8 Forestry and Climate Change

Summary Forestry and climate change interact strongly. Changes in atmospheric CO 2 concentrations can increase growth directly or change temperatures, thereby influencing forest productivity. There is some evidence that forests acclimate to higher lev-els of CO 2 and so their productivity may be directly enhanced only during periods of limited water sup-ply. Climate change can alter distributions of plants, pests and diseases, thereby imposing extra risks for forest owners. Afforestation outside of boreal zones can greatly mitigate anthropogenic climate change by sequestering atmospheric CO 2 , but some of the benefit is reduced by changes in landscape albedo. Deforestation in mostly develop-ing nations represents more than 17% of anthropo-genic GHG emissions. The Kyoto Protocol set up international GHG trading schemes, and many nations have established domestic carbon trading in order to promote more climate-friendly behav-iour. At the time of writing, some of the mecha-nisms established for carbon credit trading appear to be leading to credit inflation.