page_title: Biosequestration
section_title: Reforestation, avoided deforestation and LULUCF
hierarchical_section_title: Biosequestration / Reforestation, avoided deforestation and LULUCF
caption_attribution_description: English: A composed satellite photograph of Australia.
context_page_description: Biosequestration is the capture and storage of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by continual or enhanced biological processes.
  This form of carbon sequestration occurs through increased rates of photosynthesis via land-use practices such as reforestation, sustainable forest management, and genetic engineering. Methods and practices exist to enhance soil carbon sequestration in both sectors of agriculture and forestry. Additionally, in the context of industrial energy production, strategies such as Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from coal, petroleum, or natural gas-fired electricity generation can utilize an alternative of algal bio sequestration.
  Biosequestration as a natural process has occurred in the past, and was responsible for the formation of the extensive coal and oil deposits which are now being burned. It is a key policy concept in the climate change mitigation debate. It does not generally refer to the sequestering of carbon dioxide in oceans or rock formations, depleted oil or gas reservoirs, deep saline aquifers, or deep coal seams or through the use of industrial chemical carbon dioxide scrubbing.
context_section_description: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the cutting down of forests is now contributing close to 20 per cent of the overall greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Candell and Raupach argue that there are four primary ways in which reforestation and reducing deforestation can increase biosequestration. First, by increasing the volume of existing forest. Second, by increasing the carbon density of existing forests at a stand and landscape scale. Third, by expanding the use of forest products that will sustainably replace fossil-fuel emissions. Fourth, by reducing carbon emissions that are caused from deforestation and degradation. Land clearing reductions, the majority of the time, create biodiversity benefits in a vast expanse of land regions. Concerns, however, arise when the density and area of vegetation increases the grazing pressure could also increase in other areas, causing land degradation.
  A recent report by the Australian CSIRO found that forestry and forest-related options are the most significant and most easily achieved carbon sink making up 105 Mt per year CO₂-e or about 75 per cent of the total figure attainable for the Australian state of Queensland from 2010-2050. Among the forestry options, the CSIRO report announced, forestry with the primary aim of carbon storage (called carbon forestry) has the highest attainable carbon storage capacity (77 Mt CO₂-e/yr) while strategy balanced with biodiversity plantings can return 7–12 times more native vegetation for a 10%–30% reduction of carbon storage performance. Legal strategies to encourage this form of biosequestration include permanent protection of forests in National Parks or on the World Heritage List, properly funded management and bans on use of rainforest timbers and inefficient uses such as woodchipping old growth forest.
  As a result of lobbying by the developing country caucus (or Group of 77) in the United Nations (associated with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, the non-legally binding Forest Principles were established in 1992. These linked the problem of deforestation to third world debt and inadequate technology transfer and stated that the "agreed full incremental cost of achieving benefits associated with forest conservation...should be equitably shared by the international community" (para1(b)). Subsequently, the Group of 77 argued in the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) and then the 2001 Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF), for affordable access to environmentally sound technologies without the stringency of intellectual property rights; while developed states there rejected demands for a forests fund. The expert group created under the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) reported in 2004, but in 2007 developed nations again vetoed language in the principles of the final text which might confirm their legal responsibility under international law to supply finance and environmentally sound technologies to the developing world.
  In December 2007, after a two-year debate on a proposal from Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, state parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) agreed to explore ways of reducing emissions from deforestation and to enhance forest carbon stocks in developing nations. The underlying idea is that developing nations should be financially compensated if they succeed in reducing their levels of deforestation (through valuing the carbon that is stored in forests); a concept termed 'avoided deforestation (AD) or, REDD if broadened to include reducing forest degradation (see Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). Under the free market model advocated by the countries who have formed the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, developing nations with rainforests would sell carbon sink credits under a free market system to Kyoto Protocol Annex I states who have exceeded their emissions allowance. Brazil (the state with the largest area of tropical rainforest) however, opposes i
caption: Continent of Australia from space. Australia is a major producer of fossil fuels and has significant problems with deforestation.
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