Forests face carbon reversal threat as wildfires undermine offset strategies

Forests face carbon reversal threat as wildfires undermine offset strategies
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 26, 2025

Forests that once acted as stable carbon sinks are increasingly becoming major sources of carbon emissions, driven by escalating wildfire activity across boreal, Amazonian, and Australian regions. A new publication from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) warns that current carbon offset practices and climate policies fail to account for the growing threat posed by fire-driven emissions.

Titled Beyond Planting Trees: Taking Advantage of Satellite Observations to Improve Forest Carbon Management and Wildfire Prevention, the report cautions that tree-planting initiatives, long considered essential to carbon sequestration, can sometimes heighten wildfire risks and thus inadvertently boost carbon output.

"Planting trees is no longer enough-warming, drought-stressed forests can flip into vast carbon sources when they burn. Forest policy must move from static protection to dynamic risk management," said Dr. Ju Hyoung Lee, Environmental Remote Sensing and Spatial Hydrology Research Fellow at UNU-INWEH and lead author of the report.

The policy brief urges a fundamental shift in carbon-offset strategies, emphasizing the need to factor in how climate stressors like drought, rising temperatures, and pests may transform reforested areas into fire-prone zones. It recommends tailoring carbon policies to reflect local environmental variables such as soil moisture, precipitation, and projected heatwave intensity, along with employing active fuel-reduction practices.

Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of UNU-INWEH, highlighted the importance of combining data and action: "Forests are our powerful allies against climate change-but only if we manage them as living, dynamic systems. By coupling satellite data with proactive management, we can prevent fires from erasing decades of carbon-reduction progress."

The report criticizes the reliance of voluntary carbon markets on outdated assumptions about forest stability. It advocates using satellite monitoring to detect forest areas at high risk of fire and excluding those from carbon offset plans. This proactive approach would help policymakers direct resources where carbon retention is most viable.

To ensure accountability and better align global carbon markets with on-the-ground forest realities, the authors call for the establishment of an international platform that integrates near-real-time satellite observations into climate mitigation efforts.

Key findings note that forests and peatlands-once viewed as the largest terrestrial carbon stores-are becoming "super-emitters" due to increased wildfire frequency. The report further suggests that under certain arid conditions, methods such as controlled harvesting and grazing could help maintain ecosystem moisture and reduce carbon losses.

Research Report:Beyond Planting Trees: Taking Advantage of Satellite Observations to Improve Forest Carbon Management and Wildfire Prevention