If you’ve read about carbon removal online, you’ve seen the refrain, “just plant trees”! It’s true that a living tree draws down co2 as it grows, but can mass forestation slow climate change? That math of forest carbon sequestration is complicated.
But a lot of government climate plans, ESG investing rules, and most of the carbon offset markets are relying on forest projects to deliver CO2 removals.
A new study from Israeli researchers sheds some light on the forestation carbon math. Specifically, this study evaluated whether afforestation in arid environments or in geographies that currently do not support trees would lead to carbon removal, if we take into account albedo.
This, combined with new data that shows that deforestation did not slow down enough this year to meet international climate agreements, puts the potential for forests to deliver additional climate mitigation into question.
With me to discuss the news in forestry is our science panel: Jane Zelikova and Shannon Valley.
On This Episode
Jane Zelikova
Shannon Valley
Radhika Moolgavkar
Resources
Limited climate change mitigation potential through forestation of the vast dryland regions
Anthropocene Magazine article about the paper
Forest Declaration Assessment report of 2022 deforestation
Nature article about the report
New President of Brazil and the Amazon
Subscribe to Climate Workers Anonymous
My other show, Reversing Climate Change
Books referenced in the podcasts, at Bookshop
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Hello, everybody, and welcome to our science episode. As always, today I am joined with Dr. Jane Zelikova, Executive Director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center and Joint Faculty in Crop and Soil Science at Colorado State University. Hi, Jane.
Jane Zelikova: Hello.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And again, excited to have Dr. Shannon Vallee back with us as our new permanent host on the science episodes. She is a paleoceanography and marine biogeochemistry researcher. That is a mouthful, but impressive. You got it. She served on Joe Biden’s NASA transition team and is currently a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U. S. Agency for International Development or USAID. Hi, Shannon.
Shannon Valley: Hey, good to be with you. And I guess I should give a little disclaimer that, of course, my thoughts on the podcast are my own.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh, yes. Always our own. None of us are representing anybody, I do not believe. No. And I am Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. So I’m sure all of our listeners are familiar with the fact that Just plant trees. It’s sort of the thing that everybody can agree on. It seems easy. People love it. But is it true that a living tree draws down CO2 as it grows? Can mass forestation really slow climate change? You know, as always, the math around forest carbon sequestration, just like all nature-based solutions is complicated.
So this week, or recently, a new study from Israeli researchers shed some lights on the forestation of carbon mass. Specifically, this study evaluated whether afforestation in arid environments or in geographies that currently do not support trees would lead to carbon removal if we take into account albedo. This, combined with new data that shows that deforestation did not slow down enough this year to meet international climate agreements, puts the potential for forests to deliver additional climate mitigation into question. So with that, I’m going to start with you, Jane. And can you give us a sense of how important forestry is to global climate ambitions?
Does this paper talk about existing forests or speculate about planting new forests?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, thanks. I guess I’ll start by saying that a lot of government climate plans and nationally determined contributions rely on forestation, either in country or as part of an offset framework. A lot of ESG investing rules and sort of regulations are also relying on forests and most of the voluntary carbon offset markets are relying heavily on forest projects to deliver CO2 offsets or removals so. Forestry as a sector is huge in this space and we’re asking for us to do a lot for us. And I like this tweet by David Ho, who is actually an ocean scientist, but he has been tweeting a lot about sort of how a particular set of actions, if we think about like a climate clock, how far back those climate actions can take us.
And he had a tweet a few months ago where Someone asked, how far back in time does planting 100 million trees take us? And his answer was, if one mature tree takes up an average of 25 kilograms of CO2 per year, then 100 million trees will take up 2. 5 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. That’s a time machine that takes us back 33 minutes and 47 seconds in a year. It’s not a lot. It’s the length of this podcast maybe. So planting trees isn’t gonna be the magic wand that we need.
