How Russia's forests have a key role to play in fighting global warming

Russia is the world's largest forest country, home to more than a fifth of forests globally. Photo: AFP

Russia's forests alone account for one fifth of the world's forests. Their potential to counteract the effects of climate change is therefore immense, although this could be under threat, a recent study points out.

Published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports and carried out by researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and an international team of scientists, the study took on the major challenge of establishing new estimates of biomass contained in Russian forests. A calculation has not been made since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.