The United Nations (UN) Climate Meeting Requires U.S. Action on Forests
There is a lot of momentum right now to permanently protect our remaining mature and old-growth forests throughout the country. Our older forests with large trees store vast amounts of carbon from entering the atmosphere and warming the climate. The Biden Administration is currently participating in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP 27) and will help lead the world on climate action. Now is the time for the Biden Administration to set an example of what policy can look like to permanently protect mature and old-growth forests as a solution to climate change.
What is COP 27?
COP stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’, which is just a name for a committee created after an international treaty is signed, tasked with making decisions about how that treaty is implemented. There are all sorts of COPs but the one we hear most about is the COP that came after the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
154 countries signed the UNFCCC in June 1992, agreeing to combat harmful human impacts on the climate. Since then, COP meetings have been held annually to discuss how exactly that should be achieved, and monitor what progress has been made. Each COP is usually referred to by its number in the series, e.g. COP 27 is the 27th COP meeting.
Each year a different country becomes the COP President tasked with organizing that year’s meeting. Any new agreements which are made at COP tend to be named after the host city: the 2015 Paris Agreement or the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact. This year COP 27 is in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt from November 6th-18th.
COP 27 Highlights
This year's Conference aims to deliver action on an array of issues critical to tackling the climate emergency – from urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience, and adapting to the inevitable impacts of climate change, to delivering on the commitments to finance climate action in developing countries.
The conference began on November 6th with a key aim of ensuring full implementation of the Paris Agreement. The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Our Forests are natural solutions to the climate crisis.
Mature and old-growth trees capture vast amounts of carbon pollution, storing it for decades while living and even after their natural deaths, granted they're left in the forest. Logging immediately releases that carbon back into the atmosphere. Old forests are also critical for biodiversity. They are home to endangered wildlife like Pacific fishers, Northern spotted owls, and wild salmon. Older trees ease flooding, help produce clean drinking water, and are more resistant to wildfire than second growth forests.
The Biden administration has made strides to protect forests that are key to climate change by issuing an Executive Order to protect the remaining mature and old-growth forests. So far, all the administration has done is begin to map these forests. The forests of the Pacific Northwest are some of the best in the world for carbon storage. We need to make sure federal timber sale planners have clear direction to protect the mature and old growth trees.