Improving the Contribution of Forests to CarbonNeutrality under Different Policies—A Case Study fromthe Hamburg Metropolitan Area

As various political initiatives have set goals to reach net-zero emissions by
the mid-21st century, forests will play an important role as a carbon sink for sequestering
unavoidable emissions. Forest management can take two approaches
by either decreasing harvest and enlarging the forest carbon stock or increasing
harvest to increase carbon uptake of the remaining forest stock and create harvested
wood products (HWPs). Currently, these two management options seem
at odds with seemingly conflicting policy directives being written. We used the
BEKLIFUH model to assess six management scenarios based on carbon offset
potential taking into consideration forest carbon, HWPs and the material and
energetic substitution effects. The results show that while conservation leads
to a higher above-ground carbon pool, including HWPs, material and energetic
substitution leads to more overall carbon offsets for management scenarios with
more timber harvesting. With compromise being possible by selectively conserving
old growth forests with a high biodiversity value. In conclusion, if the
forest sector decouples GHG reporting from forest management and includes
all the secondary effects of timber harvest, this new approach can lead to a
different cost–benefit analysis for the choice between harvest vs. conservation.
This could result in a paradigm shift to a future where biodiversity and carbon
neutrality can coexist.