Region Archives: International

Recent research in the natural sciences journal Nature Communications confirmed an already well-held belief, that “human-caused climate change is raising the odds of extreme climate-driven fire years across forested regions of the globe.” Fire has long played a natural role in shaping the world’s landscapes. In certain regions, fires are necessary and beneficial but not all fires are created equal. As highlighted in a recent collection published on the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence platform, rising temperatures, lower humidity and prolonged drought have transformed fire into a destructive force. These supercharged wildfires now rank among the greatest threats to forests worldwide. They threaten the stability of ecosystems and communities and increase net carbon emissions from forests and other ecosystems, long considered stable carbon vaults. Instead of isolated local emergencies, we need to treat wildfires as a global, structural threat. This requires a fundamentally new, multi-national and tightly-coordinated effort, resting on five key pillars.

Forest fires have become a harsh new reality for millions globally, with their impacts felt near and far. Over the last few years, fires have destroyed billions of dollars in property, displaced thousands of people and coated cities in choking smoke, causing deadly air quality. It’s no coincidence that fires are becoming more intense as the planet warms. Fires need hot, dry conditions to ignite and spread. While fire is a natural part of some forest ecosystems, climate change is making forest fires worse, and vice-versa — creating a vicious “climate-fire feedback loop.” It works like this: Rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions lead to hotter, drier conditions. This makes it easier for fires to spark and grow. Worsening fires release larger amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere as trees and plants burn — further accelerating climate change and perpetuating the cycle.

In its report “Pandering to the loggers”, published 25 July 2011, Global Witness claims that the WWF scheme is fundamentally flawed; allowing organisations to benefit from being associated with the charity while still clearing protected forests and trading in illegally-sourced timber. Global Forest and Trade Network scheme, which forestry companies, manufacturers and retailers pay to join, requires forestry firms to commit to achieving a “credible” voluntary forestry certification and for trade partners to cease sourcing illegally-harvested wood within five years in a bid to encourage more sustainable practices across the market. However, Global Witness argues that a lack of minimum standards for participating companies combined with very little publically available information on the scheme’s participants bring into doubt the validity of the scheme… The group calls for a comprehensive independent audit of the scheme, how it is managed and what it has achieved in terms of real-world benefit for forests.

New research highlights concern from across Scotland about the role of industrial forestry corporations and asset management organisations who increasingly dominate the ownership and management of Scotland’s forests. The research concludes that more community ownership and management of woodlands, and more diverse ownership of forests across Scotland would increase community wealth and lead to greater environmental benefits, as well as producing more actively managed forests in Scotland. Three new discussion papers … analyse the effectiveness and impact of industrial forestry on local areas as well as for meeting national carbon and timber targets. Industrial forestry refers to predominantly single species, mostly unmanaged, Sitka Spruce forest, contrasting with more climatically resilient, sustainable, mixed species forestry. The papers recognise that, while mixed productive forestry has an important part to play in reaching Net Zero and delivering economic and social opportunities, basic assumptions about the benefits of industrial forestry can be questionable.

The forest products industry is an important part of the European economy and a crucial pillar for the transition to a low-carbon economy in the future. At the same time, this sector is not immune to trade uncertainty and geopolitical risks. As Europe looks to rely more on its own resources, there is an opportunity to better utilise the continent’s forests through investment and active management. …Although the EU has just 5% of the world’s forests, it produces approximately 20% of the world’s roundwood each year. Over the past decade, the EU has gone from being a net importer of roundwood and fuelwood to a net exporter – with the EU’s net trade surplus reaching 15.4m sqm in 2023. …Despite unpredictable trade flows… Research indicates that total demand for wood fibre in the EU will grow by 25% between now and 2050. 

High in the arid mountain forests of eastern California there is a living tree that’s older than the pyramids of Giza and the ancient city-state of Babylon — but its location is a secret. The Methuselah tree, named after an especially long-living character in the Book of Genesis, is estimated to have started growing roughly 4,857 years ago in the White Mountains just north of Death Valley. …Scientists believe it is either the oldest or second-oldest living tree known to humanity — excepting clonal colonies, in which individual trees live and die as part of the same ancient collective organism. …It’s a standout example of the Great Basin bristlecone pine, formally known as pinus longaeva. Because they are adapted to live in such harsh environments the trees are extraordinary resilient and resistant to infection. …Some scientists believe there is a Patagonian cypress tree in the rainy mountains of Chile that is around 5,400 years old.

Proposed changes to the EU deforestation law supported by a majority of member states will boost the potential for illegal trade of Russian and Belarusian timber, according to an NGO. In May 18 EU member states sent a letter to the European Commission proposing to simplify the EU Deforestation Regulation, the bloc’s legislation that aims to reduce the EU’s impact on global deforestation. …The European Commission decided to postpone its implementation to 30 December 2025. …The regulation boosts controls over illegal imports of timber by introducing more mandatory border checks and compulsory geolocation of timber. …“For so-called ‘no-risk’ countries, they would be exempt from geolocation requirements, and there would also be no obligation for authorities to carry out a minimum number of checks on those countries,” Ganesh said. …“NGOs have shown that wood, not just from Russia, but also from other high-risk tropical countries and deforestation hotspots, is regularly laundered through countries like China.

KALAVRYTA, Greece – Around the village of Kalavryta in southwestern Greece, hundreds of dying fir trees stand out among the dark green foliage, a stark reminder of how drought slowly drains the life from nature. Greek fir species Abies cephalonica are known to need cooler, moist climates. But prolonged droughts in recent years linked to a fast-changing climate in Greece are leaving them exposed to pest infestations, scientists and locals said. …Less water and moisture mean that fir trees become more vulnerable to attacks by pests that bore into their bark to lay eggs and create tunnels, disrupting the trees’ ability to transport nutrients between roots and branches and leading to their death. …In Kalavryta, authorities plan to remove dead and infested trees to limit the damage. But this might not be enough to save the forests. “We cannot stop climate change,” director of research at the National Observatory of Athens, Dr Kostas Lagouvardos said.