And also it’s good to just kind of remember that trees are already doing a lot of work for us. They’re already taking up a lot of carbon dioxide. And in many regions, they’re helping us balance the carbon budget. So we’re asking trees to do more. We should be careful about that. So with that in mind, forestry is very important. Climate ambitions are relying on forest, both halting deforestation and afforestation efforts. And so the paper that you referenced, the recent paper, sort of talks about the effort to plant trees into dryland areas, either in areas that don’t support trees or have historically not supported trees, or in some areas reforestation of reforestation efforts to kind of plant trees back and maybe shift some of the some of the species that are being planted.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Jane, as just as a follow on question, something that I was wondering was why were they trying to plant trees in a place that doesn’t support trees? I never really understood that logic. Do you have a sense?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I mean, I think dryland, you know, dryland ecosystem certainly support some trees. Like I think about areas I’ve worked in Utah where, you know, it’s a pinion pine juniper ecosystem. So they’re supporting trees. They’re just not sort of like supporting them in really high density in most places. And then on top of that, we have countries like Saudi Arabia that are, you know, claiming really large ambitions about, you know, sort of foresting the desert. So there are dryland ecosystems that are going to be, and are currently undergoing afforestation efforts.
And it’s an interesting thing to think about because when you’re planting trees in dryland ecosystems, you have to really think about water availability, nutrient availability. So those are probably gonna be the really high limitations. So when people are doing these mapping studies where they’re trying to figure out where to put trees, these are mostly modeling efforts with some sort of like on the ground efforts to kind of as a follow along, they have to think about water availability in these modeling studies. But even if you limit the geographic scope to just those areas where there’s enough water and enough nutrients to support forested ecosystems, What the study is suggesting is that there are other factors at play, specifically the albedo effect that may limit the potential climate benefit of these efforts.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Shannon, turning to you, obviously we all know a single tree does sequester carbon dioxide and Shouldn’t, you know, a lot of trees sequester, a lot of carbon dioxide. What are these complicating dynamics that David kind of alludes to and we should all learn a little bit more about?
Shannon Valley: Yeah, I mean, he goes into a lot. And I think, but the biggest thing that we always wind up talking about in this area is scale, right? So I think later on, some of the comments he talks about there being About 3 trillion trees existing naturally. So if you talk about adding another million, that seems like a lot. A hundred million seems like a big number, rather. But compared to 3 trillion, in some ways, it feels like a drop in the bucket. And if we’re talking about anthropogenic emissions being on a scale of about 40 gigatonnes or whatnot a year, Just the, I think that he talks about 2.
5 megatonnes of carbon drawdown from trees if you plan 100 million. Obviously, as Jane was saying, trees are already doing a lot of work for us. And if we’re asking them to do even more, the numbers that you have to get to really, to kind of knock out that overall human impact is beyond the scale of what we can probably feasibly do. That’s not to say that we should do it. It’s just that we have to be thoughtful about how scale matters. And then, of course, there’s all the other kind of issues, including what the paper is talking about, the albedo effect that comes into play.
You have to think about, again, where you’re planting, if the trees can take plants successfully. If you’re adding density to some areas that increases kind of like a monoculture, what other ecosystem effects does that have that would reduce the overall ability of that ecosystem to store carbon? Trees need to not burn down quickly and so on. So there’s a lot of things there, but the first thing that comes to my mind is just the scale of the problem and this being a kind of sliver of the overall pie of how we would get to drawing down carbon emissions.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Jane, I want to dive a little bit more into the paper itself. Can you describe a little about the methods in the paper and how did the researchers evaluate their hypothesis?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, this is actually pretty cool. So they started with a suitability analysis. So they basically looked at all land cover and used some biological criteria that we talked about, like where can trees even go in the first place? Where is there enough water to sustain land? Tree growth to identify potential areas where afforestation efforts could actually occur. And then that’s like a general suitability analysis that gave about 50% of the restoration potential for forest restoration occurs in dryland ecosystem. So that’s like the top level. And then they looked at the Limiting the that 50% they looked at the contribution of potential albedo effects and so it’s kind of worth talking about what albedo is and so if you’re thinking about.
A really basic kind of maybe easiest example is like think about the Sahara desert and sort of this like light tan color that is. Reflecting it’s absorbing some light and reflecting some light back into the atmosphere so. If you’re going out on a sunny day and a warm day in a white t-shirt, you’re reflecting a lot of that sun back into the atmosphere. So you don’t get as hot as if you’re wearing a really dark t-shirt, right? Or like a reflector in the car.
Shannon Valley: Right. Exactly. Yeah. You get into it.
Jane Zelikova: Totally get into a really dark, a black car in the summer and you’re like cooking. So the same thing happens when you plant trees you’re changing the color the land surface from something that may be lighter when you didn’t have trees there to something now that’s like a dark shade of green, which is absorbing more heat. Than is reflecting back so that’s like the albedo effect so they so they looked at that land cover and then started to consider this like albedo effect. And whether or not the carbon drawdown in those suitable areas is going to be offset by the additional kind of local warming that happens because the area is darker.
