EU urged to act on forests' faltering absorption of carbon
PARIS (AFP)The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by European forests has reduced dramatically in recent years putting the EU's climate targets at risk, researchers said Wednesday, calling for urgent action to halt the decline.Forests, which cover 40 percent of the European Union's territory, are expected to play a crucial role in efforts to meet targets for overall reductions of the bloc's emissions of planet-warming gases.But human and climate pressures, from logging to extreme weather and insect attacks, means their ability to absorb CO2 is "rapidly declining", according to an article, led by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre."Reversing the decline in European forests' ability to store carbon is essential -- and still possible -- with bold, science-based action today," said co-author Giacomo Grassi, who is a member of the UN's IPCC expert task force on greenhouse gas inventories.Solutions include rapid reductions in carbon emissions, combined with efforts to improve management to make forests more resilient to climate impacts, and comprehensive monitoring.Many European countries still rely on periodic inventories, which cannot keep up with rapid changes to forest health.The authors emphasise the need to better understand forest dynamics.They call in particular for better measuring of carbon flows between the soil, vegetation, and atmosphere, as well as improving predictions of how extreme weather will affect carbon sinks in the future.
Steeper Decline The research looked at official 2024 data showing that the amount carbon absorbed by Europe's forests, ecosystems and changes to land use plummeted by around a third in the 2020 to 2022 period, compared to 2010 to 2014.The authors said 2025 figures "suggest an even steeper decline"."This trend, combined with the declining climate resilience of European forests, indicates that the EU's climate targets, which rely on an increasing carbon sink, might be at risk," the authors said.Earlier this week another study in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment found that land accounts for a quarter of global emissions reductions in countries' climate plans and warned that a lack of funding and conservation focus was putting these in jeopardy.Scientists have warned that it is still unclear how carbon sinks might behave as the planet warms in future, and exactly how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide they might soak up from the atmosphere.
In April, research by Climate Analytics, a policy institute that independently assesses countries' climate plans, warned that major economies are overstating how much carbon their forests can absorb in a climate accounting fudge that could allow them to use even more fossil fuels.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Zawya
2 days ago
- Zawya
Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and European Commission Launch New Initiative to Strengthen Mpox Testing and Sequencing Across Africa
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the European Commission today announced the launch of the Partnership to Accelerate Mpox Testing and Sequencing in Africa (PAMTA), a landmark initiative to boost diagnostics and outbreak response capabilities in Mpox-affected African countries. Co-funded under the EU4Health 2024 Work Programme, PAMTA reflects the growing momentum of Africa–EU health cooperation and aims to reinforce the continent's resilience against current and future health threats. The initiative will accelerate testing, sequencing, capacity building, and local manufacturing efforts for mpox and other priority pathogens across Africa through a €9.4 million to Africa CDC and the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM), managed by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). The project officially began on 1 June 2025 and will be implemented over three years. Africa CDC Director General, H.E. Dr Jean Kaseya, welcomed the initiative as a timely and strategic intervention to close the diagnostic gap for Mpox and other outbreaks in Africa. 'This partnership reflects our commitment to working with trusted partners to build agile and self-reliant public health systems across Africa. Together with the EU and our technical partners, we are setting a new benchmark for outbreak detection and response.' The PAMTA initiative focuses on four key objectives: scaling up Mpox testing with the goal of supporting over 150,000 tests across the continent; strengthening genomic sequencing capacity to track viral evolution and spread; building human resource capacity in molecular diagnostics, genomics, bioinformatics and data interpretation; and promoting the production and validation of locally developed testing kits within Africa. 'PAMTA marks a historic milestone as the first initiative jointly signed between the European Commission and Africa CDC,' said Deputy Head of DG HERA, Laurent Muschel. 'Building on HERA's earlier donation of Mpox vaccines, this action enables a critical next step: strengthening diagnostic capacities as part of a broader medical countermeasures approach. It reflects our shared commitment to reinforcing epidemic preparedness across Africa — from vaccines to diagnostics, from innovation to manufacturing. This action shows that, together, the African Union and the European Union can deliver tangible results to protect lives.' The launch of PAMTA builds on broader efforts by the EU and its partners to address the Mpox outbreak. By mid-2025, more than 600,000 vaccine doses had been delivered to African countries through HERA and Team Europe. Simultaneously, research initiatives such as MPX-RESPONSE and EDCTP3 continue to explore new therapeutic options, while the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative (PGI)—also funded through EU4Health—is enhancing public health laboratory networks and genomic surveillance across the continent through public private partnerships. PAMTA marks a significant milestone in EU–Africa collaboration for health resilience. By supporting comprehensive diagnostics and fostering local innovation, the initiative is helping to lay a strong foundation for Africa's long-term pandemic preparedness and response capabilities. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).
