Does Russia function as one of the green lungs of the planet?

A Russian island north of Japan is testing efforts to Moscow for making their precious fossil fuel production compatible with the need to do something to control the climate change.

More than two-thirds of Sakhalin Island is forested. With the go-ahead from the Kremlin, its authorities have set an ambitious goal of making the island, Russia’s largest, carbon neutral by 2025.

The idea is that the trees absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide that its half million residents and their industries produce. The Russian government in Moscow, 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) away, hopes to repeat that formula nationwide. Russia is the country with the most green areas.

“The economic structure of Sakhalin, its large amount of forests and a balanced distribution of carbon reflect the situation in Russia in general,” said Dinara Gershinkova, adviser to the governor of Sakhalin on climate and sustainable development. “The results of the Sakhalin experiment will be representative, applicable to the entire Russian Federation.”

The project reflects a stark contrast in Russia’s attitude towards climate change.

Russian President Vladimir Putin joked about global warming in 2003, saying that Russians would “spend less on fur coats and increase the grain harvest” if it continued.

Last year, however, he admitted that climate change “requires real action and a lot more attention.” He also tried to present the nation that exports the most fossil fuels as a country at the forefront of the fight against global warming.

The large wooded area of ​​the country is essential in this regard.

“By aiming to create a carbon neutral economy by 2060 at the latest, Russia relies, among other things, on the unique resource represented by the available forest ecosystems and their significant capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen” Putin said in a video speech at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow on November 2. “After all, our nation has 20% of the world’s forests.”

Scientists say that natural ways of removing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere will play a key role in fighting global warming.

Many countries present at the summit have ways of absorbing emissions to meet the goal of reaching a “net zero” by 2050. That is, emitting only the amount of greenhouse gases that they can capture, either by natural or artificial means. .

Experts believe that the mathematics behind these calculations is unreliable and can be manipulated by governments, who are interested in producing positive figures in relation to emissions.

“Russia makes an enormous contribution to the absorption of global emissions – its own and those of others – from the absorption capacity of our ecosystems,” said Viktoria Abramchenko, Deputy Prime Minister in charge of environmental issues, during a recent conference in St. Petersburg.

But Natalia Lukina, director of the Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity, says that the figures that the Russians offer are not real but rather assumptions, since “there are no precise statistics.”

One problem, to begin with, is that no one knows how many trees there are in Russian forests.

The Russian forestry agency counted them over 13 years, at a cost of US $ 142 million, but did not release the figures.

Russia’s network of broadcast monitoring stations is limited, according to Lukina.

Vadim Mamkin, a scientist who maintains one of the 11 masts that measure greenhouse gases in the Tver region, said that the carbon balance in those old forests “is generally zero”, although those figures vary by 10% from year to year. dwarf.

Forest fires, which burn millions of hectares, are another factor to take into account. Forests that stored carbon for decades suddenly become large emitters when they catch fire, nullifying all absorption, according to Sergey Bartalev, director of a laboratory that monitors boreal ecosystems at the Institute for Space Research.

These fires are becoming more frequent in Russia, partly due to climate change.

This year 13.1 million hectares were burned, an unprecedented figure, which led to the emission of 970 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, according to a calculation of the Copernicus Program of the European Union, almost double the amount registered in the last period absorption.

Fire prevention is now one of the priorities of Moscow’s strategy to reduce the amount of carbon.

Russia has said it plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, the same deadline that China and Saudi Arabia set themselves, but ten years later than that of the United States and the European Union.

Scientists say suspending additional greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is the only way to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, which seek to prevent warming above 1.5 ° C (2.7 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Failure to meet that goal would be catastrophic.

Those who doubt the commitment of the Russians will closely follow their movements.

Vasily Yablokov, director of the Energy and Climate unit of the Russian branch of Greenpeace, said he fears that Russia “adjusts its estimates to its needs.”

One factor that prompts Russia to present low emissions estimates is the prospect of an emissions-related fee being charged on imports from countries believed to be not doing enough to contain climate change.

“Unfortunately, the role of forests is overestimated,” said Alexey Kokorin, director of WWF-Russia’s climate and energy program.