Pep Canadell
Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project and Senior Research Fellow at the CSIRO Climate Science Centre in Canberra, Australia
The study further underlines that over-reliance on the use of vegetation and soils as a primary strategy for climate change mitigation will not solve the climate crisis.
Plants appear to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than we previously thought, but the study shows that carbon is recycled through vegetation and soils more rapidly than we thought.
Emphasis should be placed on reducing the sources of carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion and use and deforestation. Using strategies to increase the amount of carbon in landscapes is part of the solution, but it will be a small contribution compared to the large effort needed to reduce emissions.