Tired Forests Release Carbon

The startling and counterintuitive finding by Australian researchers, that the meagre tropical rainforests in the dry continent are turning into net emitters of carbon rather than acting as a sink, is a warning sign for all countries. What the scientists at Western Sydney University have found is that trees in the exhausted forests are dying at a higher rate due to heat, releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere, and more aggressive cyclones are felling trees at an unsustainable rate; regeneration efforts are simply unable to keep up. The research findings published in Nature underscore several home truths in the fight to stop dangerous climate change, the most important of which is to cut the rate at which globe-warming gases are emitted by major economies. Forests are simply not able to withstand the rising heat. Capping the warming is crucial, therefore, to give the world a chance to stabilise its efforts to mitigate climate change and vigorously pursue initiatives that capture the existing stock of atmospheric CO2. There is little time left, and the Australian findings point to the fallacy of pursuing an incremental approach to stop global warming when the need is for radical cuts. The 2025 Forest Declaration Assessment, produced by three dozen credentialled organisations including IUCN, estimates that 8.1 million hectares of the world’s forests were destroyed just in 2024, 63% higher than the limit set for deforestation; short-termism to expand commercial agriculture, such as palm oil that fuels cheap processed food, is responsible for a large part of this loss. In addition, 8.8 million ha. of tropical forests were degraded in one year, greatly reducing their productivity. Mindless removal of old-growth forests is a big blow inflicted on future generations, who must face a warmer world without the protective natural hedge available to those living in the present.

If there is a single message from the Australian research finding, it is that forests are falling victim at an accelerating scale to mindless economic policies. Contrary to their resolutions, countries are working at cross purposes to the UN climate change goal of ending deforestation by 2030, agreed in Glasgow four years ago; unthinking consumerism is making things worse. A rational response to this unfolding catastrophe should lead to a better accounting system for economies in which losses are counted using the same methods as gains from commerce. The economist Amartya Sen called this the dashboard approach, in which environmental losses appear accurately. Insights such as those available from Australia must give pause to myopic plans to cut down forests to create infrastructure that could well be built in already degraded locations. India’s Great Nicobar project to build ports, airports and shipping terminals in a pristine island, wiping out vast ancient forests, is a case in point.