Region Archives: International

JAKARTA, Indonesia — From trees felled in protected national parks to massive swaths of jungle razed for palm oil and paper plantations, Indonesia had a 27% uptick in primary forest loss in 2023 from the previous year, according to a World Resources Institute analysis. But the loss is still seen as historically low compared to the 2010s, it said. “Deforestation has been declining from six or so years ago,” said Rod Taylor, global director of the forests program at WRI. “It’s good news and commendable for Indonesia. But others saw cause for concern in the uptick, and tied some of the more recent deforestation to the world’s appetite for mining Indonesia’s vast deposits of nickel. …Since 1950, more than 74 million hectares of Indonesian rainforest have been logged, burned or degraded for development of palm oil, paper and rubber plantations, according to Global Forest Watch.

NEW ZEALAND — In a sector that has been knocked about by rule changes in the past few years, Keith Woodford plots the way ahead. …Many of my forestry presentations have focused on flaws in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). This presentation was different. I simply took the rules as they are and looked at how farm foresters could best respond in their own interests, be they economic interests or broader issues coming from the heart. My starting point was to briefly look at the journey NZ’s production forestry has taken in recent decades. …Almost 90% of NZ’s log exports go to China. …NZ is now the only country that exports significant volumes of softwood logs to China. Countries like Russia now only export lumber, not logs. Also, China is becoming increasingly self-sufficient in timber, with big eucalyptus plantings in the south of China.

Elizabeth Heeg

Foresters are seething at the lack of understanding they claim exists in the Helen Clark Foundation report on the role their sector can play in New Zealand’s future growth opportunities in adding value to food and fibre products. Earlier this month the Pathways to Prosperity report was released by a public policy think tank hosted by Auckland University of Technology. It cited the looming impact of aging demographics as a key driver for a need to increase the country’s wealth to pay for greater superannuation and health care. …Forest Owners Association CEO Dr  Elizabeth Heeg said the report’s single biggest failing was its lack of appreciation and recognition of the level of global demand for timber and timber products in the future. “Not only will the worldwide demand for timber to replace carbon-emitting concrete and steel rise rapidly, but so too will the demand for wood-based biofuels and plastic-substitute products,” Heeg said.

Conservation actions are effective at reducing global biodiversity loss, according to a major study. …The authors said their findings offered a “ray of light” for those working to protect threatened animals and plants. One out of every three species monitored is currently endangered because of human activities. In the first study … scientists from dozens of research institutes reviewed 665 trials of conservation measures, some from as far back as 1890, in different countries and oceans and across species types, and found they had had a positive effect in two out of every three cases. Co-author Dr Penny Langhammer told said, “If you read the headlines about extinction, it would be easy to get the impression that we are failing biodiversity – but that’s not really looking at the whole picture. This study provides evidence that not only does conservation improve the state of biodiversity and slow its decline, but when it works, it really works.”

A reported 85% of Ikea’s virgin wood still comes from European producers, including Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden. The company website cites China as responsible for nine percent of its lumber — another notable provider is Vietnam, making up three percent. Until Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ikea sourced 11% of its timber in Russia and Belarus but has since ended all business with either country, scaling back operations. Ikea’s report for the Fiscal Year 2023 claims the company used 97.8% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified or recycled wood materials. However, concerns about Ikea’s conduct regarding Brazilian lumber arrived this year from NGO Disclose. …The furniture giant has since partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for environment restoration operations in the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes in Brazil and the Tapajós River Basin in Colombia. …Notwithstanding these incremental changes, there are still threats to old forest areas across the world, especially in China.

The Association of Romania’s Wood Industry (AIL) accuses Greenpeace and Agent Green of attacking the entire wood processing industry with no grounds, furthermore misleadingly using specific terms to magnify the impact of its rhetoric in the international media. The two NGOs cultivate confusion between the term “old forests” (a legally undefined term) and the term virgin and quasi-virgin forests, the association says. “For Agent Greenpeace/Agent Green, forest management, according to the highest standards of professionalism, Romanian legislation, and international FSC and PEFC standards, means ‘forest destruction’. […] According to official data, 94% of Romania’s forests [although not necessarily old-growth forests or virgin forests] have primary structures identical to the old-growth forests. It is an indisputable merit of forestry in Romania,” AIL argues. …Environmental organizations Agent Green and Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF) recently urged IKEA “to better oversee their forestry operations in Romania.” …and refrain from sourcing wood from national parks and primary and ancient forests. 

