Soaking Up Carbon in Forests and Fields

摘要

The climate treaty left open the rules for using managed forests, range-lands, and croplands to help meet Kyoto targets. How should it be done? Is it fair for global bookkeepers to let countries subtract carbon sequestered by their farmland and forests from the carbon they spew by burning fossil fuels? If so, how do you measure how many tons of carbon an Iowa cornfield has socked away? Those questions will be high on the agenda as negotiators meet later this month to nail down the details of the Kyoto Protocol (see p. 920). Forests and other land sinks, as they are called, could offset a sizable chunk of the extra CO_2 that humans pump into the atmosphere and protect biodiversity as well. But sinks are controversial, both because of uncertainties about how to measure the carbon they absorb and because some countries view sink proposals—particularly the United States'—as a distraction to avoid cutting fossil fuel emissions.