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Background: The European Union (EU) has committed to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. This requires a rapid reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and ensuring that any remaining emissions are balanced through CO2 removals. Forests play a crucial role in this plan: they are currently the main option for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and additionally, wood use can store carbon durably and help reduce fossil emissions. To stop and reverse the decline of the forest carbon sink, the EU has recently revised the regulation on land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), and set a target of − 310 Mt CO2e net removals for the LULUCF sector in 2030. Results: In this study, we clarify the role of common concepts in forest management – net annual increment, harvest and mortality – in determining the forest sink. We then evaluate to what extent the forest sink is on track to meet the climate goals of the EU. For this assessment we use data from the latest national GHG inventories and a forest model (Carbon Budget Model). Our findings indicate that on the EU level, the recent decrease in increment and the increase in harvest and mortality are causing a rapid drop in the forest sink. Furthermore, continuing the past forest management practices is projected to further decrease the sink. Finally, we discuss options for enhancing the sinks through forest management while taking into account adaptation and resilience. Conclusions: Our findings show that the EU forest sink is quickly developing away from the EU climate targets. Stopping and reversing this trend requires rapid implementation of climate-smart forest management, with improved and more timely monitoring of GHG fluxes. This enhancement is crucial for tracking progress towards the EU's climate targets, where the role of forests has become – and is expected to remain – more prominent than ever before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The contribution of EU forests to climate change mitigation in 2021–2025 is assessed through the Forest Reference Levels (FRLs). The FRL is a projected country-level benchmark of net greenhouse gas emissions against which the future net emissions will be compared. The FRL models the hypothetical development of EU forest carbon sink if the historical management practices were continued, taking into account age dynamics. The Member States' FRLs have been recently adopted by the European Commission with the delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/268 amending the Regulation (EU) 2018/841. Considering the complexity of interactions between forest growth, management and carbon fluxes, there is a need to understand uncertainties linked to the FRL determination. Results: We assessed the methodologies behind the modelled FRLs and evaluated the foreseen impact of continuation of management practices and age dynamics on the near-future EU27 + UK forest carbon sink. Most of the countries implemented robust modelling approaches for simulating management practices and age dynamics within the FRL framework, but faced several challenges in ensuring consistency with historical estimates. We discuss that the projected 16% increase in harvest in 2021–2025 compared to 2000–2009, mostly attributed to age dynamics, is associated to a decline of 18% of forest sink (26% for living biomass only). Conclusions: We conclude that the FRL exercise was challenging but improved the modelling capacity and data availability at country scale. The present study contributes to increase the transparency of the implementation of forest-related EU policies and provides evidence-based support to future policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2018, the European Union (EU) adopted Regulation 2018/841, which sets the accounting rules for the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector for the period 2021–2030. This regulation is part of the EU's commitments to comply with the Paris Agreement. According to the new regulation, emissions and removals for managed forest land are to be accounted against a projected forest reference level (FRL) that is estimated by each EU Member State based on the continuation of forest management practices of the reference period 2000–2009. The aim of this study is to assess how different modelling assumptions possible under the regulation may influence the FRL estimates. Applying the interlinked G4M and WoodCarbonMonitor modelling frameworks, we estimate potential FRLs for each individual EU Member State following a set of conceptual scenarios, each reflecting different modelling assumptions that are consistent with the regulation and the technical guidance document published by the European Commission. Results: The simulations of the conceptual scenarios show that differences in the underlying modelling assumptions may have a large impact on the projected FRL. Depending on the assumptions taken, the projected annual carbon sink on managed forest land in the EU varies from −319 MtCO2 to −397 MtCO2 during the first compliance period (2021–2025) and from −296 MtCO2 to −376 MtCO2 during the second compliance period (i.e. 2026–2030). These estimates can be compared with the 2017 national GHG inventories which estimated that the forest carbon sink for managed forest land was −373 MtCO2 in 2015. On an aggregated EU level, the assumptions related to climate change and the allocation of forest management practices have the largest impacts on the FRL estimates. On the other hand, assumptions concerning the starting year of the projection, stratification of managed forest land, and timing of individual management activities are found to have relatively small impacts on the FRL estimates. Conclusions: We provide a first assessment of the level of uncertainty associated with the different assumptions discussed in the technical guidance document and the LULUCF regulation, and the impact of these assumptions on the country-specific FRL. The results highlight the importance of transparent documentation by the EU Member States on how their FRL has been calculated, and on the underlying assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]