Climate change

One of the many reasons to support the campaign to save Bintree Woods and the surrounding farmland is the sheer insanity of destroying an area of woodland which is playing its part in the fight against climate change.

Woodland is recognised as the greatest global resource to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fuels global warming. http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-6umkar

Trees are nearly 50 per cent carbon. Growing trees take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, convert it to carbon-based tissues during photosynthesis and release oxygen as a by-product. The carbon remains tied up in the tree until it dies or is cut down. So trees are long-term stores of carbon – carbon sinks. When cut down and turned into long-lasting products such as furniture or buildings, the wood continues to store that carbon.There is more carbon in forests than in the whole of the world’s remaining oil reserves and more carbon in trees than there is in the atmosphere.

Trees create and sustain local climates. One hectare of woodland can remove between 2.5 and 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

While 13 million hectares are lost each year only 5.7 million hectares are regained annually through replanting – a net annual loss of 7.3 million hectares (2000–05 figures). From 50 per cent of the world’s land area, forests now only cover 30 per cent. Developing countries in South America, Central Africa and in Indonesia have the highest rate of deforestation

The government has signed up to the Kyoto Protocol. This international agreement legally binds the UK to take steps to reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon sinks.

The UK Forestry Commission (FC) has set out six key ways woodland can mitigate climate change:

• protect the forests we already have
• reduce deforestation
• restore forest cover
• use wood for energy
• replace other materials with wood
• plan to adapt to our changing climate

Lord Clarke of Windermere, chairman of the FC, presided at an international conference in London in November 2007 called ‘Forests and climate change; a convenient truth’. At this conference the director general of the FC, Tim Rollison, spoke of the importance of protecting existing forests and their vital role in mitigating climate change. The Forestry Commission was complimented by Phil Woolas, UK minister for the environment, who said the FC was applauded around the world for its expertise in sustainable forest management and suggested it had much to offer as a leading organisation in developing ways to tackle climate change.

So much for the spin. The reality is that the Forestry Commission wants to dig up Bintree Woods and fill the hole in the landscape with waste. When it comes to their own trees, FC talk about about climate change is revealed as just that – talk. Click here for more on the Forestry Commission.