wood Technology (Woodlab), Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Abstract:
African tropical moist forests are critical regulators of global carbon cycling, yet their contributions to national carbon budgets remain poorly constrained, impairing effective policy design. Here, we unravel carbon removals and emissions for 18 African tropical countries using multiple approaches over a data-rich period (2015-2019). Across countries, carbon removals (-286 ± 68.4 TgC yr-1) nearly offset land-use change emissions (343.4 ± 100.3 TgC yr-1), with broadly comparable net fluxes between bottom-up and top-down approaches (57.4 ± 121.4 TgC yr-1 versus 121.9 ± 164.4 TgC yr-1). Results vary between countries, with highest removals in intact forests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (-81.7 ± 64.2 TgC yr-1), lowest land-use change emissions in Gabon (2.6 ± 7.1 TgC yr-1), and highest fossil fuel emissions in Nigeria (31.2 ± 1.6 TgC yr-1). African tropical countries show high carbon removal rates and land-use change emissions but low fossil fuel emissions, contrasting with industrialized countries. (Inter)nationally endorsed conservation policies can reverse national carbon budgets from net sources to sinks.
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