Supporting Forest Research, Acting for Sustainable Life on Earth AXA Research Fund

As the world looks towards COP30 in Belém, forests have re-emerged as a core topic at the center of global climate negotiations. Trees play a vital role in combating climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide, regulating temperatures, and maintaining biodiversity. Forests, including mangroves, act as natural barriers against disasters like floods and storms, and protecting coastal communities. They also provide habitats for countless species, ensuring ecological balance. Yet the planet’s forests are under escalating threat from deforestation, mega fires, unsustainable land-use change, and climate extremes.   

Research helps us understand how to preserve and restore these precious ecosystems. Understanding how these pressures interact, and how forests can continue to serve as powerful allies are some of the efforts AXA has been committed to advancing. The AXA Research Fund, part of the AXA Foundation for Human Progress, has been funding 20 projects, with €6M committed across 17 institutions in 7 countries to address these challenges.  

Within this effort, AXA-funded research has provided vital insights into forest ecosystems and their critical role in climate mitigation. Below are a few examples. 

• Prof. Apostolos Voulgarakis, AXA Chair in Wildfires and Climate Director, Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment & Climate Change, Technical University of Crete, has shown that the increasing frequency of Arctic and boreal megafires, particularly those burning through carbon-rich peatlands, are both a consequence of climate change and active drivers of further global warming and atmospheric disruption. [1]  

• Complementing this, former AXA laureate Prof. Vincent Gauci discovered that tree bark across forests worldwide acts as a significant methane sink, removing up to 50 million tons of methane annually, thus highlighting the substantial climate value of conserving intact forests. [2] 

• Meanwhile, Dr. Floor van der Hilst, recipient of the AXA IM Climate Transition Award, demonstrated by analyzing different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) models that poorly managed bioenergy expansion can lead to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and food security issues. Her work underscores the necessity of sustainable land-use planning as countries pursue biomass solutions to meet Paris Agreement targets. [3] 

• Additionally, Professor Mark New, former AXA Chair at the University of Cape Town together with other scientists conducted thorough analysis to prove that impacts of climate change can be mitigated by invasive alien tree clearing, which is also a form of catchment restoration.  Research highlights that invasive alien trees in catchments exacerbated water shortages by consuming more water than native vegetation, particularly during drought periods. Removing these alien trees could have reduced the impact of climate change on river flows by up to 27%, thus illuminating the potential of catchment restoration efforts to improve water availability in South Africa, and around the water stressed parts of the Earth. [4] 

Together, these AXA- supported research contributions fuel a much needed science-driven foundation for global action to ensure that forests remain one of humanity’s most vital allies for life on Earth. 

 
Source:

[1]How high-latitude peat and forest fires could shape the future of Earth’s climate
[2]We’ve Discovered the World’s Trees Absorb Methane – So Forests Are Even More Important in the Climate Fight than We Thought
[3]Agriculture in Brazil: how land-use choices affect biodiversity and the global climate
[4]Clearing Alien Trees Can Help Reduce Climate Change Impact on Cape Town’s Water Supply