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Countries are betting on forests and soils to mop up their remaining “difficult-to-decarbonise” emissions to achieve their climate targets. More forests and better soils are good for nature and for adapting to climate change, but this strategy may prove a risk to the global goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Substantial emission cuts across the global economy are required to stay on course with global temperature targets. Reaching net zero, however, will also involve removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and storing it, a process known as carbon removal.
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed that carbon removal will be “unavoidable” for balancing out the continued emissions from “difficult-to-decarbonise” sectors, such as aviation and agriculture. In our new paper, we examined how governments plan to pursue carbon removal in their national climate strategies.
We examined all national climate strategies published in English before 2022, totalling nearly 4,000 pages across 41 strategies. We found that the majority did not estimate how much of their emissions would be difficult to decarbonise in 2050.
Out of the 20 strategies that did, the majority rely primarily (and in some cases solely) upon forests, soils, or other natural sinks to compensate. In fact, forests and soils are the most commonly mentioned removal methods, present in nearly all strategies.
Forests, soils, or other natural sinks are not the only carbon removal options available. Engineered methods are increasingly gaining traction in climate policy.
One engineered method is direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), which uses chemical reactions to pull CO₂ out of the air and pump it underground. Another is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which captures the CO₂ released when burning plant matter (referred to as “biomass”), before also storing it underground.
These engineered methods feature in far fewer strategies. Only two countries (the UK and Switzerland) estimate how much CO₂ they might remove with DACCS, while the method receives mentions in a further five.
BECCS fares better. Its contribution to carbon removal is quantified in five strategies and mentioned in a further 11. Many of the examples in which they are mentioned are speculative, stressing that their potential deployment depends upon further technological breakthroughs.
Governments seem hesitant to embrace engineered methods and are more drawn to nature-based carbon removal. This isn’t too surprising – removing CO₂ through land use has been a feature of global climate policy dating back to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
Many existing policies, such as the EU’s LULUCF Regulation, help countries account for carbon removals by forests and soils in their emission totals. Engineered methods meanwhile account for a tiny proportion of what is currently removed from the atmosphere, according to a recent report.
Countries are rightly drawn to nature-based methods as they not only remove carbon but are critical to halting the decline of biodiversity and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Nature-based methods, however, may be a risky bet when it comes to removing and storing carbon to mop up remaining emissions.
Countries seem aware of these risks. Portugal’s national climate plan relies on forests and soils to close the gap to net zero yet describes damaging rural fires, which in 2017 flipped its forests from removing and storing CO₂ to adding it back to the atmosphere.
Sweden and Slovenia similarly rely upon their forests, but fear they are vulnerable to pests and disease. Hungary, Finland, Slovakia, South Korea and Ukraine anticipate that their forest carbon sinks will make a shallow contribution towards their long-term climate targets owing to the age of existing forests or limited land for growing new ones.
Countries such as France note that carbon storage in soil will be temporary if farmers decide to move away from practices that add carbon to soils and instead return it to the atmosphere. Malta similarly fears that the impacts of climate change may reduce the ability of soils to store carbon.
These concerns largely echo what researchers have already identified, underlining the limitations of removing CO₂ through these methods, particularly as climate change makes forests and soils more vulnerable to natural hazards.
Engineered carbon removal methods may offer a more durable way to remove and store carbon by pumping it underground. But the capacity of these methods must be urgently scaled up this decade.
Within their national strategies, countries either note a lack of potential storage sites or ample storage capacity. Making widespread deployment of engineered methods a reality may rest on countries collaborating to transfer CO₂ between one another or remove CO₂ on one another’s behalf.
Given the limited capacity of countries to remove carbon, the challenge of rapidly scaling up engineered methods and the necessity of addressing other pressing issues like declining biodiversity, carbon removal cannot substitute emission reductions.
Mitigating climate change requires both large and rapid emissions reductions and the responsible scaling up of carbon removal methods. Both natural and engineered methods are likely to be needed. Our research suggests that countries may need to engage with engineered removal methods if the challenge of net zero is to be met.
As of March 2023, 58 national climate strategies have been submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Compare this to the 194 nationally determined contributions, shorter term emission pledges made by countries, and it’s clear that there should be many more strategies to come.
These strategies must quantify the pathways they will take to their climate target and recognise the unique but different roles nature-based and engineered removals have. Those with existing strategies should follow suit in future revisions.
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Harry Smith receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.
Johanna Forster receives funding from Horizon Europe and has previously received funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
Naomi Vaughan receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust and has previously received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council.
Jamila*, a widow living in Herat, lost her husband in a suicide attack about eight years ago. She has an 18-year-old daughter who is blind and a 20-year-old son who lost both legs in a mine blast.
