William Moomaw had had a distinguished career as a physical chemist and environmental scientist. He helped found the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. He is also an author of five reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In recent years, Moomaw has turned his attention to working on natural solutions to climate change. He has become a staunch and vocal proponent of what he calls ‘preforestatifon’. This is the belief that we should leave older and middle-aged forests alone and intact. Why? Basically, it’s because of their superior carbon sequestration abilities.
Although Moomaw supports the multiple efforts of individuals
and governments to plant billions of trees, he says that we need to preserve
mature forests. This will have a bigger impact on slowing down global warming
over the coming decades. This is because immature trees have less success in
sequestering carbon than their more mature counterparts.
In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Moomaw explains the benefits of
preforestation, discusses policy changes that would lead to the preservation of
existing forests and sharply criticizes the recent trends of converting forests
in the Southeastern US to wood pellets that can be burned to produce
electricity in Europe and elsewhere.
Moomaw believes that, “the most effective thing we can do is to allow trees that are already planted, that are already growing, to continue growing to reach their full ecological potential, to store carbon and develop a forest that has its full complement of environmental services.” Moomaw also believes that “cutting trees down to burn them is not a way to get there.”
Preforestation will help us meet our climate goals because it will allow for greater sequestration by natural systems in the present. It entails protecting carbon stocks that we already have in forests, or at least a large enough fraction of them so that they make a difference. We have to protect wetlands as well because they are storing an amount of carbon in the US that equals what’s in our standing forests.
There’s been a lot of interest as of late in planting more trees. However, these small trees will not be able to sequester as much carbon as more mature trees and we need the mature trees to help assist the newly planted ones until they mature.
For more information on how to improve climate change through conserving and planting trees, please stay tuned to our blog. We love brining you the most up-to-date information we can.