And they used a combination of remote sensing tools, basically how we kind of measure what’s happening on the ground from space. And they used some data based estimations. They also used two previously published forest restoration data sets that Applied a set of different criteria than this particular study, but they use those data to look at potentially using higher density of woody vegetation and tree planting in areas that were once covered by forests, but that no longer support. So reforestation, not afforestation. And then they simulated this carbon sequestration and albedo effect using restoration maps and modeling.
And then they basically were able to combine all of those methodologies to create these new forestation maps that simulate the sort of maximum climate change mitigation potential that’s available from these restoration or reforestation efforts, specifically focused in dry land ecosystems. So not all of the globe, but just areas that like receive less than a certain amount of rainfall per year.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, it’s a really cool, approach and method, I think, and produce some very interesting results. Shannon, I wanted to, Jane did a really nice job, and you did both of you, of describing what albedo is, but can you just maybe expand a little bit on its importance in carbon removal generally? Because it’s not just applicable, obviously, to tree coverage and things. It has its impacts, I think, across potentially nature-based solutions and how we think about them.
Shannon Valley: Yeah, well, normally when we talk about albedo as effect on the overall climate, it’s something that impacts the overall radiative balance of the planet. So how much heat stays absorbed within the planet and on the surface versus how much is reflected back into space. So the high albedo areas of our planet, so those high reflective, icy, snowy areas, and as Jane was saying, like the Sahara deserted regions, They help regulate the planet’s radiative balance by pushing the thermostat down a bit. And so again, what this paper is discussing is converting, if you’re adding trees, which are darker, you’re converting some of that lower albedo land area to higher, sorry, you’re converting some of the higher albedo land area, the more arid areas to potentially lower albedo area, so more heat trapping.
And that reduces some of the overall global cooling effects that planting a large number of trees should produce. So a nuanced point that the paper actually makes is that the trees can be locally cooling due to their evaporative effects, but overall the albedo effect at scale is reducing their cooling effects by adding all this dark land cover where it wasn’t before.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Ah, always so many things to think about. So Jane, why, I think, I think Shannon was getting into this, but let’s just be really explicit about why do foresting in some regions closer the equator have better CDR potential than at those at higher latitudes? And, you know, as you both reviewed this paper, this is for both of you, what made you How do you think we should be thinking about future efforts to use forestation as a climate tool? Start with you, Jane.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I think about the fact that Well, tropical regions are still really diverse. And I think we’ve talked about this in the past, like the tropics isn’t a monolith and you have a lot of like ecosystem variation, even in the tropics, including dry land regions that don’t receive a lot of precipitation and then regions that get a lot. But I think generally sort of tropical ecosystems have a bit of their own climate where sort of moisture availability from wetter regions can drive a lot of productivity. And so if we focus our efforts on areas that receive ample rainfall and can support really like diverse, thriving forested ecosystems, if we put our efforts into those areas, I think we get a lot of bang for our buck.
And because those ecosystems have traditionally supported forests. And so versus thinking about sort of planting trees in Saudi Arabia, where you haven’t had a lot of tree cover in the past, I think the sort of the local resource limitations may become really important and might not sustain those forests for the long term. And we need these forests, not just like sort of established, but to also grow for long enough to actually deliver a climate benefit and a carbon drawdown benefit. That’s kind of a key thing that I think about. And tropical ecosystems, again, diverse as they are, have a long history of supporting forests, and I think that’s a really large area where we can do a lot of CDR.
That doesn’t mean we should. There are lots of other considerations besides carbon drawdown that really should drive where we focus our efforts. I don’t know, Shannon, what do you think?
Shannon Valley: Yeah, and I think To think about the kind of carbon crediting point of this with afforestation, reforestation. So carbon storage is just one, like you were saying, this is just one type of ecosystem service that Forest provides. They also help clean our air, they clean our water, recycle soil nutrients, protect us from flooding and erosion. There’s all these different Biodiversity, of course, is a huge one. Although I think the article noted correctly that dry lands have their own important ecological niches. And so if you’re changing that, then maybe there’s some loss there too.
