Sustainably manage terrestrial ecosystems to reduce GHG emissions and enhance carbon removals

Emissions-intensive management practices — particularly those associated with timber, paper and pulp production — spur forest degradation, while land-use changes coupled with increasing temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns are heightening the risk of catastrophic wildfires, even in ecosystems where fire is a natural part of the ecological cycle.
 

Improved forest and land management can reduce emissions and bolster carbon uptake

When locally tailored and appropriately implemented, improved management practices can help combat these harms and generate benefits for climate, biodiversity and development, especially when employed alongside protection and restoration efforts. Improving forest management across already managed forests can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from logging and enhance carbon sequestration in regrowth following wood harvesting, while improved grazing practices across grasslands can play a role in slowing and reversing degradation, enabling these ecosystems to rebuild depleted carbon stocks. In addition, better fire prevention and fire suppression practices can help reduce the frequency and intensity of extreme fires across these ecosystems.

By one estimate, improving management practices across the world’s forests, grasslands, savannas and shrublands can contribute about 15% of the cost-effective mitigation potential needed from terrestrial ecosystems in 1.5-degree-C pathways. While this mitigation potential is smaller than those associated with protecting and restoring terrestrial ecosystems, improved management practices may prove less challenging to implement. They are often more cost-effective than restoration; entail few, if any, changes in land use; and generate co-benefits, including to productivity and local livelihoods.
 

Why management practices must be adaptive, evidence-based and site-specific

But to achieve this potential, these measures must be carefully planned and implemented. Climate change is already rapidly changing forest conditions and increasing fire severity, and knowledge bases are constantly evolving, altering the ways forests and other terrestrial ecosystems are managed. Successfully improving management practices requires being adaptive, evidence-based and site-specific.

Some practices, for example, involve trade-offs that must be proactively addressed to minimize harmful or unintended impacts. Challenges also arise when the long-term benefits and effectiveness of techniques across different ecosystems are uncertain, as with some fire management practices. Additional research is needed to close knowledge gaps and ensure that management practices are appropriate for each ecosystem where they are adopted.
 

Data gaps and barriers hinder the widespread adoption of improved management practices and make global progress difficult to assess

To date, comprehensive data measuring the hectares of terrestrial ecosystems under improved management practices globally does not yet exist, nor is there scientific consensus on what practices count as “improved” across these ecosystems. Still, available evidence suggests that current efforts are likely insufficient, in large part due to a weak enabling environment.For example, many countries have sustainable forest management policies on paper, but far fewer have policies in place for improved management across other ecosystems like grasslands or support adoption of improved fire management practices. Insecure land tenure has also limited Indigenous Peoples’ ability to use traditional practices such as cultural burning without interference.

Even when strong legal frameworks exist, efforts to uphold these policies are often constrained by limited financial resources and technical capacity; weak monitoring, evaluation and learning systems; poor coordination among diverse stakeholders, including a failure to meaningfully partner with Indigenous Peoples in fire management strategies; and inadequate private sector action.
 

Improved management must go beyond climate change to combat other direct drivers of biodiversity loss

While this shift focuses on management practices that can reduce GHG emissions and enhance carbon sequestration, these actions should be complemented by additional management measures to combat other primary direct drivers of biodiversity loss — namely, overexploitation of wild species, pollution and the spread of invasive alien species.