Accounting for all territorial emissions and sinks is important for development of climate mitigation policies

Abstract

The Paris agreement identifies the importance of the conservation, or better, increase of the land carbon sink. In this respect, the mitigation policies of many forest rich countries rely heavily on products from forests as well as on the land sink. Here we demonstrate that Sweden’s land sink, which is critical in order to achieve zero net emissions by 2045 and negative emissions thereafter, is reduced to less than half when accounting for emissions from wetlands, lakes and running waters. This should have implications for the development of Sweden’s mitigation policy. National as well as the emerging global inventory of sources and sinks need to consider the entire territory to allow accurate guidance of future mitigation of climate change.