Climate-adapted forest management in the Zofingen region, Switzerland

Forests are priceless ecosystems. They are an essential component in the fight against climate change, as they capture the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) and produce oxygen and store carbon at the same time. Forests also serve as recreation areas for people, provide habitats for many animals and plant species, act as a water store, and produce wood – an important renewable and climate-friendly building material and fuel. 

While, in developing countries, the focus tends to be more on protecting the forest, industrialised nations are aiming to adapt the forestry industry to climate change. Adaptations through silvicultural measures make the forest fit for climate change, thereby keeping it stable, storing additional carbon and at the same time supplying the renewable raw material wood in the future. The project in the Zofingen region pursues precisely this approach.

Climate protection thanks to carbon capture in the Zofingen forest 

This climate protection project covers an area of around 1,663 hectares of forest in the border regions of the Aargau, Bern, Lucerne and Solothurn cantons. The forest is currently being actively managed and used for a variety of purposes, and in future the forest will continue to be managed by the regional forest enterprise, but activity will be reduced to allow larger wood reserves to accrue. Thanks to the increased wood supply, the forest can remove an average of up to 3,550 tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year. Over the 30-year total duration of the project, this equates to an emissions reduction of up to 106,604 tonnes of CO₂. 

As a result of the current management of the area, the wood reserves amount to around 328 cubic metres per hectare, which means that the forest is unable to fully reach its potential as a carbon sink. The adapted management should in future allow the creation of a forest that has wood reserves of over 350 cubic metres per hectare. The Aargau forestry department regularly checks the use of the forest throughout the duration of the project.

This carbon sink function – that is the storage of atmospheric carbon in the forest's biomass (trunks and branches) and in the soil – is also described as a nature-based solution, meaning the use of a natural process as a solution to counter global warming. This so-called carbon dioxide removal is an important process in reaching the negative emissions that are urgently needed to achieve the Paris climate goals.  

Since the Confederation credits itself with part of the sink effect of Swiss forests to the national carbon footprint under the Kyoto Protocol, each CO₂ certificate of this project is additionally backed by a certificate of a forest project benefiting smallholder families in order to avoid any double counting by the state.

Climate adaptation and promoting diversity 

Thanks to the income from the sale of CO₂ certificates as compensation for the forest's climate protection performance, this forest area will be able to store more CO₂ in future and will be more resilient to the consequences of climate change. This not only allows the lost income from the use of timber to be partly compensated for, but also permits the financing of measures for climate adaptation and promotion of biodiversity:

Climate change is having an increasingly noticeable impact on the forest, in particular as a result of rising temperatures, lower summer rainfall and increasingly evident disruptive events. To ensure that the benefits of the forest continue to be guaranteed in the future, this project supports the adaptation of this piece of forest, for example by introducing and promoting climate-adapted tree species to increase the resistance and resilience of forest stocks. Hence, tree species that are more climate-adapted and therefore more resistant to drought, such as the sweet chestnut, are reforested in places where storm Burglind wreaked major damage in 2018.  

The biodiversity of fauna will also be protected and promoted as a result of the project, thanks to both careful forest management and targeted assistance measures. In ponds, pools and pits, for example, habitats for valuable species such as the yellow-bellied toad, midwife toad, common toad or newt can be protected and preserved.  

This project contributes to 3 SDGs (as of end 2024):

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These SDGs have been approved by myclimate:

The project manages an area of 1663 hectares of forest sustainably and promotes climate-adapted tree species in order to increase the resilience of the forest.

This project will capture up to 106,604 tonnes of CO₂ by 2050.

Climate-optimised forest management contributes to the promotion of biodiversity. The project implements concrete measures to promote biodiversity, e.g. the creation of amphibian ponds.