Without improving the condition of our domestic forests and significantly increasing forest cover, our room for maneuver in building resilience against extreme droughts and heatwaves—exacerbated by climate change—will be severely restricted.
The key to enhancing this resilience lies in simultaneously strengthening the capacity of forests to sequester carbon dioxide and their ability to moderate near-surface temperatures at a regional level through evapotranspiration. Achieving this requires landscape-scale water retention and replenishment, as well as continuous forest cover and the maintenance of forests with a high degree of naturalness.
We possess more favorable conditions for achieving these goals than most European countries; however, we are currently failing to leverage this advantage. The primary obstacle to change is not a lack of funds, but rather shortcomings in policy implementation and the failure to employ appropriate economic regulatory instruments.
Contrary to prevailing policy perceptions and expectations, the necessary large-scale and rapid transformation is best driven not by the subsidy schemes of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but by sector-neutral incentives for natural carbon sequestration. We must ensure that the carbon sequestration provided by healthy forests—whose resilience has been bolstered through water retention and replenishment—is properly recognized by European carbon markets. Currently, there is practically no opportunity for this within the EU; even the concepts currently under discussion would offer only very limited scope for forests and nature—and Hungary is not even taking advantage of these limited possibilities. On one hand, this creates a competitive disadvantage for the Hungarian economy—and the European economy more broadly—as achieving emissions reductions will entail higher costs at the national level than would otherwise be necessary. On the other hand, we are failing to utilize market-based incentives that align with the interests of economic actors—incentives that could facilitate land-use changes supporting water retention and the enhancement of forest naturalness.
Policymaking must take place at two levels: (1) Domestically, a regulatory framework must be established—leveraging the provisions of the CRCF (Carbon Removal Certification Framework) regulation—that recognizes natural carbon sequestration and enables its trading. (2) At the EU level, it is necessary to open European carbon markets to the (surplus) carbon sequestration services provided by European forests.
Inaction not only means missing the chance to improve our resilience and reducing the likelihood of preserving current environmental conditions, but it also entails forfeiting the more rational use of 3 billion euros domestically. This sum could be generated through the surplus carbon sequestration provided by forests—a resource that could offset the need for the most expensive investments in the energy sector required to meet net-zero targets by 2050.
