Visualizing the State of Climate Change

The recent influx of wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes serves as a warning sign of the impact of climate change.

In order to identify ways to mitigate the crisis, it’s important to understand the historical drivers and current state of climate change.

This infographic sponsored by the National Public Utilities Council (NPUC) explores how human activities have influenced the climate crisis and how decarbonizing the power sector can help.

The Human Drivers of Climate Change

Global warming, the phenomenon driving climate change, is a result of increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

GHGs in the atmosphere increase the Earth’s temperature through the greenhouse effect. This refers to the natural warming of the Earth that occurs when GHGs trap the sun’s heat.

Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities like energy generation and consumption from fossil fuels have accelerated GHG emissions and the greenhouse effect. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is now nearly 415 parts per million (ppm), up from around 280 ppm prior to the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the Earth is warming faster.

For a better understanding of how humans have contributed to the crisis, here’s a look at historical CO₂ emissions by sector:

Electricity and heat by far accounts for the largest share of emissions since 1990. This is because of the dominance of fossil fuels in our energy mix over the last few decades.

The transport sector is the second-largest contributor largely due to the reliance on internal combustion engines, oil-fired ships, and other fossil fuel products like jet fuel.

Limiting the temperature rise and ultimately the impacts of climate change will require emissions reductions across all sectors, starting with electricity generation.

How Decarbonizing the Power Sector Can Help

A decarbonized energy system with clean electricity generation is an essential building block for the road to net-zero emissions.

There are two factors that emphasize the importance of a clean power sector. First, all sectors of the modern economy rely on electricity for daily functions. If this electricity comes from clean sources, it can help reduce the consumer’s carbon footprint. Second, global power demand is charging up with the electrification of sectors like transport and industry. As a result, supplying clean electricity will be more important than ever.

In Part 2 of the Road to Net Zero series, we will explore pathways to decarbonize the U.S. economy, beginning with the power sector.

Global Deforestation and Forest Growth over 30 Years

This was originally published on December 29, 2021, on Visual Capitalist.

Forests are the great carbon capturers of our planet, and they are a key source of wildlife habitats and vital resources for people around the world.

But deforestation is threatening this natural infrastructure, releasing carbon into the atmosphere while simultaneously reducing wildlife diversity and making our environment more susceptible to environmental disasters.

This graphic looks at global deforestation and forest growth over the past 30 years, mapping out the net forest change by country and region using data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The State of Deforestation by Region

Today, forests make up around 31% of the Earth’s total land area, spanning 15.68 million square miles (40.6 million km²). Over the past three decades, the world lost a bit more than 4% (685,300 square miles) of its forests, which equates to an area about half the size of India.

Europe and Asia were the only two regions which had significant overall forest growth during this time period, while Oceania saw no significant change and North and Central America saw a slight reduction.

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization

Africa along with South America and the Caribbean were the regions with the greatest amount of net forest loss, both losing more than 13% of their forests over the past 30 years. This is largely because these two regions have large amounts of forest area available, with the underlying land in high demand for agriculture and cattle-raising.

Although the overall forest loss around the world is massive, the rate of forest loss has slowed down over the past three decades. While an average of 30,116 square miles were lost each year between 1990 to 2000, between 2010 to 2020 that number has dropped to 18,146 square miles, showing that the rate of overall loss has fallen by almost 40%.

The Countries and Drivers of Deforestation and Forest Growth

Despite an overall slowing down of forest loss, certain countries in South America along with the entirety of Africa are still showing an increase in the rate of forest loss. It’s in these regions where most of the countries with the largest reduction in forest area are located:

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization

Brazil, home to most of the Amazon rainforest, saw 356,287 square miles of net forest loss, largely fueled by farmers using the land to raise cattle for beef. It’s estimated that 80% of the deforested land area of the Amazon has been replaced with pastures, with the resulting beef production known to be among the worst meats for the environment in terms of carbon emissions.

The other great driver of deforestation is seed and palm oil agriculture. These oils account for about 20% of the world’s deforestation carbon emissions, and their production concentrated in Indonesia and Malaysia is now expanding to other Asian countries along with Africa.

While the demand for beef and palm oils drives deforestation, initiatives like the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) are providing incentives to protect forest land.

Select countries in the European Union along with the United Kingdom and South Korea have committed $494.7 million to six central African nations (Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo) for them to preserve their forests and pursue low emission pathways for sustainable development. The initiative has seen $202 million transferred thus far and an anticipated reduction of 75 million tons of CO₂ emissions.

Forests and the Climate Crisis

It’s estimated that forests absorb around 30% of the world’s carbon emissions each year, making them the greatest and most important carbon sinks we have on land. When you pair this with the fact that deforestation contributes around 12% of annual greenhouse gas emissions, the importance of forest preservation becomes even more clear.

But we often forget how much forests protect our environment by acting as natural buffers against extreme weather. Forests increase and ensure rainfall security, making nearby land areas significantly less susceptible to wildfires and natural droughts in hot and dry seasons along with flooding and landslides in wet seasons.

With every dollar invested in landscape restoration yielding up to $30 in benefits, reducing deforestation and investing in reforestation is considered an effective way to reduce the difficulty and costs of meeting climate and environmental protection goals. This is without even considering the benefits of maintaining the world’s largest wildlife habitat and source of species diversity, the home of the nearly 70 million indigenous people who live in forests, and the livelihood of 1.6 billion people who rely on forests every day.

Preserving and Regrowing Forests for the Future

Despite the short-term acceleration in forest loss seen in 2020, there have been positive signs about forest regrowth coming to light. A recent study found that previously deforested land can recuperate its soil fertility in about a decade, and layered plants, trees, and species diversity can recover in around 25-60 years.

Along with this, in some instances these regrowing “secondary forests” can absorb more carbon dioxide than “primary forests”, giving hope that a global reforestation effort can absorb more emissions than previously thought possible.

From better financial incentives for local farmers and ranchers to preserve forest area to larger scale policies and initiatives like CAFI, curbing deforestation and promoting reforestation requires a global effort. Reversing forest loss in the coming decades is a daunting but necessary step towards stabilizing the climate and preserving the environment that billions of animals and people rely on.