Not Just Carbon: Capturing All the Benefits of Forests for Stabilizing the Climate from Local to Global Scales

The report highlights that forests stabilize the climate through biophysical processes affecting energy and moisture transfers, which are currently undervalued in policy. It argues that accounting for these effects can increase the estimated global cooling benefit of avoiding tropical deforestation by up to 50% and warns that ignoring them leads to underestimated climate risks for health and agriculture.

• Forests contribute to climate stability via biophysical processes that manage energy and moisture transfers in the atmosphere, which supports water and food security, human health, and climate adaptation. When these processes are considered alongside the carbon cycle, the estimated global cooling effect of preventing tropical deforestation may be up to 50 percent higher.
• Deforestation, particularly in tropical regions, raises local temperatures and interferes with rainfall patterns, which exacerbates the local impacts of global climate change and poses risks to agricultural output and public health.
• Current climate policies systematically undervalue the climate services provided by forests because they fail to account for biophysical effects, leading to an inequitable distribution of resources and responsibilities and a failure to predict the full scope of deforestation-related climate risks.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Not Just Carbon: Capturing All the Benefits of Forests for Stabilizing the Climate from Local to Global Scales. https://www.wri.org/research/not-just-carbon-capturing-benefits-forests-climate

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Not Just Carbon: Capturing All the Benefits of Forests for Stabilizing the Climate from Local to Global Scales. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/not-just-carbon-capturing-benefits-forests-climate.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Not Just Carbon: Capturing All the Benefits of Forests for Stabilizing the Climate from Local to Global Scales |url=https://www.wri.org/research/not-just-carbon-capturing-benefits-forests-climate |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendnot, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Not Just Carbon: Capturing All the Benefits of Forests for Stabilizing the Climate from Local to Global Scales}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/not-just-carbon-capturing-benefits-forests-climate}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }