President Recognizes Role of Private Forests in Climate Action Plan
Your new proposals will leverage the potential for U.S. forests and forest products to mitigate the effects of climate change through carbon sequestration and aid communities in climate preparedness by protecting critical natural resources in a changing world. America’s forests currently sequester approximately 13 percent of U.S. carbon emissions every year—representing one of the Earth’s most important net carbon sinks. However, data from the 2010 Resources Planning Assessment indicate that U.S. private forests, which provide the majority of forest carbon capture in the U.S., are at risk from development pressures and climate‐driven stressors like fire, pests, and disease.
In April of this year we delivered to you a comprehensive set of recommendations to ensure that U.S. forests, especially private forests, can continue to help reduce emissions and protect our natural resources and communities from the impacts of climate change. These recommendations included a range of actions such as improving science and inventory data, strengthening markets for forest products, enhancing tools and incentives for forest management and strategic forest conservation, promoting landscape‐scale conservation and restoration efforts, and engaging the power of urban forestry.
We applaud the proposed actions you've released today under your Climate Action Plan as strongly consistent with our recommendations, and reflective of what we have seen as effective tools and strategies for U.S. private forests. We believe your proposed policies will make important progress in keeping forests as forests as forests, addressing the climate driven stressors on forests, and growing the contribution of private forests and forest products to mitigating climate change.
We look forward to working with you to implement your proposals, and to help find additional opportunities for administrative actions that can enhance the role of U.S. forests in our nation’s climate change response.
