Forests and Climate Change Mitigation: A Compendium for Technical Training in African Forestry 13

Climate change and climate variability remain a global concern to many stakeholders. This is because of significant rise of temperature resulting to global warming due to increase of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). Some of the important GHGs include; Water vapour (H2O), Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitric oxide (NO2), Ozone (O3), Hydrocarbons and Chlorofluorocarbons. These gases naturally blanket the earth and keep it at about 33° C warmer than it would be without these gases in the atmosphere. They have different capacity to trap heat in the atmosphere, what is normally called global warming potential (GWP) because they are chemically stable and persist in the atmosphere over time scales ranging from decades to centuries or longer so that their emission has a long-term influence on climate. One of the long lived GHGs in the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, laying the foundation of removal by forest and trees through the process of photosynthesis. It is in this regard that in order to keep the temperature goal of 1.5 ° C, sector specific efforts towards reducing GHGs emissions are on the rise. This compendium therefore addresses the role of forests and tree resources in mitigating climate change through the process of carbon sequestration or removal carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is achieved through afforestation, reforestation, forest restoration and forest management practices. case studies from the African continent.