Al Etihad
3 days ago
- Al Etihad
EU urged to act on forests' faltering absorption of carbon
30 July 2025 21:19 PARIS (AFP)The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by European forests has reduced dramatically in recent years putting the EU's climate targets at risk, researchers said Wednesday, calling for urgent action to halt the which cover 40 percent of the European Union's territory, are expected to play a crucial role in efforts to meet targets for overall reductions of the bloc's emissions of planet-warming human and climate pressures, from logging to extreme weather and insect attacks, means their ability to absorb CO2 is "rapidly declining", according to an article, led by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre."Reversing the decline in European forests' ability to store carbon is essential -- and still possible -- with bold, science-based action today," said co-author Giacomo Grassi, who is a member of the UN's IPCC expert task force on greenhouse gas include rapid reductions in carbon emissions, combined with efforts to improve management to make forests more resilient to climate impacts, and comprehensive European countries still rely on periodic inventories, which cannot keep up with rapid changes to forest authors emphasise the need to better understand forest call in particular for better measuring of carbon flows between the soil, vegetation, and atmosphere, as well as improving predictions of how extreme weather will affect carbon sinks in the future. Steeper Decline The research looked at official 2024 data showing that the amount carbon absorbed by Europe's forests, ecosystems and changes to land use plummeted by around a third in the 2020 to 2022 period, compared to 2010 to authors said 2025 figures "suggest an even steeper decline"."This trend, combined with the declining climate resilience of European forests, indicates that the EU's climate targets, which rely on an increasing carbon sink, might be at risk," the authors this week another study in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment found that land accounts for a quarter of global emissions reductions in countries' climate plans and warned that a lack of funding and conservation focus was putting these in have warned that it is still unclear how carbon sinks might behave as the planet warms in future, and exactly how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide they might soak up from the atmosphere. In April, research by Climate Analytics, a policy institute that independently assesses countries' climate plans, warned that major economies are overstating how much carbon their forests can absorb in a climate accounting fudge that could allow them to use even more fossil fuels.
Al Etihad
3 days ago
- Al Etihad
US, India launch powerful Earth-monitoring satellite
30 July 2025 19:38 WASHINGTON (AFP)A formidable new radar satellite jointly developed by the United States and India launched Wednesday, designed to track subtle changes in Earth's land and ice surfaces and help predict both natural and human-caused NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), the pickup truck-sized spacecraft blasted off around 5:40 pm (1210 GMT) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India's southeastern coast, riding an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle of the event showed excited schoolchildren brought to watch the launch and mission teams erupting in cheers and anticipated by scientists, the mission has also been hailed by US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a milestone in growing cooperation between the two countries."Congratulations India!" Dr Jitendra Singh, India's science and technology minister wrote on X, calling the mission a "game changer.""Our planet surface undergoes constant and meaningful change," Karen St Germain, director of NASA's Earth Science division, told reporters ahead of launch."Some change happens slowly. Some happens abruptly. Some changes are large, while some are subtle."By picking up on tiny shifts in the vertical movement of the Earth's surface -- as little as one centimeter (0.4 inches) -- scientists will be able to detect the precursors for natural and human-caused disasters, from earthquakes, landsides and volcanoes to aging infrastructure like dams and bridges."We'll see land substance and swelling, movement, deformation and melting of mountain glaciers and ice sheets covering both Greenland and Antarctica, and of course, we'll see wildfires," added St Germain, calling NISAR "the most sophisticated radar we've ever built."India in particular is interested in studying its coastal and nearby ocean areas by tracking yearly changes in the shape of the sea floor near river deltas and how shorelines are growing or will also be used to help guide agricultural policy by mapping crop growth, tracking plant health, and monitoring soil the coming weeks, the spacecraft will begin an approximately 90-day commissioning phase, during which it will unfurl its 39-foot (12-meter) radar antenna operational, NISAR will record nearly all of Earth's land and ice twice every 12 days from an altitude of 464 miles (747 kilometers), circling the planet near the poles rather than around the it orbits, the satellite will continuously transmit microwaves and receive echoes from the the spacecraft is moving, the returning signals are distorted, but computer processing will reassemble them to produce detailed, high-resolution images. Achieving similar results with traditional radar would require an impractically large 12-mile-wide Jet Propulsion Laboratory and India's ISRO shared the workload, each building components on opposite sides of the planet before integrating and testing the spacecraft at ISRO's Satellite Integration & Testing Establishment in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. NASA's contribution came to just under $1.2 billion, while ISRO's costs were around $90 million.
