31/3/2006
Use of Wood Fuel Can Mitigate Climate Change

Using wood from a sustainably-managed forest as fuel can reduce global warming, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said last week, calling for better forest management.

The world’s forests and forest soils currently store more than one trillion tons of carbon – twice the amount found floating free in the atmosphere – however, when destroyed or over-harvested and burned, forests can become sources of carbon dioxide.

“We need to stop deforestation and expand the land area covered by forests, certainly,” says Wulf Killmann, who chairs FAO's interdepartmental climate change working group.

"But we also need to substitute fossil fuels with biofuels,-- like wood fuels from responsibly managed forests -- in order to reduce carbon emissions, and we should use more wood in long-lasting products to keep trapped carbon out of the atmosphere for longer periods of time."

The FAO says that this can be achieved not just by preventing forests from being cut down, but through afforestation (new plantings) and reforestation (replanting of deforested areas) of non-forested lands.

Particularly in the tropics, planting trees can remove large amounts of carbon from the air within a relatively short time.

Harvested wood is also a carbon sink -- wood used in construction or for furniture effectively stores carbon for centuries.

The use of wood fuel instead of oil, coal and natural gas, can thus actually mitigate climate change.