Carbon emissions from logging would be the third highest emitting sector of Canada’s economy, if the federal government reported them out separately, according to a new report from groups including Nature Canada.
They would only be behind emissions from oil and gas production and transportation, said the report, released Wednesday.
However, because Canada doesn’t break out those emissions, logging is unfairly portrayed as a sustainable industry, the climate advocates say. Aspects of that reporting mechanism, some of which are unique to Canada, have also been questioned by UN experts charged with reviewing Canada’s annual emissions reports to the international community.
“It’s become clear that it’s quite an emissions behemoth,” said Jennifer Skene, an author of the report and the global forest policy manager for the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
“The government is not being forthright about that, and is not treating it on par with other high-emitting sectors.”
Inconsistencies with measuring human-caused emissions
There isn’t one consistent global standard for measuring emissions from the land sector, because different countries have different climates, landscapes and methodologies.
But for Canada, because it has one of the largest forestry sectors in the world — and about 10 per cent of the world’s forests — accurately measuring the industry’s emissions has an outsized impact.
The report outlines several issues with how Canada measures its emissions for the sector.
Many are common issues globally. For example, current UN guidelines allow for countries to offset their total emissions with carbon removals from trees, underreporting the true amount — and making the full picture of the logging industry’s emissions lost in the larger, complex land sector.
The researchers say Canada should report logging emissions separately, rather than as part of the larger land sector, to transparently show the climate impact of the $33-billion industry.
Another issue is how land is categorized: Human-caused emissions are measured on what are called “managed lands” — those that are actively affected by human activity, like forestry, conservation and fire suppression.
But different jurisdictions count their managed lands inconsistently — B.C. and Alberta, for example, consider all their forests as managed, because of fire suppression and logging activities taking place there. Meanwhile, Ontario and Quebec have a northern limit, beyond which the forests are not considered managed.
The inconsistent approach to delineating managed land can have a big impact on the final emissions numbers, because countries count carbon removals by trees in managed areas.
“Essentially what [Canada’s] doing is taking credit for forests that it can but has not yet cut,” Skene said.
Canada doesn’t measure wildfire emissions
Unique to Canada in emissions reporting is that it doesn’t consider the emissions from events like insect outbreaks and wildfires on managed land as part of the forestry sector’s total, the report noted — an approach not taken by most other countries.
Wildfire emissions in particular have become a major issue, as last year’s fires produced a record amount of them. This year has also seen devastating fires, especially the (still ongoing) wildfire that destroyed Jasper.
However, once those forests grow back and reach an age of commercial maturity, the government designates the carbon they absorb to the forestry sector.
A UN review in July also flagged this as an issue. Canada, it said, claims that human activity is not a major driver of wildfires — even though they are exacerbated by human-caused climate factors — and so those emissions cannot be counted among those accounting for the sector.
However, that assumption “is not supported by long-term data and scientific understanding,” the UN review said.
Canada has made major revisions to land emissions estimates
The federal government, in apparent response to recent criticism, has begun overhauling its emissions reporting for the sector. Its latest National Inventory Report lists total emissions from Canada’s managed lands as 51 megatonnes in 2022. This is a major recalculation from previous years, which showed Canada’s lands as a net carbon sink rather than as an emissions source.
The government made the recalculation because it has new estimates of what counts as a “managed” forest.
Nature Canada and other groups have been critical about how a large swath of Canada is considered “managed.” A larger managed forest means there are more carbon removals by trees to count.
Therefore, with the size of managed land in Canada reduced, emissions from logging and other activities are no longer fully offset by trees, and the land sector now appears as a carbon emitter in the country’s reporting.
However, according to the Wednesday report, the full impact of the logging industry is still obscured. If emissions from the logging industry were reported separately from the overall land sector, they would actually total 147 Mt, behind only oil and gas (217 Mt) and transport (156 Mt), according to the latest report.
The calculations are based on the approach taken in a peer-reviewed study published earlier this year.
Anthony Taylor, the author of that study and an associate professor of forestry at the University of New Brunswick, said in an email the new report drives home the point that Canada’s managed forests aren’t the tool to counter climate change they are sometimes purported to be.
“I know there are some forestry firms out there that manage their forest very sustainably, but as a whole, the sector is a net source based on the federal government’s own data,” Taylor said.
The Forest Products Association of Canada, an industry group, declined to comment without seeing the full report. But it’s previously said that Canada’s accounting methods are widely respected around the world and have been adopted in other countries. It’s also defended the forestry industry as a source of climate-friendly materials to replace carbon intensive products like steel and concrete.
A new environmental report suggests that Canada could be drastically underestimating the carbon emissions from the forestry sector. The report also noted that while Canada’s reporting model is used worldwide, it may not be the most accurate way of assessing the industry’s true carbon footprint.
Natural Resources Canada planning improvements
Natural Resources Canada, the department that compiles emissions for the land sector, has a multi-year plan to improve its calculations.
Recalculating the extent of managed lands is one part of that. It’s also planning to improve how it measures the impact of oil and gas development on forests and better estimates for emissions from wildfires.
“Canada’s approach to estimating forest GHG emissions and removals is based on science and evidence,” the department said in a statement.