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The Demonization of Forest Plantations in the Climate Change Law

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Marcos Tricallotis Campaña, PhD, Regional Councilor of the Valparaíso Region and Vice President of the Environment, Natural Heritage, and Climate Change Commission.

On June 13 of this year, the current administration of President Gabriel Boric published the long-awaited Framework Law on Climate Change No. 21,455. A law as anticipated as it is necessary, given that greenhouse gas emissions have done nothing but increase in the country, alongside economic and material progress, surpassing 87 million tons of CO2 equivalent as early as 2010, according to a 2017 study by ECLAC.
The law establishes important management instruments through the Long-Term Climate Strategy, much of which had already been anticipated in 2017 with the launch of the National Strategy on Climate Change and Vegetation Resources by CONAF and the Ministry of Agriculture. In this strategy, projected for the 2017-2025 period, sustainable forest management and the reforestation of 100,000 hectares by 2030—primarily with native species—were fundamental pillars.
Unfortunately, Law No. 21,455 systematically strives to ignore both scientific evidence and the recommendations of international organizations that those currently in government claim to heed. Thus, Article 3 states that "under no circumstances shall monoculture activities be considered climate refuges," effectively denying the role of carbon sinks and climate regulators that forest plantations also play worldwide. This is further reinforced in Article 4, which, regarding "levels of absorption, storage, and sequestration of greenhouse gases," mandates guidelines for ecosystem conservation, ecological restoration, afforestation, and reforestation with native species, among other actions, but specifies that "the guidelines shall not incentivize the planting of forest monocultures." Just as you read it.
If those in the current administration were not so ideologically driven and dismissive of scientific evidence, they would not have allowed such absurdities in the Climate Change Law. While it is known that forest plantation monocultures hardly match the biodiversity and carbon sequestration levels of native forests, they do play a tremendous role in combating climate change.
First, forest plantations "relieve pressure" on native forests by preventing indiscriminate exploitation, precisely because these "evil" monocultures grow quickly. Without plantations, native forests would be nearly wiped out to meet the growing demand for sustainable wooden housing and cellulose fiber, expected to triple by 2050. The regeneration of native forests would take decades to sustain such harvesting—given current needs. It is no coincidence that of Chile’s 17 million hectares of forests, 14 million are native forests and no more than 3 million are forest plantations.
Second, the importance of forest plantations has only grown, as managed forests are an additional strategy against climate change. This has already been recognized by the Conference of the Parties (COP) in the Kyoto Protocol, Article 3, Paragraph 4, since its first enforcement period (2008-2012). The article allows countries to choose any type of forest management, plantation management, grazing lands, and revegetation activities to meet emission reduction commitments.
In Chile’s case, it is estimated that the forest subsidy system under Decree Law No. 701 of 1974 and its subsequent amendment through Law No. 19,561 of 1998 has, according to ODEPA studies, sequestered over 44.5 million tons of atmospheric carbon, which is an integral part of forest biomass. While native forests can sequester significantly more carbon, the data above shows that forest plantations do play a crucial role as carbon sinks: they grow rapidly, sequestering carbon in their biomass, protect carbon stocks in unharvested forests, and when harvested, continue storing carbon in the various wood products they become.
Unfortunately, despite all the environmental goods and services forest plantations provide, it must be noted that their biomass has only declined, particularly since the massive wildfires of 2017. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of planted forests, mainly in the O’Higgins and Maule regions, have not been reforested due to the absence of forest subsidy benefits. Many of these were small and medium landowners. A shame, as INFOR estimates suggest we could expand plantation forests on eroded lands by about 2.5 million hectares, with all the environmental, social, and economic benefits this would bring to such landowners. Instead, since a certain radical environmentalist discourse has established as absolute truth that only native forests—important but slow-growing—can mitigate climate change, it has been very difficult to shift the mindset of the average politician, who, in their ignorance, echoes these scientifically weak ideologies.
It is time to act pragmatically in the fight against climate change, stop demonizing forest plantations, and use them to mitigate the effects of the environmental crisis.