A forest the size of Mexico could store twice as much carbon as was thought. That makes its conservation even more valuable

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It was called the largest mammal migration in the world. From October to December, until 10 million Straw -up fruit bats move from all over Africa and gather over a swamps forest in the National Park, at the heart of Mombo forests in Zambia.

They leave in January, and many other sites inside the vast dry Miombo forest surrounding the garden-which provide these bats for the year and abundant supplies of fruit

It extends from the northern tips from Tanzania, to the coastal Angola in the West, to the south of Mozambique, covering Miombo 1.9 million square kilometers (734,000 square miles): An area for the size of Mexico.

It is believed to provide more basic livelihoods and resources 300 million peopleIn addition to maintaining a lot of the most famous megavow in Africa, including some of the largest continent Elephant residents.

Despite its importance, Miombo witnessed a decrease in the forest cover of Almost a third Between 1980 and 2020, modern research has shed light on its ability to store carbon, which may mean that the restoration of forests has more economic value than reducing it.

Carbon

The first of the type Ticket It was published in July 2024 that Miombo may be more detained than carbon twice above the ground as it was previously thought. This difference is an additional 3.7 billion metric tons of carbon stored across the entire forest – more than that It is emitted by China in 2023.

Professor Matthias Disney, from the University of College London, who co -authored the paper, explains that the excessive relationship between the diameter of the trunk and the mass of trees (which the carbon is a fixed percentage) used in previous estimates, “a kind of motivation behind everything we know about carbon and forests around the world.”

Instead, this new study predicted the vital bloc above the Earth in Mombo using a more advanced method: Lidar (detection of light and range). As far as Sonar depends on the sound pulses, and radar on radio pulses, Lidar wins a 3D map by launching thousands of laser pulses per second in an object and recording reflected signals.

The team has deployed photography technology from Earth, from drones and helicopters, more than 500 square areas in the forest in Mozambique. Then they used their data to create the finest 3D representation of the forests so far and settled to estimate the entire carbon carbon via the entire Miombo.

Maintaining this number precisely is very important. Article 6 of 2015 Paris on climate change He says that the two countries are gaining “carbon credits” based on performance, for emissions. Countries that can sell excessive carbon credits excessive to companies that want to compensate for their emissions, or countries that are less than performance, which also allows them to achieve their goals.

Regarding Miombo, although “nothing has changed on the ground … if you double the amount of carbon that are stored through these forests … the value of the dollar has multiplied mainly overnight,” says Disney. This means doubling the financial incentive for the countries of South Africa to protect and restore Miombo, but also doubling the financial cost to reduce it.

Restoration Alliance

the Momooo -Return AllianceCooperation was formed between 11 South African countries, conservative organizations, and Trafigura – a global commodity trading group – in September 2024. Trafigura funds $ 500 million for the plan to finance forest restoration projects, allowing the sale of carbon removal balances under Article 6.

“In the carbon world, everything flows from politics, everything flows from the organization,” says Hana Haumin, head of carbon trading in Trafforra. While adhering to governments to finance and enforce the most striking environmental organization, it says that the coalition has the ability to become “the largest initiative to remove naturally based on this planet.”

The first experimental plan for Miombo Alliance was announced in November 2024 at the Cop29 Climate Conference in Azerbaijan. It focuses on enhancing the use of sustainable lands among local communities in the Gorongosa region in Mozambique, with the aim of searching for the regional capabilities to remove carbon through this.

However, carbon compensation under the Paris Agreement is controversial.

Rachel Rose Jackson, Director of Climate Research and Politics, says companies-a non-profit monitoring that challenges across patriotism companies in moral practices-Article 6 is often “a pollution allowance rather than actual reducing emissions.” She says that the countries and companies that pollute them greatly can continue to do so, by pushing people elsewhere to compensate for their emissions.

Jackson points to 2023 Ticket Of the 2000 displacement projects, it was found that only 12 % of existing credits already constitute any real discounts of emissions. She says the carbon trading market “is full of gaps, it is full of weakness, and in general, it does not work at all.”

Although Jackson explains that it does not criticize the Mombo restoration alliance specifically, it says that governments should be transmitted away from “dangerous deviations such as displacement and carbon markets” and instead focus on maintaining fossil fuels on Earth.

“More than carbon”

For Disney, “forests are more than carbon”. He explains that preserving carbon closed in the forests is very important from the climate perspective, as it “says nothing about biological diversity”, nor about “food, resources, shelter, beauty and health benefits for people.”

Edwin Tambara, director of global leadership at the African Wildlife Corporation, says that, compared to rainforests like Amazon and the Congo basin, dry forests such as Miombo are systematically strengthened and lacking.

Thinking about his own childhood, which arose surrounded by Al -Momoobo in Zimbabwe, Tambara says, “We have relied on the ecosystem in terms of every aspect of our lives.”

He explains that his community depends on the forest of the building materials that are resistant to termites, food supplies, and even dental treatment medications. 2016 Ticket Such provisions are estimated to live in the countryside via MIOMBO – and geographically interfering – MPANE Woodlands – at $ 9 billion per year.

“The Africans who have memorization are important and the Africans that lead to preservation,” says Tambara. However, he insists that maintaining Miombo in the long run should protect the locals and the biological diversity that depends on it, as well as the carbon that it imprisons.

For example, the 2016 project describes where African Wildlife Foundation The cane group provided drought resistance to farmers with small holders in the Kilomberu area of ​​Tanzania, an important area for sugar production. Farmers who receive the new diversity have witnessed a 70 % increase in sugar cane revenues, significantly reduced the need to remove the forests surrounding Al -Mombo to expand their agricultural conspiracies.

He remembers about the “traditional rules” when he was small, and dictates which plants that can be collected and that must be preserved-later realistic rules realized the deep local understanding of both scarcity and societal importance of different types.

“Societies that live day after day in these forests … they have a lot of original knowledge that we need to benefit from in terms of the best way to preserve them (forests),” Tambara added.

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