Diversifying Chile’s climate action away from industrial plantations

•Climate change threatens the carbon sink capacity of forests in Chile.•Industrial plantations do not contribute towards achieving carbon neutrality.•Wildfire emissions exceed the nationally determined contributions mitigation.•Climate actions should diversify including a wider range of nature based...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science & policy 2021-10, Vol.124, p.85-89
Main Authors: Hoyos-Santillan, Jorge, Miranda, Alejandro, Lara, Antonio, Sepulveda-Jauregui, Armando, Zamorano-Elgueta, Carlos, Gómez-González, Susana, Vásquez-Lavín, Felipe, Garreaud, Rene D., Rojas, Maisa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon neutrality
Climate action
Native forest
Nature-based solutions
Net-zero
Wildfires
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Climate change threatens the carbon sink capacity of forests in Chile.•Industrial plantations do not contribute towards achieving carbon neutrality.•Wildfire emissions exceed the nationally determined contributions mitigation.•Climate actions should diversify including a wider range of nature based solutions.•Conservation and restauration of wetlands can contribute to carbon neutrality. As president of the Climate Change Conference of the Parties, Chile has advocated for developing ambitious commitments to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to achieve carbon-neutrality by 2050. However, Chile's motivations and ambitious push to reach carbon-neutrality are complicated by a backdrop of severe drought, climate change impacts (i.e., wildfires, tree mortality), and the use of industrial plantations as a mitigation strategy. This has become more evident as widespread and severe wildfires have impacted large areas of industrial plantations, transforming the land-use, land-use change, and forestry sector from a carbon sink to a net carbon source. Consequently, Chile must diversify its climate actions to achieve carbon-neutrality. Nature-based solutions, including wetlands-peatlands and oceans, represent alternative climate actions that can be implemented to tackle greenhouse gas emissions at a national level. Diversification, however, must guarantee Chile's long-term carbon sequestration capacity without compromising the ecological functionality of biodiverse tree-less habitats and native forest ecosystems.
ISSN:1462-9011
1873-6416
DOI:10.1016/j.envsci.2021.06.013