Gordon Hamilton
December 8, 2007

Environmental groups took their campaign to preserve Canada's boreal forest to the United Nations climate change conference in Bali today, where they unveiled a series of maps depicting the northern forests as the world's largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon.

The maps don't focus on the trees, however, but on the carbon-rich soils, peatlands and perma-frost, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the National Resources Defense Council, said in an interview from Bali.

Globally, the groups say, boreal regions house 22 per cent of all the carbon stored on the world's land surfaces.

"People have been focused on trees, mostly in the tropical forest, as a carbon sink and their utility as absorbers of carbon. What we are bringing here is a whole new note to the discussions with a focus on the northern forests as carbon storehouses," said Casey-Lefkowitz.

The groups presented their information on Canada's role as a carbon bank at the inter-governmental conference aimed at preparing for the post-2012 world, the year the Kyoto protocol expires.

Tzeporah Berman, founder of ForestEthics, described Canada's boreal forest as a carbon bank.

"It's to carbon what Fort Knox is to gold. Our forests are not only incredibly important because of their eco-systems - providing the air we breath and the water we drink -- but because they store more carbon than any other terrestrial eco-system in the world."

Berman's organization is one of several Canadian forest-focussed groups taking part in the UN Conference as non-governmental delegates.

The data on the maps has been compiled from a variety of sources to depict it in a way that makes immediate sense to people, said Steve Kallick, director of the International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

"It's never been depicted this way before," he said of the maps, available for viewing at the organization's website

The Bali conference is to set an agenda for an international agreement on carbon reduction after the Kyoto protocol expires. The North American environmental groups, under the umbrella of the International Boreal Conservation Campaign, say the role of Northern forests in storing carbon has not been adequately addressed in the protocol.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007