Barriers and Lessons of Quantifying Carbon in Africa and Siberia for Climate Change Actions

Abstract

The study aims to provide a critical overview of the existing evidence on the impacts of climate change on carbon sequestration potential in Asian and African ecosystems, enabling scholars to navigate the field. The study compared recent changes in carbon cycles in the permafrost region and various ecosystems in the African region, highlighting the prospects and challenges, and evaluating the directionality of future research. A total of 37 peer-reviewed publications were evaluated on the following topics: 1. carbon-climate feedback in Siberia and Africa; 2. prospects and challenges of the carbon cycle, and directionality of research. The major finding from this study is that climate change has negatively affected the tundra glacier permafrost ecosystem of the Asian continent, as well as the coastal marine wetlands, grasslands, forests, and farmlands ecosystems in Africa across all sectors of the economy. Africa is faced with the problems of data scarcity, standardization, and validation, while the Siberia region is confronted with process complexity, ecosystem bias, and model–observation mismatches. The need for global comparative frameworks harmonizing methods and data co-production between African and temperate scholars. Based on these findings, there is a need for international collaboration across all regions towards the development of a unified methodology for carbon assessment.