But in general, yeah, I think that if you’re talking about kind of monetizing and paying to preserve those kinds of, or to restore those kinds of ecosystems, I think about that kind of as a market correction in a way. So the free market obviously is not, It famously doesn’t penalize for a lot of environmental destruction, and it also doesn’t pay folks for environmental benefits. So obviously, in a lot of cases, if people aren’t financially incentivized to protect trees or if they’re not incentivized to plant them, then they’re not going to do it.
So, you know, paying for carbon storage plus all these other benefits is a way to kind of secure those win-wins that we all want. And in theory, this could also be a way to compensate and support climate adaptive capacity for folks, including indigenous people who are not big emitters historically and today. But I want to acknowledge that there are people who also believe that nature should not simply just not be commodified in that way, but it should just be respected for its inherent and infinite value. So, you know, I think of it as these are win-wins to pursue.
But there’s different different thoughts on that. I think they should all be respected.
Jane Zelikova: I also I just went to a talk yesterday where a researcher talked about actually Dr. Lauren Gifford, who studied forestry projects in Peru for her PhD. And she kind of brought up she’s a social scientist and she brought up this idea that while sort of like carbon projects are being used as a financial kind of mechanism to deliver money to conservation projects ultimately. So carbon projects are just a vehicle for conservation. In some of these forest ecosystems, there are a lot of other factors to consider in terms of land ownership structure and sort of like other harms that could come from focusing on carbon projects specifically and forest projects specifically, especially in areas where people are already living.
So there are forests that are already supporting indigenous populations, people that might not Have the like sort of language capabilities or education to read contracts that they’re signing. And that in many instances, in order for these forestry projects to like sort of expand and thrive, it requires those people to be displaced from their homeland. So there are a lot of other considerations when we think about scaling CDR that have to do with like how it affects people and even sort of like indigenous people that might say they’re supportive of a carbon project might not fully understand the contractual obligation that they’re entering into when they sign up.
And in many instances, the organizations that are running the carbon projects sort of threatened to take something like health care or education away if these people don’t sign these contracts. So in that case, like it’s a different kind of colonialism and extraction, all kind of in the name of carbon Carbon drawdown. So they’re just, it’s a really complicated set of things to consider and no two carbon projects or no two forestry carbon projects are really the same.
Shannon Valley: Yeah, that’s rough. And that also reminds me, I heard something good the other day at a conference where somebody said, don’t confuse activity with accomplishment. And that’s, I think that’s always a good, good words to live by, right?
Jane Zelikova: I mean, I’m going to take that really personally, just because I’ve like read all my emails doesn’t mean I’ve done anything.
Shannon Valley: Oh, I know.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So many emails. All right. Well, let’s let’s pivot just for a few minutes to something also related to forestry that I think Shannon, you know, actually was. Was heading towards is that, you know, at the end of the October, the Forest Declaration Assessment published the first analysis of global deforestation since COP26. They found good news and bad news. The good news is the deforestation has decreased by 6% compared to 2018 baselines. Unfortunately, the bad news is the decreased needs to grow to 10% to meet climate goals. Shannon, how did this report measure the rate of deforestation across the globe?
And how could they really measure that or know that?
Shannon Valley: Satellites. Love an earth observing satellite. So what I understood is that they’re using data from Landsat satellites. And Landsat is an incredible historic program going back to the 70s, a series of earth observing satellites that can look at Different land cover and land use changes. And so this data, this data sets are looking at kind of 30 square meter resolutions of land cover. And that’s what I read was about the size of a baseball infield. Like that’s the dirt part. Like if you know as much about me as baseball, which I know mostly about baseball related snacks, but this is apparently like the diamond part plus kind of the pitcher’s mound.
So it’s a very high resolution view of the Earth’s surface. And specifically, they have sensors on the satellites that are capturing spectral ranges that are characteristic of forest vegetation. And so they’re looking at kind of a 30% tree cover threshold. So if an area had gone from this kind of 2018 to 2020 period, To the 2021 period, if that went below the 30% forest cover threshold, then it was considered deforested. If it went above, then it’s gained forest land. And so they took that, they compared those kind of two year sets and looked at the anomalies there.