At the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Remedy Forum held in Jakarta, a group of stakeholders and rights holders interested in the implementation of FSC’s Remedy Framework shared a clear message with FSC. They expect to see restoration outcomes scaled up and delivered. They want the implementation of remedy to pick up pace so that degraded forest landscapes are transformed and people and communities get an opportunity to heal. And they want FSC to develop robust systems that ensure verified and holistic redressal of past unacceptable activities. …After reviewing all relevant considerations, FSC is now ⁠lifting the suspension on Asia Pulp and Paper’s (APP) remedy process. …The legal review is still ongoing and FSC will publish a summary of the conclusions once completed. …Further delaying their implementation of remedy puts rights holders’ access to remedy at risk. It is in the interest of speedy delivery of remedy, at scale, that APP will take its remedy process forward. 

In related coverage by Greenpeace: FSC Risks Reputation by Lifting Suspension of APP’s Remedy Process

A deadly wildfire in Seyitgazi, Türkiye that killed 10 forestry workers was the result of a lack of training and institutional expertise, a senior union leader has claimed. The accusation was made by Yusuf Kurt, president of the Agriculture and Forestry Workers Union, who said unqualified personnel were deployed to the scene, while experienced staff had been reassigned due to internal rotation policies. Kurt criticized the practice of assigning staff who had never responded to wildfires before, simply as part of internal rotation policies. “Fire has no school, but the institution used to train its own staff through in-house training centers,” he said. “Now those centers are being shut down. Sending untrained personnel into active fires leads to fatal consequences.” Emphasizing the complexity of fire management, Kurt warned that theoretical knowledge is not enough. “Fire has a language. If you cannot read it, you cannot control it,” he said. 

Costa Rica is advancing with the creation of a National Forest Traceability System, a key tool to guarantee the legality and sustainability of timber use. Public and private sectors came together for the first time to plan this initiative. This process is led by the Ministry of Environment and Energy through the Vice Ministries of Environment and Strategic Management of Costa Rica, with technical support from the FAO. It is part of a national strategy to strengthen forest legality, reduce the risk of illegal timber trade, and enhance the competitiveness of the Costa Rican forestry sector in demanding markets such as Europe (EUDR) and the United States (Lacey Act). “Costa Rica has made significant progress in forest legality, but the next step is to integrate technology and innovation into the process to ensure traceability from the farm to the primary wood product,” commented Franz Tattenbach, Minister of Environment and Energy.

In 2023 and 2024 the world’s forests absorbed only a quarter of the carbon dioxide they did in the beginning of the 21st century, according to data from the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch. Those back-to-back years of record-breaking wildfires hampered forests’ ability absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, curbing some of the global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions. Those two years also marked the first time wildfires surpassed logging or agriculture-driven deforestation as the biggest factor lowering forests’ carbon-capturing ability. It’s an emerging pattern that’s different from the last big drop, in 2016 and 2017, which was largely the result of increased deforestation for agriculture. …Other recently published studies suggest that climate change is making extreme-forest-fire years more common, and the worst events more frequent and intense. …“We’re reaching the point where global warming is feeding the warming,” said Werner Kurz, an emeritus scientist for the Canadian Forest Service. [A subscription to the New York Times is required to access the full story]

Anthony Albanese

AUSTRALIA – The Albanese government was so worried a court case could halt native forest logging in northern New South Wales that it drew up plans to essentially sidestep federal environment laws in the event of a loss, documents released under freedom of information laws reveal. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, played a key role as the commonwealth and NSW governments worked to ensure some logging could continue in the face of any “adverse decision” and to manage a potentially volatile situation between loggers and environmentalists. In the end the governments won the case … despite the fact that the RFA was amended in 2018 without fresh scientific studies regarding the impact on threatened species. …If the federal and state governments had lost, there could have been an immediate halt to logging and lengthy processes to assess areas under the commonwealth’s environment laws. The government was concerned [this] could lead to environmentalists demanding an end to logging.

Alastair Collier is right to point out that to build forests that can withstand future conditions, we must invest in resilience from the outset (Britain’s forests need help to adapt to the changing climate Letters, 17 July). At Forestry England, forest resilience is our most critical challenge. We must ensure the nation’s 1,500 forests in our care can withstand and adapt to the threats facing them, including climate change, biodiversity loss, extreme weather, and pests and diseases. We are doing this by planning 100 years ahead in the way we manage these beautiful places, which are home to some of the UK’s rarest wildlife. …The benefits of the nation’s forests are enormous, from storing carbon and mitigating floods to supporting our health and wellbeing. They are an unsurpassed national asset. As their custodians, we are putting forest resilience at the heart of everything we do.

@Wikipedia

Lightning may strike in an instant, but its ecological toll lingers for years. According to a new global study published in Global Change Biology, lightning directly kills approximately 320 million trees each year — a number that rivals other major causes of forest disturbance but has gone largely unrecognized. These deaths release an estimated 0.21–0.30 gigatons of carbon annually, underscoring lightning’s surprising role in shaping forest structure and the global carbon cycle. While lightning has long been associated with wildfires, its direct impact on tree mortality has rarely been quantified. To address this gap, researchers at the Technical University of Munich integrated lightning mortality into a dynamic global vegetation model known as LPJ-GUESS. …Most of this mortality occurs in tropical Africa, where both lightning density and the prevalence of tall, vulnerable trees are high. However, the study also found that as climate change intensifies thunderstorms, lightning-induced tree deaths could increase in temperate and boreal forests.