UNESCO World Heritage forests
- October 29, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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UNESCO World Heritage forests
Subject – Environment
Context – UNESCO World Heritage forests: India’s Sundarbans among 5 sites with highest ‘blue carbon’ globally
Concept –
- India’s Sundarbans National Park is among five sites that have the highest blue carbon stocks globally, according to a new assessment of greenhouse gas volumes emitted from and absorbed by forests in UNESCO World Heritage sites.
- Also, such ‘World Heritage forests’ are now releasing more carbon than they are absorbing, primarily due to human activity and climate change, according to the assessment.
- Researchers at UNESCO, the World Resources Institute and the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimated the gross and net carbon absorbed and emitted by UNESCO World Heritage forests between 2001 and 2020.
- They found that UNESCO World Heritage forests in 257 sites absorbed approximately 190 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere each year.
- This figure, according to the study, was comparable to roughly half the United Kingdom’s annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
- World Heritage forests also stored substantial amounts of carbon in addition to absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere.
- The study described blue carbon as organic carbon that is mainly obtained from decaying plant leaves, wood, roots and animals. It is captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems.
- Unesco lists 50 sites across the globe for their unique marine values. These represent just one per cent of the global ocean area. But they comprise at least 15 per cent of global blue carbon assets.
- These 50 sites have carbon stores estimated at 1.4 Gigatonne Carbon (Gt C). The Sundarbans National Park has stores of 60 million tonnes of carbon (Mt C).
- The other four sites besides the Sundarbans National Park in India are the Bangladeshi portion of the Sundarbans (110 Mt C), Great Barrier Reef in Australia (502 Mt C), Everglades National Park in the United States (400 Mt C) and the Banc d’Arguin National Park in Mauritania (110 Mt C).
Worrying scenario
- The researchers found that 10 of 257 forests emitted more carbon than they captured between 2001 and 2020 due to different anthropogenic disturbances and pressures.
- The 10 sites are:
- Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra (Indonesia)
- Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve (Honduras)
- Yosemite National Park (US)
- Waterton Glacier International Peace Park (Canada, US)
- Barberton Makhonjwa Mountains (South Africa)
- Kinabalu Park (Malaysia)
- UvsNuur Basin (Russian Federation, Mongolia)
- Grand Canyon National Park (US)
- Greater Blue Mountains Area (Australia)
- MorneTrois Pitons National Park (Dominica).
Blue Carbon already covered September DPN
It came in Prelims 2021 on 10th Oct, 2021