Jamila used to be a housemaid and bake bread for people in their homes. With this income she was able to feed her daughter and son, according to research carried out by Ahmad*, a former lecturer at the University of Herat and shared with me.
Since the Taliban gained control of the country, Afghanistan has been on the brink of universal hardship. As many as 97% of people are now estimated to be living in poverty, up from 72% in 2018.
The recent Taliban ban on women working in international and national organisations and women moving about public spaces has also affected women being able to find employment.
Because of the current situation Jamila has lost her clients and is now struggling to cope. She could not pay her rent and the landlord asked her to leave her home. She now lives in a small room that a kind family gave her in their yard. She has no source of income.
Previously about 10% of educated women in Afghanistan worked in national or international organisations to support their children. If less educated, they had a range of formal and informal jobs including working as housemaids, baking bread, washing clothes, cleaning bathrooms and babysitting, and in rural communities rearing small livestock and growing wheat, maize and vegetables.
Jamila said that previously under the former government her family received a monthly salary from the state ministry of martyrs and disabled affairs, which pays families of military veterans or those killed in the fighting, and that gave them enough money for bread.
The new government (the Taliban) has now stopped this salary … they don’t believe our lost ones are martyrs.
My son also had a job with the municipality office in a city parking lot, taking care of vehicles and collecting money from people parking their vehicles there. There were many handicapped people doing this kind of job. But now all of them, including my son, have lost their jobs.
The Taliban has appointed their own personnel in these parking areas. We have very few options left. A neighbour now drops my son near a bridge in the city where he begs people to help him with coins. He brings him back here in the evening. With the coins he brings, we can get only bread to survive until the next day.
Jamila is not an exception. She is one of thousands of women who have lost their jobs as a result of the new decrees. Many are acutely malnourished and don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
Single women and widows have practically no way of earning money. On-the-ground reports reveal that many households are supported by women as male members of their family were either killed or injured in the ongoing conflict.
It is not just food, but also shelter, water, fuel and warmth that contribute to survival, especially in bitterly cold temperatures. Ahmad, the former lecturer in Afghanistan, said:
Since COVID-19, my wife and I have tried to raise funds from friends to help poor families (especially widows). Very cold weather has been forecast for the western zone of Afghanistan in February.
There has been snow and the temperature has dipped to -25℃ at night early in 2023. One of my friends, who is in the US, helped us with some money locally to buy charcoal to help poor widows like Jamila cook food and warm up their rooms. My wife is also very frustrated and helpless in the current situation.
But, the plight of women-headed households, lacking adult males, is especially dire. In the absence of any social connection, they are increasingly food insecure, with few options to feed and care for their children.
This follows Taliban decrees banning women from education at the secondary and university level and not allowing them to travel without a mahram (male close relative as chaperone). The Taliban also ordered the closure of all beauty salons, public bathrooms, and sports centres for women, important sectors of employment for women.
Overall, the dire situation in Afghanistan has increased the incidence of extreme hunger and malnutrition for both men and women, but women without husbands are being pushed into even more extreme poverty.
Read more: The Taliban shifts tactics in its determination to control and oppress women
According to UN resident and humanitarian coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov, “a staggering 95% of Afghans are not getting enough to eat, with that number rising to almost 100% in female-headed households”.
The January 2023 high-level UN delegation led by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed called on the Taliban authorities to reverse the various decrees limiting women’s and girl’s rights for the sake of peace and sustainable development. While the backlash against women’s rights needs to be urgently addressed, the crisis of food and nutrition security facing single women, widows and separated women, is not being recognised by many outside the country.
According to the 2015 Demographic Health Survey, only 1.7% of Afghan households were headed by women. The January 2022 report from the UN World Food Programme places this at 4%.
As a former employee of the Afghanistan Central Statistical Organisation, responsible for population data collection in four districts of Bamiyan province, told us: “It is very difficult to collect accurate population data.” She said that previous data concerning women-headed households was now likely to be invalid.
While women’s rights are under attack in Afghanistan, the full effect of the ban on women’s work and mobility on single women, widows and separated women, is yet to be fully recognised. While appeals for help to the United Nations by teachers, professionals and civil society activists are rising by the day, negotiations are not progressing, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance is becoming increasingly challenging.
It’s difficult to estimate how long local communities, themselves struggling to survive, can keep women-led households and their families alive.
**All names in this article have been changed for security reasons
Nitya Rao has received funding from DFID for a project entitled 'Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA)' between 2014-18..
Two years on from the latest military coup that deposed Myanmar’s democratically elected government, what began as a wave of national protest against the army’s power grab has descended into outright civil war.
Myanmar’s military have gone beyond repression or terrorising ethnic minority groups – it is making war on society as a whole. There is little prospect of the violence ending, let alone the prosecution of the perpetrators for a litany of crimes against their people.
