Climate: Carbon sinks are shrinking in France, warns the Canopée association

"The stakes are considerable and largely underestimated," the authors write. According to them, "preserving the carbon sink is as important as reducing emissions," but French government policy tends to "sacrifice" the former in favor of the latter.

Carbon sinks, which absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere, should make it possible to offset the unavoidable CO2 emissions that energy conservation efforts and technological progress will not have eliminated by 2050.

Among these carbon sinks, forests are the "primary contributor," explains Canopée. But according to Citepa, the leading organization responsible for monitoring emissions, the amount of carbon absorbed by French forests has decreased by more than half since the early 2000s.

Three factors explain this decline: increased tree mortality, slower growth and increased "harvesting" (the volume of trees felled), Canopée summarizes.

"Today, 85% of the decline in carbon sinks across Europe is due to tree felling," said scientist Philippe Ciais, a French researcher specializing in the carbon cycle, at a press briefing organized by Canopée on Monday, compared to only 15% for "natural disasters."

Limit tree cutting

"We don't control the fires, nor do we control the bark beetles (insects that parasitize trees, especially spruce trees, editor's note), but we do have control over the harvest. If we agreed to reduce the harvest a little, there would be no problem maintaining the objectives" of carbon sinks, explains Philippe Ciais.

This observation leads the report's authors to conclude that "the decline in the forest carbon sink" is, "to a significant extent, the result of identifiable and reversible political choices." And "the main lever for control is harvesting," added Sylvain Angerand, director of Canopée, during the same press briefing.

According to the association's report, with the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC), the executive "will hasten the fall of the carbon sink".

This document, regularly amended by the government, aims to enable France to achieve a balance between carbon emissions and absorption of carbon from the atmosphere by 2050, the definition of carbon neutrality.

The NGO criticizes the latest version of the document, submitted for public consultation, for planning "an increase in forest harvesting" of more than 13% by 2030, which will "degrade the carbon sink" by 11 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, according to its calculations.

This increase in withdrawals is fueled by the demand for wood for energy uses and the use of wood as a resource intended to contribute to reducing emissions.

In recent years, numerous projects for pellet production plants, cogeneration (boilers) or even biofuels from wood have emerged in France.

"They have launched too many industrial projects which, cumulatively, lead to a carbon sink problem," summarizes Sylvain Angerand.

In doing so, the government is "sacrificing" carbon sinks in favor of reducing emissions, laments Canopée.

Wood-based biofuels for aviation, promoted by the aeronautical industry as sustainable fuels, are particularly targeted by the association: "Opening this market without limiting the growth of air traffic amounts to creating additional demand for forest biomass at the precise moment when it should be reduced," says Canopée.

The association calls for a reduction in timber harvesting and for "freezing the development of industrial projects increasing pressure" on forests, and for setting a target of 50 million cubic meters of timber per year, compared to approximately 53 million today.