British Columbia’s government has failed to transparently show how it calculates carbon in the province’s forests — numbers critical when officials decide to boost or lower logging and reforestation levels.
In a statement Tuesday, the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia released the results of its investigation into the Ministry of Forest’s forest carbon projections.
Those projections are used to understand how the ministry’s management decisions might impact how much carbon remains stored in the forest and how much is released into the atmosphere.
The analysis uses modelling to estimate how activities like tree planting and harvesting trees could affect the overall balance of carbon in the forest.
But according to the auditor general’s findings, the ministry did not use a “defined methodology” when it calculated the carbon impact of forest investments — including reforestation and fertilization projects.
Carbon projections are also used to decide how much annual allowable cut is approved. However, the audit found the ministry used a methodology that “wasn’t specific enough to allow review or replication.”
Acting Auditor General Sheila Dodds said that replication was “essential to the quality of the measurements and builds confidence in the projections."
"A defined methodology for carbon modelling that outlines what's measured — and how those measurements are done — is critical to ensuring forest carbon projections can be reviewed and replicated," she said in a written statement.
Ministry calculations looking at the benefit forest investment projects had on carbon stores “weren’t sufficiently documented,” found the report.
“Despite the uncertainty regarding the quality of its projections, the ministry publicly and annually reported the carbon benefit from the Forest Investment Program,” concluded the audit.
Dodds said the ministry had accepted the audit’s two recommendations to define and approve methodologies to calculate forest carbon projections.
"We were encouraged to see that near the end of 2024, the ministry finalized guidance for calculating consistent and transparent carbon projections to inform its new forest landscape plans," she said.
Torrance Coste, associate director of the B.C. Wilderness Committee, said he was not surprised with the results of the audit.
“We’ve pushed them,” said Coste. “We’ve said, What about forest emissions? And you get a look like you’re talking about the launch of the B.C. space program.”
Across the world, forests absorb an estimated of carbon dioxide every year. But logging, wildfires and city building threaten that carbon sink.
In B.C., greenhouse gasses from logging and forest management are reported but not counted as part of the province’s total output of carbon emissions.
Since 2004, the forestry sector flipped from a net carbon sink, so that by 2018, the industry released more than half the annual emissions currently being counted in the province, according to public data.
“It makes logging the largest single source of carbon by a long shot,” said Coste.
A similar pattern has played out Canada, where logging and wildfires have combined to make forests a net source of carbon since 2001, according to the federal government. But critics say the government has failed to account for millions of tonnes of emissions produced from the logging industry.
A March 2023 from Canada’s Commissioner on Environment and Sustainable Development found the federal government had failed to properly account for emissions from the country’s forestry sector. Among several recommendations, commissioner Jerry DeMarco said the federal government “did not provide a clear and complete picture” of greenhouse gases from forestry and called for an independent expert review to assess any gaps.
Another federal audit called out two ministries — Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada — for failing to follow through on those recommendations and still not properly reporting logging emissions.
The commissioner’s criticisms line up with a September 2024 from Nature Canada that concluded Canada's net logging emissions hit 147 megatonnes in 2022.
That would make the industry the third-highest emitting sector of the Canadian economy, with only the oil and gas sector’s 217 megatonnes and transport sector’s 156 megatonnes reaching larger totals.
