Reacción a "The decline of European forests in their role in combating climate change is analyzed"

The work is a review of the recent "state of the art" in assessing the carbon storage capacity of European forests. It is of very high quality and contains high-quality information. It will very likely become a bibliographic reference that scientists will draw on in future studies.

The work shows that the confidence that policymakers place in the belief that a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions do not need to be reduced thanks to the free service provided by forests may remain a wishful thinking that cannot be relied upon. It shows that in recent decades, European forests, for various reasons, are not absorbing as much carbon as previously thought. This issue has already been questioned by various researchers since the question was first raised, while more traditional sectors of forest management saw in this possibility an opportunity to draw attention to the work being done to maintain these forest stands. It is not a question of deciding before having the data whether one approach or another is correct. Precisely what this work is saying is that over time these issues can evolve in one direction or another.

Forests allowing carbon to be stored in their biomass or in their forest soils can never be the solution, in and of themselves. They can serve to "buy time" while technological solutions are found. The problem has arisen (and continues to arise) from the technological development that has created the most recent society (a society of well-being, at least for some). It therefore seems reasonable that the solution must also come from a new carbon capture technology that reduces the intensity of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Since this will not happen within 24 hours, 30 years, or 50 years, it also seems reasonable that while the real emissions emitted by current technologies are urgently reduced, the management of natural sinks (forests, soils, etc.) will help prevent current society from collapsing. I want to point out that this last paragraph is a reflection not included in the article, but it seems to me a logical consequence of the paper's conclusions.

Placing expectations of achieving the long-awaited climate neutrality on the work done by European forests is nothing short of fallacious. Forests can help, but they shouldn't be assigned amounts to compile carbon balances; they're used to buy time. Not for anything else.

[Regarding possible limitations] From my perspective, there is a very important limitation that is mentioned in the paper, but I believe it has little relevance. Forest ownership, at least in Spain, mostly falls into private hands. The well-identified shortcomings in forest management will not be resolved by the owners without economic benefits.

Another important issue is that most of the proposals arise from the Central European forestry context, where issues such as the importance of elements for observing forest resources or forest carbon sink models are given priority. I will not fail to recognize this importance, but in the Mediterranean world—conditions toward which much of Central Europe, which still enjoys quite favorable conditions, is moving—there is still a lack of basic information regarding the growth of different species, the role of biodiversity in these forest systems, and, especially, the impact on soil carbon produced by changes derived from forest management.