Carbon storage capacity of India’s forests, soil

Environment and Ecology Natural ecosystems and protection Add to Study Deck

Context: Recently, a new study has estimated that India’s forests and soil can potentially store an additional 7 billion tonnes of carbon.

Land-based carbon storage is a part of nature-based solutions to climate crisis.
It is also one of the focus areas at the 26th Conference of Parties (CoP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The world can potentially store 287 billion tonnes of additional carbon.
Of this, 78 per cent is in forests and 22 per cent in soil.
Tropics show the most promise, holding 68 per cent of additional carbon-storing potential.
Boreal and temperate zones hold roughly 46 billion tonnes of additional carbon storage potential.

There is an increase of 79.4 million tonnes in India’s carbon stock as compared to the last assessment of 2019.
The annual increase in the carbon stock is 39.7 million tonnes.

Sometimes called “natural climate solutions,” these solutions involve conserving, restoring, or better managing ecosystems to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
It includes allowing forests to regrow, restoring coastal wetlands, and switching to restorative agricultural practices, such as cover crop rotation, that support healthy soils.

Forestry practices include planting new forests, allowing forests to regrow naturally where they have been cut down, and improved forest management.
Wetland-related practices focus on conserving and restoring peatlands and coastal wetlands, such as mangroves.
Restorative agriculture ranges from practices that build soil carbon, such as no-till agriculture and cover crop rotation, to agroforestry and improved livestock management.
Ocean-based practices include restoring seagrass meadows or growing kelp or shellfish to restore or expand marine ecosystems.

Protecting biodiversity: Since they conserve or expand ecosystems, nature-based solutions protect biodiversity against both climate change and habitat loss.
The benefits range from cleaner air and water to erosion control and flood protection.
These solutions pay for themselves over time.

Nature-based solutions cannot solve climate change alone. It has to be clubbed with rapid cuts in emissions and engineered forms of carbon removal.
Such solutions have a limited capacity to sequester carbon.
Reversibility: Because they store carbon in biomass rather than more permanent reservoirs, nature-based solutions’ carbon sequestration is reversible, meaning that the captured carbon could be released back into the atmosphere by wildfires, changes in land-use or land management, or climate change itself.

Some nature-based solutions, such as conserving existing wetlands, serve mainly to prevent greenhouse gas emissions by capturing CO2 from the air and sequestering it in plants, soils, and sediments.
Many nature-based solutions both prevent emissions and remove carbon.
They also provide a wide range of other important benefits, such as cleaner air and water, economic benefits, and increased biodiversity.

Outreach, education, and training: Many stakeholders may not know about the benefits of nature-based solutions or may need training to implement them correctly.
Financing and incentives: Many potential adopters will need help financing up-front costs and additional incentives can speed adoption.
Right-sizing: since some nature-based solutions, such as forestation, compete for land with other uses, good governance can ensure that these solutions get implemented at appropriate scales.
Monitoring, reporting, and verification: Measuring and accounting for captured carbon can be challenging, but good governance can streamline the process and help verify carbon storage.
Protecting captured carbon: Good long-term governance is needed to minimize the release of captured carbon back into the atmosphere.