Germany’s forests no longer a carbon sink, now net emitters – report

Forests across Germany have become a source of carbon dioxide for the first time since records began, that’s the takeaway from a report by the agriculture ministry (BMEL). Every decade, the government publishes the "Federal Forest Inventory" to determine the state of the country’s forests. The report highlights that the dieback of pine and spruce monocultures, as well as the loss of coniferous forests due to droughts and storms, have affected the ability of forests to store carbon. The loss of living biomass due to the consequences of climate change has been greater than the increase, turning forests into carbon sources, the report reads.

Pierre Ibisch, forest expert at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, told Spektrum that the situation could be worse than the report suggests, as the data came from 2022 and forests have continued to decline since then. “The question is whether the negative trend of recent years can still be halted,” he said. German forests have lost 41.5 million tonnes of carbon since 2017, the report concluded. The results underlined "the urgent need for adaptation and restoration measures in forests to strengthen their role as climate protectors in the long term," it reads.

“As bitter as this truth is, the call for action is all the clearer: we need a radical health programme for our forests,” said Jörg-Andreas Krüger, head of environmental NGO NABU. “In view of these devastating results from the Federal Forest Inventory, it is clearer than ever that we need a strong Federal Forest Act,” said Susanne Winer, forest programme manager at WWF Germany. She added that the act “provides nationally valid specifications that we urgently need for climate and biodiversity protection.”

German forests are in a poor state, as four out of five trees of the most common species – spruce, pine, beech and oak – are damaged, said the agriculture ministry's forest condition assessment earlier this year. In recent years, German forests have been damaged heavily by droughts, bark beetle infestations, storms and forest fires.

Forests act as natural carbon sinks, playing an important role in achieving climate targets by balancing out emissions that are hard to avoid. The German climate law already prescribes annual net-negative emissions targets for the land use sector (LULUCF, which also includes other carbon sinks and sources, for example peatland) for 2030, 2040 and 2045, and the government is currently working on a long-term strategy for negative emissions. One goal of the strategy is to strengthen natural carbon sinks, including forests.