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4.7 Forestry and the Carbon Cycle
Authors: J Ford-RobertsonPublication: NZIF Forestry Handbook, Volume Section 4 – Forests and the environment, pp 7, Dec 2023
Publisher: New Zealand Institute of Forestry
Abstract: he Third Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides clear evidence that the earth’s climate system has changed since pre-industrial times, and that most of the warming over the last 50 years has been caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. It reports that warming is expected to continue over the next 100 years, with an increase in average temperature of between 1.4 and 5.8˚C. This is between two and ten times larger than the warming observed in the 20th century, and could be higher than any estimated in the past 10,000 years. Human actions will affect whether and when these projections are realised. Human responses include two international agreements directly addressing the threat of climate change. New Zealand is a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and ratified its subsidiary agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, in December 2002. The Protocol was expected to come into force internationally in 2003, following ratification by Russia, but this has yet to occur.