For years, the feds have portrayed forestry as carbon-neutral, neglecting any role industrial logging plays in driving climate change. In fact, it has portrayed forestry as a climate solution, and funneled millions of dollars of subsidies to the sector to expand wood harvesting and use.

In this year’s National GHG Inventory, Canada reports that GHG emissions associated with logging ranged from 25 to 85 million tonnes (Mt) a year between 2005 and 2022, comparable in some years to high-emitting sectors like agriculture, buildings and heavy industry.

(The government’s numbers are likely low-balled: a recent study found that the government is understating actual GHG emissions from forestry by as much as 100 Mt a year due to biased accounting of emissions and removals from natural disturbances.)

Based on its new GHG Inventory, the federal government should reconsider the assumed climate benefits of subsidies to the logging sector, and instead redirect or reform subsidy programs to ensure that they support the transition to truly low-carbon forest management approaches.

Read the Hill Times article by Nature Canada’s Michael Polanyi →

“In its recent greenhouse gas report to the United Nations, the federal government quietly corrected its long-standing portrait of forestry as a carbon-neutral industry, showing the sector is, in fact, a source of climate pollution. Now, the government needs to translate [this] finding into a new set of policies focused on reducing logging’s role in driving the climate crisis.”
— Michael Polanyi, Policy and Campaign Manager at Nature Canada

Take Action

Tell your MP there’s no place for climate polluters to hide in Canada!

Ask your MP to join the call for a clear report on greenhouse gas emissions from logging and an immediate strategy to reduce emissions and protect old-growth forests. Send the letter now!

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