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PARKS AND TRIBES

HOW MUCH CARBON / CO2 DOES THE AMAZON RAINFOREST ABSORB?

Why your National Park Visit offsets your Amazon Rainforest Carbon Emissions

A carbon offset credit is a service that tries to reduce the net carbon emissions of people or organizations by compensating their carbon emissions with measures for absorbing greenhouse gases. A wide variety of offset actions are available; forest planting is the most common, as the new trees very gradually absorb CO₂ from the air and convert it to carbon in their trunks. 

But worldwide, far more CO₂ gets blasted into the atmosphere from virgin forests being cut down. One of the most effective ways of preventing forests from being cut down is protecting them as national parks and nature reserves. But in order to do so, these forests must produce at least some economic benefits.

How much Carbon / CO2 Does the Amazon Rainforest Absorb?

The question how much carbon  / CO2 does the Amazon Rainforest Absorb always fascinated me. The reason is that in mature forests, as the few young trees grow, they absorb CO2, right? But in a mature forest, there are not all that many young trees under those mature big trees. Of course, the mature trees also absorb carbon, in fact, a lot! But then, one day, a huge mature tree dies, or old age or because of a strong wind. There it is, on the ground. A feast for all sorts of insects, bacteria and fungi. Particularly fungi. They break down the wood, and guess what, transforming it into CO2. So, all that absorbed carbon in that tree becomes CO2 again. The balance? The Amazon rainforest does not absorb CO2! But when it gets cut down for whatever purpose, all the carbon absorbed in the trees of the Amazon rainforest, gets released into the air. So by visiting the Amazon rainforest or any other forest, you help protecting them and contribute to keeping the carbon in the forests.

Continuation of the current theme

So, lets do some calculations. Assume a tropical forest has about 175 metric tons of Carbon in its trees. The carbon is fixed in the tree trunks, leaves and roots. So, if a hectare of forest gets deforested, the wood may first be used to build houses, furniture or produce paper, but eventually, it will either rot away or be burned and eventually all the carbon of that forest will be converted into CO₂. The mass of CO₂ is more than 3 times more than that of Carbon, so the 175 tons of carbon will produce more that 500 tons of CO₂.

Now, we only believe in durable avoidance of the emission of CO₂, if the emission avoidance of carbon dioxide is really permanent. So in our opinion, you can only permanently avoid the emission of CO₂ into the air, if you set up an endowment fund that would generate the capital interest from which management costs can be financed permanently. Assuming a 7% return from the endowment fund, it would take about $2,700,000 to prevent 500,000 tons of CO₂ to be released into the air, which is about $5 per ton. That is about as much as for the short-term fixation of Carbon through forest plantations, whereas Carbon dioxide emission avoidance through and Adopt-A-Ranger-Endowment fund would be permanent! 

If you come from the USA, your contribution to the CO₂ emission from your flight will probably have been about 8000 kg CO₂ per person; coming from Europe it will have been around 13,000 kg CO₂; averaging somewhere around 10,000kg. The total release of CO₂ from the jungle of Cuyabeno would be about 500 * 6,000,000 (ha) = 3,000,000,000 kg CO₂. Given the fact that ecotourism has rescued Cuyabeno by going there and spending their tourism dollars/euros to see the reserve. As the average amount of CO₂ production from flights to Ecuador has been about 10,000 kg, one may argue that the first 300,000 visitors to Cuyabeno may consider their flight fully compensated by visiting Cuyabeno. Under the current level of visitation that will allow for somewhere between 15 - 20 more years of AMAZON RAINFOREST CARBON EMISSIONS OFFSET and other forested national parks. This does not apply as much for Savannahs - which only have 5 - 15% forest cover - and other protected areas with limited forest cover such as Galapagos National Park and desert protected areas.

You think this is not enough?

One of our shareholders is an expert on Rainforest CO₂ emissions offset contracted by international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations and he has written this page because this is his professional opinion. But of course you are always free to buy additional Carbon credits, in which case we recommend: https://www.adopt-a-ranger.org.

HOW MUCH CARBON / CO2 DOES THE AMAZON RAINFOREST ABSORB?