Abstract
BackgroundThe contribution of EU forests to climate change mitigation in 2021–2025 is assessed through the Forest Reference Levels (FRLs). The FRL is a projected country-level benchmark of net greenhouse gas emissions against which the future net emissions will be compared. The FRL models the hypothetical development of EU forest carbon sink if the historical management practices were continued, taking into account age dynamics. The Member States’ FRLs have been recently adopted by the European Commission with the delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/268 amending the Regulation (EU) 2018/841. Considering the complexity of interactions between forest growth, management and carbon fluxes, there is a need to understand uncertainties linked to the FRL determination.ResultsWe assessed the methodologies behind the modelled FRLs and evaluated the foreseen impact of continuation of management practices and age dynamics on the near-future EU27 + UK forest carbon sink. Most of the countries implemented robust modelling approaches for simulating management practices and age dynamics within the FRL framework, but faced several challenges in ensuring consistency with historical estimates. We discuss that the projected 16% increase in harvest in 2021–2025 compared to 2000–2009, mostly attributed to age dynamics, is associated to a decline of 18% of forest sink (26% for living biomass only).ConclusionsWe conclude that the FRL exercise was challenging but improved the modelling capacity and data availability at country scale. The present study contributes to increase the transparency of the implementation of forest-related EU policies and provides evidence-based support to future policy development.
Highlights
The contribution of European Union (EU) forests to climate change mitigation in 2021–2025 is assessed through the For‐ est Reference Levels (FRLs)
Degree of fulfilment We found that the National Forestry Accounting Plan (NFAP) and the FRLs therein mostly fulfil the requirements of the Land Use (LULUCF) Regulation (90% show high and medium degree of fulfilment for principles; 89% for criteria, and 82% for elements; see Fig. 2 and Additional file 1: Table S5)
Countries show lower degree of fulfilment in ensuring the consistency with the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, compared to correctly representing management practices in the period 2000–2009, and simulating the future evolution of the forest sink based on age dynamics and harvest intensity (32%, 22%, and 8% of NFAPs with high degree of fulfilment for PRACTICES, HARVEST, and LULUCF Inventory on the grand total, respectively; see Additional file 1: Table S5) (p < 0.05; see Additional file 1: Table S7)
Summary
The contribution of EU forests to climate change mitigation in 2021–2025 is assessed through the For‐ est Reference Levels (FRLs). The accounting is based on the concept of Forest Reference Level (FRL), a country-specific projected benchmark, i.e. a counterfactual of net emissions from managed forest land and HWP, against which the future actual net emissions will be compared This way, each Member State will quantify its mitigation efforts in the forest sector, and gain credits—if the reported net emissions are lower than the FRL—or debits—if the reported net emissions are higher. The FRL concept incorporates the impact of the continuation of past management practices (2000–2009) on future age-related forest dynamics It excludes policy assumptions and market expectations [7], marking a radical change with respect to the Forest Management Reference Level (FMRL) adopted under the Kyoto Protocol. The FRL concept triggered an intensive debate, especially on the consideration of harvest and of the dynamics of age-related forest characteristics as main drivers of the future evolution of the forest carbon sink [9,10,11]
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