Forests
Forests as we know them have been around for 70 million years and developed naturally, while modern forestry (systematic management of forests for a sustainable yield of timber) have been around for only the last few centuries. If we shift our view and start to allow them to develop naturally again, they can make significant contribution to help fight the climate and nature crises.
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Healthy forests:
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are regenerated by seedlings or sprouts produced by on-site trees rather than artificially generated by tree planting
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are diverse in species and age
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have trees dying naturally and left on-site rather than cut down for lumber
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are capable of regulating themselves rather than being managed, thinned and cultivated for lumber production
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play a crucial climate role by sequestering carbon dioxide, regulating soil- and water conditions, and continental humidification
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play a crucial environment role in protecting biodiversity
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are beneficial for human recreation and health
When forests are allowed to grow naturally beyond harvest-maturity age they continue to capture atmospheric carbon as their trees continue to grow in girth, pump carbon into the soil and avoid emissions from the harvesting, the products and the clear-cut forest soils. In Scandinavia, the stand mortality rate generally remains flat for the first hundreds of years, and as trees die and fall they make room for younger, naturally regenerated trees to reach the overstory. More mature forests will also have more developed and interactive root systems, connected via mycorrhiza fungi networks in the soil that transport and store carbon and, together with the natural debris, contribute to a build-up of soil carbon. Left alone for hundreds of years the forests will become natural forests again and reach their optimum capacity as gigantic CO2 vacuum cleaners and preservers of biodiversity.
We are now in urgent need for immediate action to fight the climate and nature crises, and even though permanent forest conservation is the ideal, securing contractual permanence at scale is impractical, it is legally challenging and capital intensive; and this raises costs, limit deployment and makes presumptions on compliance hundreds of years into the future.
A Fossagrim contract delaying harvesting by 30 years is more attractive to our network of private forest owners and unlocks deployment of your local forests as a significant and scalable mitigation tool. Our chosen methodology of discounted ton-year accounting values immediate action over permanence, so the more harvesting we can delay now, the better. This enables businesses to make an immediate impact and take responsibility on a time scale we can relate to, rather than what our great-grandchildren must do in a 100 years.