Policy Brief 1: Distribution of Terrestrial Carbon Across Developing Countries

Avoiding dangerous climate change requires tackling the emissions and harnessing the sequestration potential of terrestrial carbon. And to be effective, this needs to be done at scale. In this Policy Brief we analyse the volumes of what we term “volatile” terrestrial carbon across land types (forest and nonforest), carbon pools (vegetation and soil), regions, and country circumstances. For the resulting forest carbon volumes we also make some simple and transparent assumptions to calculate possible emissions of forest carbon over the next 40 years under various scenarios (none of which are predictions). We conclude that in respect of forest carbon, the international climate change response must encompass both vegetation and soil carbon pools. Further, it needs to be flexible enough to incentivise countries with a variety of forest circumstances and histories. Finally, although the carbon richness of forests and their current rate of decline mean that tackling emissions from deforestation and forest degradation is of paramount importance, it is only part of the story: the volumes of carbon in both the vegetation and soil of non-forested land implies that the international climate change response must encompass all sources and all sinks of terrestrial carbon, not just forests.

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