And then they looked again at the 2021 data compared to a future pathway that would result in zero deforestation by 2030. So that’s calculated to be about a 10% reduction in deforestation needed every year in this decade to reach that goal.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, the good news was there was some progress. So what were the reasons, Jane, or what did this paper find to be the reasons for the progress? And then the flip side, what are some of the obstacles to continued improvement?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, so I think the some of the good news and the exceptional results that were found in actually decreasing deforestation, which I’m always like surprised when there’s good news these days. Is because of a few key countries where they did actually see a reduction in deforestation and then kind of the major one that they. They talk about in the paper is Indonesia and the large efforts by the Indonesian government and by corporations that do business in or with Indonesia. To actually reduce palm oil production. And that’s one of the biggest reasons they see this progress in reducing deforestation.
So for example, they kind of talk about that as of 2020, more than 80% of the palm oil refineries had made a promise to not cut down or degrade any more forests and that they’ve actually seen progress in that. And there’s also policy change So the Indonesian government imposed a moratorium on any new palm oil development. So the results of sort of both policy and corporate action has been able to slow deforestation in Indonesia, although the ban by the Indonesian government did expire last year. So people are actually worried that some of that deforestation progress is actually going to be reversed.
And then in terms of the moving forward, I think one area that the authors of the paper flag is that We have continued demand for commodities that require deforestation or have been driving deforestation, including sort of the global demand for beef, continued prospecting for fossil fuels, the need for timber, and a lot of sort of the need for timber and beef come from northern countries where deforestation to accommodate those needs comes from the global south. And so until we kind of address the growing demand for these commodities, forests are continuing to be threatened and deforestation goals might not be met.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So my next question, maybe there isn’t an answer to it, but I’d like both of your thoughts on You know, what policy improvements, I know you’re scientists, but as just as a human, what policy improvements would you like to see in some of these countries that’ll help us move towards a better outcome for the forests by 2030? Is that an impossible to answer question?
Jane Zelikova: The reason I am pausing is like, I’m so wary of telling sovereign nations what they should do as like, I would call the US in my mind, the number one polluter because like some of the pollution, some of the CO2 pollution that we are responsible for is from our sort of purchasing of goods from China. So China’s number one, but really we’re the ones buying the goods. So we should claim those emissions. So it’s really hard as like the number one emitter and especially legacy emitter to like tell other countries, especially developing countries that don’t have a lot of resources what they should do in terms of policy to help address the problem that you’ve created.
So that’s why I’m sort of pausing.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I don’t know if you could say something to the US government about policies within the US because it’s not like we aren’t losing force here too. Shannon, do you have any thoughts?
Shannon Valley: Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I mean, I like what you were saying, Jane, about kind of the consumption kind of pull on resources in general. And like, right, like we always talk about this, you know, what is it, reduce, reuse, and recycle, but forget the first R. And, you know, yeah, the issue is that wealthy countries do consume a lot. But if we’re, you know, also encouraging, you know, lower income countries to develop, we want them to prosper as well. We don’t want them to prosper in a way that we’ve modeled for them, right?
So, I mean, what policies could the U. S. do? I mean, it’s, honestly, it’s probably a dicey question for me to answer, given my position anyways. But I don’t know, is it too far off to even cite something as, like, Isn’t the EU starting to put into place some kinds of policies around making things that have to be a little bit more sustainable, that have to be able to be fixed, repaired, so that things are less kind of like single use? We talk about that a lot for plastics, but there’s a lot of commodities that could probably go that way too.
I don’t know. I think I’m rambling at this point, but no, I love that.
Jane Zelikova: I love your point about also like the reduce gets left out and everyone’s like really focused on the recycling and maybe the reuse, but certainly not reduce. Cause you can’t like, you can’t like post on Twitter that you’ve reduced something and get a lot of likes.
Shannon Valley: Yeah.
Jane Zelikova: It’s like a lack of action, but yeah, no, I like that idea a lot. Um, People are talking about sort of like trade policy that’s based on sort of carbon intensity of products that are being brought into the country. And I think that’s interesting, but I think it penalizes again countries that are not huge emitters, but that are sort of the production states for our consumption. And it feels really weird to penalize them with like high tariffs, et cetera, when we’re like the consumers, we have to really address the consumer side.
Rather than that, and then also obviously the production side, but if there wasn’t a consumer demand, there wouldn’t be production emissions.
Shannon Valley: Yeah, and it’s always money too, right? It’s like, again, financial incentives. If we’re pushing conservation in different places, you know, these 30 by 30 pledges and things like that. How are you making up for potential loss? If folks are standing to gain in different countries from the resources of these forests, where is the transfer? How are we helping them make up for that? Are there other ways to do that? I don’t know. Not a policy maker in that sense.
