What is Canada's pathway to limit global warming to 1.5°C?
LULUCF
Canada's LULUCF Sector
Canada’s forests have been reported as a net carbon source since the 1990s.1 The 2024 National Inventory Report (NIR) used improved historical data for the forest sector, showing that earlier reports had overestimated the size of the forest sink. These revisions shifted the sector from a net carbon sink to a net carbon source across the entire historical inventory period. The largest contributor to these emissions is forest harvesting and the production of harvested wood products, which peaked at about 150 MtCO2e in 2005, driven by high market demand and salvage logging in response to the mountain pine beetle outbreak.2 Since then, harvest rates have stabilised and emissions have gradually declined to around 130 MtCO2e in 2022, while a growing share of managed forest land has returned to acting as a carbon sink.3 Other sources include forest conversion to other land uses, peat extraction, and emissions from flooded lands, particularly from the creation of hydroelectric reservoirs.
In recent years, emissions from the land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector have continued to fluctuate in response to human activities and natural disturbances. The sector was reported as a net source of 51 MtCO2e in 2022 – an unusually high level driven by drought conditions in Western Canada that reduced soil carbon storage.4 Although the historical time series shown here ends in 2022, Canada’s most recent NIR indicates that emissions fell to 4.2 MtCO2e in 2023, underscoring the sector’s strong year-to-year variability.5
Canada's LULUCF emissions
MtCO₂ / year
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Graph description
Historical CO2 emissions 1990-2020 for the land-use sector are taken from the country's First Biennial Transparency Report where available, and otherwise from Grassi et al (2022): Carbon fluxes from land 2000–2020: bringing clarity to countries' reporting. Future emissions, covering the period 2025-2070, follow a 1.5°C-compatible pathway downscaled to the national level. Positive values represent emissions from deforestation, harvesting, and soil respiration, while negative values reflect CO₂ removals through afforestation and reforestation.
Methodology
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1.5ºC aligned LULUCF pathways
All 1.5ºC-aligned pathways analysed here show that Canada’s LULUCF sector will continue to act as a net source of emissions – which matches current reports in Canada’s inventory. However, recent years have shown greater variability and more intense natural disturbances than previous projections, suggesting that future emissions may be higher than model estimates.
The Deep Electrification scenario highlights the potential for net emissions to approach near-zero by 2050. This outcome is sustained by small growth in the forest carbon sink and gradually declining gross emissions. After 2050, however, net emissions are expected to rise again to about 23 MtCO2e/year by 2070. The sink decline reflects limited new afforestation and reforestation, ageing of previously planted trees, and intensifying climate impacts such as wildfires, droughts and pests. On the emissions side, gross fluxes are projected to fall gradually until 2050 but continue even after forest loss is assumed to halt by 2030. These ongoing emissions are linked to legacy effects, as carbon from decomposing wood and soils is released long after harvesting or other land-use activities have taken place.
The Government of Canada’s accounting rules used to determine how LULUCF emissions and removals count toward its climate targets imply stronger removals than seen in the illustrative pathways. For most land-use categories, a “net-net” approach is applied, comparing net emissions in 2030 with those in 2005. For managed forest and associated harvested wood products, Canada applies a reference level approach that compares outcomes against a baseline of past management practices, ensuring that only the impact of new activities is counted toward targets. Based on these accounting approaches, the government projects accounted removals of 28 MtCO2e/year in 2030 and 30 MtCO2e/year in 2040, providing credits that reduce national emissions.6 These projections show larger removals than seen in the Deep Electrification pathway, reflecting both the way accounting rules operate and the broader set of options considered in national projections, including measures to enhance forest sinks and reduce emissions.7
Canada's LULUCF emissions
MtCO₂ / year
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Graph description
Historical CO2 emissions 1990-2020 for the land-use sector are taken from the country's First Biennial Transparency Report where available, and otherwise from Grassi et al (2022): Carbon fluxes from land 2000–2020: bringing clarity to countries' reporting. Future emissions, covering the period 2025-2070, follow a 1.5°C-compatible pathway downscaled to the national level. Positive values represent emissions from deforestation, harvesting, and soil respiration, while negative values reflect CO₂ removals through afforestation and reforestation.
Methodology
Data References
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Forestry activities
Canada is home to 369 million hectares (ha) of forest, representing about 9% of global forests.8 Of this, roughly 230 million ha are classified as managed forest, where human activities directly influence carbon stocks.9 Forest area has remained relatively stable over the past few decades, with less than 0.5% lost to deforestation since 1990.10 However, deforestation continues to outweigh new forest plantings, resulting in a small net loss of forest area each year.11 Agricultural expansion, mining, and oil and gas development have been the main drivers of deforestation, while the creation of hydroelectric reservoirs caused notable spikes in 1993 and 2006.
All 1.5ºC-aligned pathways analysed here assume no further afforestation or reforestation (A/R) after 2030, which limits future sink growth driven by forest expansion. This assumption reflects concerns that in some regions, additional planting could increase warming through the albedo effect, where darker forest cover reduces reflectivity and absorbs more heat.
However, other models which take a more granular approach to mapping albedo effects suggest greater potential for A/R and highlight a wide range of possible outcomes for Canada’s forest cover and carbon sink potential.12 The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (MESSAGE-GLOBIOM model) projects that Canada could gain around 0.8 million hectares of forest per year between 2020 and 2030, creating an additional sink of 26 MtCO2e annually by 2030.13 Recent research by Fesenmyer et al. (2025) goes even further, estimating that Canada could reforest up to 17 million hectares under sustainability safeguards, which would generate an additional 35 MtCO2e/year sink relative to the Deep Electrification pathway.14
The resilience of these sinks, however, is increasingly threatened by climate-related disturbances. In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record, with over 15 million hectares burned, the largest area on record and far above the ten-year average of just over 2.5 million hectares per year.15,16 Insect infestations such as the ongoing mountain pine beetle outbreak are also expanding as milder winters increase survival rates.17 These outbreaks kill large areas of forest, reducing carbon uptake and releasing CO2 as dead trees decay or are cleared through salvage logging (the practice of harvesting dead or damaged or trees).
In 2020, Canada announced the 2 Billion Trees Program designed to support reforestation in areas affected by natural disturbances, creating an additional 1.1 Mha of forests by 2030.18 The government is also developing the Forest Systems Information Technology Enhancement program to expand national forest monitoring and data systems, including information on carbon and forest health indicators.19
Although Canada’s forest area has remained largely intact, small net losses, harvest pressures, and growing climate disturbances continue to weaken the sector’s sink potential.20,21 While scenarios analysed here suggest that A/R could support near-term emission reductions by strengthening the forest sink, they also indicate that legacy processes, harvest pressures, and disturbance risks will likely keep the sector a source in the long term. Canada’s ability to expand its sink and limit emissions will depend on the effectiveness of current policies, sustainable forest management, and investments in forest resilience.
Canada's Forest area change
Million hectares / year
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Graph description
The graph presents five-year averages of changes in forest area. Negative values represent losses in forest area due to deforestation and harvesting, referred to as "forest loss". Historical forest loss data cover the period 2001-2025 and are sourced from Global Forest Watch (2025). Positive values represent forest area expansion through afforestation and/or reforestation, referred to as "forest gain". Historical forest gain data cover the period 2001-2020 and are sourced from the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment (2025). Future changes in forest area, covering the period 2026-2070, follow a 1.5°C-compatible pathway downscaled to the national level.
Methodology
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