Perth’s gardens have been kept alive with desalinated water over the driest six months in the city’s history, but beyond the reach of sprinklers native vegetation from Kalbarri to Albany is dying from a summer without end. Jess Boyce, acting director of the WA Forest Alliance, declared it a climate and ecological emergency. “Large areas of drying and dying vegetation are being seen all around south-west WA, their root systems are running out of water,” she said. In 2011, the Northern Jarrah Forest that stretches from inland of Perth to Collie suffered a forest collapse – believed to be the first such event in the world – but in 2024, the damage is more widespread. Climate scientist Bill Hare said this damage was driven by global warming from the burning of fossil fuels. “This is not the new normal, it is the beginning of what looks like a very, very worrying period of decades ahead,” Hare said.

Envisioning a climate-stable future requires a dual strategy as far as the world’s forests are concerned: protecting and restoring natural forests for all of their ecological and climate benefits while also sustainably managing working forests to drive the global transformation to a sustainable, circular bioeconomy. Many are uncomfortable at the thought of cutting down a tree. While wood is a useful material, people don’t like the idea that it should be harvested from a forest. In a 2017 study commissioned by the North American Forest Partnership, nearly four out of five respondents thought wood was a renewable material; however, fewer than one in five associated the forest sector with sustainability. That’s an unfortunate misconception and in our current era of climate disasters, it’s becoming a dangerous one. The reality is that sustainable forestry and forest products can help us save the planet from ourselves.

The number of fires shows no signs of easing as Brazil’s Roraima faces unprecedented blazes, and several Amazonian countries, including Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela, registered record-high outbreaks in the first quarter this year. Fire outbreaks in primary (old-growth) forest in Brazil’s Amazon soared by 152% in 2023, according to a recent study, rising from 13,477 in 2022 to 34,012 in 2023. Fires in the mature forest regions are the leading drivers of degradation of the Amazon Rainforest because the biome hasn’t evolved to adapt to such blazes, according to the researchers. The fires are a result of a drought that has been fueled by climate change and worsened by natural weather phenomena, such as El Niño, which has intensified dry conditions already aggravated by high temperatures across the world, experts say.

NEW ZEALAND — A second Gisborne forestry company has lost its sustainability accreditation within the space of two months. Aratu Forests’ Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certificate was suspended on March 28 by Swiss auditing company Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS). This follows forestry company Ernslaw One’s FSC certification being suspended in February. Aratu Forests chief executive officer Neil Woods declined to comment on the suspension but said the company was working towards getting accredited again. Gisborne’s certifiers have been in the spotlight recently after an Audit Services International (ASI) report raised shortcomings. FSC certifiers SGS and Preferred by Nature were issued four major non-conformities, just one non-conformity short of ASI’s policy to consider a suspension of both certifying bodies. …Following the recent suspensions, MTT has said auditors will return to New Zealand to review audits of three more companies.

The Cook Government’s Forest Management Plan 2024-2033, which supports the decision to bring commercial logging of native forests to an end, will be bolstered with a $67.2 million investment over the next four years. The funding, which will be part of the 2024-25 State Budget, will deliver: an additional 65 new jobs throughout Western Australia’s South West and metropolitan Perth, focused on a range of climate actions; a new forest health monitoring program; and support for emerging technologies, such as eco-acoustics, fire research, and ecological thinning, to improve forest health. Funding will also support work with Traditional Owners, protection of native wildlife from feral predators and managing weeds and plant diseases. The new jobs will be created between 2024 and 2027 within the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions and partner agencies.

Visitors to Australia could have their access to a popular UNESCO World Heritage site restricted after authorities controversially set fire to neighbouring land on Wednesday. Locals fear the skies will soon be choked with smoke across regions of Tasmania after the state government’s logging agency began its annual burning program. While logging company Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) says the practice promotes “natural regeneration” and is crucial in “reducing fuel loads” on land it has cleared, conservationists warn it kills endangered species including the state’s iconic Tasmanian devils. One was found dead in a burrow after a burn in 2023. Jenny Weber from the Bob Brown Foundation said STT had logged right up to the edge of an access road to the Hartz Mountains National Park… “It’s obscene that people going to a World Heritage site to visit the beautiful wild Tasmania are going to be impacted by Forestry Tasmania burning.”

A team of researchers has unveiled a novel approach to accurately characterizing tree height composition in forests using the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. This study marks a significant advancement in our understanding of forest ecosystems, shedding light on the intricacies of tree height variability and their implications for ecological studies and climate change mitigation efforts. …Limitations have historically hindered the challenge of accurately mapping this structural diversity in scale and detail. However, the advent of recent advancements in remote sensing technologies has opened new pathways for detailed canopy height mapping. Highlighted in a study published in the Journal of Remote Sensing, this technological breakthrough facilitates more precise assessments of forest structure, thereby enriching our comprehension of forest dynamics, carbon sequestration capabilities, and the overarching influence of forests on climate regulation and biodiversity conservation.