Boreal forests provide 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services like
reducing atmospheric carbon and water filtration, but which have gone
unacknowledged by governments and industry, experts say.
Governments need to begin accounting for those services before allowing timber,
oil and gas and mining to carve up the world's remaining northern forests,
argues the Edmonton, Canada-based ecological economist Mark Anielski.
The globe-spanning boreal forest is the last great forest ecosystem -- larger
even than the Amazon. The boreal is also the largest terrestrial storehouse of
carbon, making it one of the world's best defences against global climate
change.
"The boreal is like a giant carbon bank account. The forests and peatlands store
an estimated 67 billion tonnes of carbon in Canada alone -- almost eight times
the amount of carbon produced worldwide in the year 2000," Anielski told IPS.
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