Jane Zelikova: I think I’ve talked about this as like a not a crazy idea, but we talk a lot about carbon removal on this podcast and I think the science of carbon removal is fascinating and. But in terms of like the carbon that the commodity of carbon and all of the proliferation of carbon offsets and markets that sort of try to commoditize it. And the companies that are making voluntary purchases, I think it would be interesting to consider what it would look like for these companies to instead of like commoditizing and tracking carbon, sort of just have 10% of their total like profits allocated to their license to operate in general.
And those funds have to go towards conservation and betterment of humanity kind of projects. Instead of sort of focusing on carbon, they just have to focus on making the world a better place. And carbon can be one of those things, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing. If we focus on forest conservation, there are obvious carbon benefits from that activity. Just putting it out there, corporations, think about it. Put 10% of your profits into conservation and see if we can get somewhere.
Radhika Moolgavkar: It’s a little bit moving away. Put some money into the ESG goals, I guess. Yeah, moving away from a strict carbon accounting to a more of a social and ecosystem benefit impact. And so, you know, the hard thing about all of these things I find is they all have to answer to shareholders and directors and everybody wants something that’s measurable and they can take credit for it, to your point, Jane, like on Twitter. So we also, I feel like have to change the mentality, which is a huge Huge, obviously, thing.
Jane Zelikova: And this week, Twitter might not be a thing that people want to tout their progress on anymore. So we’ll see where that all ends up.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I’m looking forward to watching the progress on that.
Jane Zelikova: We may need a new public square where people can yell at each other.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, that’s a whole other show. I sometimes, you know, the public square of Twitter does not seem to be the public square that the founders were thinking about, just saying.
Jane Zelikova: It never is. It never is.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So I’m going to turn it over to you for some good news, Jane, that I think relevant to the deforestation policy question. So yeah, what are you thinking about this week?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, it’s rare that there’s any good news, but the good news of the week is that Brazil took a step back from the abyss of fascism. And elected Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, who won the election against Bolsonaro, who actually conceded finally today. He hadn’t conceded yet until today. This is potentially a win for climate because Lula oversaw really large efforts to slow deforestation in Brazil when he was previously the president. And his platform when he was running for election this time Included a really large emphasis on environment and climate change.
So whereas Bolsonaro promoted a lot of the like sort of development of the rainforest and the deforestation rates under him were really high. Lula has pledged to reverse many of those previous policies. And so, you know, we’ll see what actually happens, but it is potentially a good news for forests and for climate.
Shannon Valley: Yeah, I was really excited to see that too. And I think that’s, I saw that there was like, I think, deforestation declined about 80% or something when Lula was in charge last time around. So he has some credibility there. And definitely, so I think it could be more challenging this time. Like, I think Bolsonaro really cut a lot of funding in science, cut enforcement of different regulations, I think. And then the last, when Lula was in, I think they attributed a lot of the deforestation declines in part to some of the improvements in the satellite observations and applying that data to actually act on conserving the forest.
But then also there was this enforcement of something they called the Brazil’s Forest Code. Which is estimated that if the Forest Code is enforced, and this is something that requires private landowners to conserve and restore a portion of their privately held land, if that’s enforced properly, that could get deforestation down in Brazil 89% by 2030. So almost at that 0% deforestation goal, if they’re able to do it by the end of this decade. And that’s so important because land use change is like a third of Brazil’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.
So this could be potentially huge. Again, politics situations are tough. And there’s a lot of, I think Jane, you were talking about earlier about, you know, land rights, land ownership issues are tricky, especially with a lot of the indigenous politics down there. But I see it as hopeful and it really reinforces what I tell folks all the time when they ask me, what can I do on climate? My main takeaway is you as an individual, the main thing that you can contribute is your vote for pro climate leadership. That is the thing.
So fingers crossed while rooting for you.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, go Brazil. Thank you for giving us an example of what it looks like to not continue sliding into dictatorship and craziness.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, with that, I will wrap up our science episode and also a friendly reminder to everybody who listens to vote because our country’s elections are next Tuesday. And I thank you both, Jane and Shannon, for being here today. I really appreciate it.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, thank you. Happy voting, everyone.
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