Meanwhile the junta continues to steal what wealth there is in Myanmar. This UN-designated “least developed country” is vastly endowed with natural resources which are being misappropriated. There is a major humanitarian and growing environmental crisis. Yet outside of the country, the situation’s complexities are barely grasped.
Myanmar’s 2020 election delivered a crushing defeat to the Union Solidarity and Development Party – the proxy political party of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) – and a huge mandate to Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and allied parties.
Yet on the morning of February 1 2021, army general Min Aung Hlaing blocked access to parliament, arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and many senior colleagues. He declared a “state of emergency” and installed himself as head of a ruling state administration council.
Millions took to the streets. A civil disobedience movement formed, led mainly by young people who saw their bright futures being stolen. The military reaction was swift and brutal: demonstrators shot by snipers, bombed indiscriminately, arrested, tortured and executed.
Two years on, Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as most of her top party colleagues, remain in custody – she was recently sentenced to 33 years jail for “corruption”. But several democratically elected leaders managed to escape to form a “national unity government” in exile. This government now represents Myanmar at the United Nations and has representatives in a range of countries.
Meanwhile, across Myanmar ordinary people have taken up arms. Many have received basic training from one or another of the ethnic armed organisations which formed over decades of regional conflicts, and have returned to fight as the People’s Defence Force.
The whole of Myanmar is now a conflict zone. The Tatmadaw routinely attacks or bombs villages resisting or suspected of harbouring People’s Defence Force members. Thousands have died and many more have been injured.
Thanks to significant revenues from oil and gas, the Tatmadaw has the military advantage, particularly in air power, yet it is struggling in the face of unified opposition. It lacks numerical superiority compared to the democrats, and many soldiers and police have defected – over 8,000 so far.
Meanwhile it is finding it hard to recruit or even conscript new troops, risking becoming in the long term an “army without soldiers”. It is also struggling to pay wages and is resorting to printing money, which is fuelling inflation that feeds into public discontent.
But two years of fighting has left Myanmar’s resistance outgunned, with dwindling supplies, particularly ammunition, and little defence against air attacks. Conflict fatigue is affecting some.
It is a major humanitarian crisis. Over half the country is in poverty after the previous decade of rapid improvements under a civilian quasi-democracy. The UN has identified 4.5 million people needing emergency support, with millions displaced, the economy and international trade disrupted, and basic foodstuffs and essential drugs scarce.
But the conflict is delivering plenty of business opportunities for the Tatmadaw and its political cronies. Numerous large-scale projects previously blocked for environmental reasons have been reactivated: new dams and mines are of particular concern.
Logging appears to be on the increase and a new wave of “crony” land grabbing by the army and its business partners has been taking over farmland for agricultural commodity production, often adding to deforestation.
Unregulated mining, taking advantage of Myanmar’s significant share of gold, gems, jade and rare earth elements, is poisoning Myanmar’s waterways. Oxford University-led research in 2017 into water quality found arsenic and lead concentrations above safe levels. And today, mining projects are proliferating,, undoubtedly increasing pollution.
Meanwhile in many cities, electricity outages is forcing people to burn coal and wood for fuel, affecting air quality.
Aside from the solidarity in the resistance movement and the increasingly fragile position of the military, there are grounds for optimism in the robust response of many foreign governments. The UN security council issued a resolution in December 2022 calling for an immediate cessation to all forms of violence (Russia, China and India abstained).
The US has imposed escalating sanctions targeting generals, arms suppliers and cronies. In December 2022, the National Defense Authorization Act provided support for democratic groups in Myanmar, including training and non-lethal assistance.
The EU passed its fifth package of sanctions against the junta in November 2022, targeting arms exports. This international pressure has increased to the extent where it appears even China is becoming embarrassed by its association with the junta.
The civil war will undoubtedly continue for some time, and when it eventually ends the scars will take even longer to heal. What would make the pain bearable for many would be a just peace in which the menace of the Tatmadaw, after more than 60 years of violence, is removed, and the wealth of the generals, their cronies and the military companies used to alleviate poverty.
In the absence of direct military assistance, foreign governments and organisations should consider supporting the national unity government to help alleviate the suffering of Myanmar’s people. Key to this will be the coordination of health, education and financial services – now widely absent – as well as the groundwork to help civil society to restore democracy when the time comes.
Dr. Oliver Springate-Baginski has received funding from a range of research and advocacy groups in relation to work in Myanmar/Burma including Pyoe Pin Program (Rangoon/Uk Govt), ALARM (Rangoon), Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation (Rangoon), TransNational Institute (Amsterdam); International Union for Conservation of Nature, (Gland), Forest Trends (Washington), World Bank Group (Washington), CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (Vientiane), London School of Economic and Political Science (London).
Win Myo Thu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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