Abstract
This paper provides an overview of China’s climate mitigation policy related to the forestry sector, with a special focus on the development of carbon forests which are established to mitigate climate change. A total of 3.5 million ha of carbon forest were planted in the past decade. In recent years, the number of Voluntary Emission Reduction forest carbon projects has increased rapidly. The main challenges for future development of carbon forests under market mechanisms include increasing costs, uncertainty in the future supply and demand for China-certified emission reduction, and potential disputes between households and project developers.
Highlights
The emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in China has increased rapidly in the past decades.The estimated total emission in 2012 was 12.45 Gt CO2 eq, which was more than three times as high as the total emission in 1990, and accounted for about 23% of the global total emissions [1].The rapid increase in the emissions of GHGs and the position of being the largest emitter have created enormous pressure for China to effectively control its emissions
Since it does not come to the end of the first monitoring period of other registered projects, according to the verification report, the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) verified of this project during the first monitoring period are 5208 t CO2 eq, which is lower than the estimated CO2 reduction in the validation report [36]
The total area of carbon forests established by the end of 2016 is about 3.5 million ha, corresponding to less than 2% of the total forest area in China
Summary
The emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in China has increased rapidly in the past decades.The estimated total emission in 2012 was 12.45 Gt CO2 eq, which was more than three times as high as the total emission in 1990, and accounted for about 23% of the global total emissions [1].The rapid increase in the emissions of GHGs and the position of being the largest emitter have created enormous pressure for China to effectively control its emissions. Joint Announcement on Climate Change declared that “China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early” [3]. Forestry is an important part in China’s efforts on climate change mitigation. As one concrete contribution to mitigating climate change, China announced in 2009 that it would endeavor to increase the country's forest area by 40 million ha and the forest stocking volume by 1.3 billion m3 by 2020, relative to the situation in 2005 [4]. In 2015, the NDRC declared that, by 2030, China would increase the forest stocking volume by around 4.5 billion m3 from 2005 levels [5]. Along with the increasing emphasis of the role of forestry in climate policy, China started to invest in establishing the so-called carbon forest, referring to forests planted and managed for carbon sequestration following specially designed technical provisions or methodologies [6]
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