Region Archives: International

Finland has come out against the EU’s draft “Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act” saying the proposed classification of biomass under the EU’s green finance rules goes against the country’s national interest. The EU taxonomy regulation spells out conditions under which economic activities can be considered sustainable. The majority of economic activities, including hydropower and the burning of biomass, were covered in April in a so-called “climate delegated act.” …But the Finnish government said it “does not support the adoption of the act in the current form”. …Under the proposal, “forestry would be excluded from the taxonomy, which would make it more difficult to access funding for forestry investments”. …The Swedish government is expected to align itself with the Finnish position but they would have to gather support form 13 other EU states accounting for 65% of the total EU population in order to block the act.

Low-emissions fuels for aircraft and cargo ships are targets of a new federal government initiative to harness organic waste for bioenergy, sparking calls for a ban on the use of native forest timber to fuel furnaces for power generation. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA) bioenergy road map, released on Thursday, has been backed with $34 million in public funds from Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor. …The government’s green tech finance agency…said waste from the forestry sector, created during milling and harvesting, represented 22 per cent of the total resource potential available to the sector, raising fears among conservation groups that logging of native forests could be spurred by increased demand for organic waste for biofuels. The Australian Forests and Climate Alliance’s submission to ARENA said whole logs could be “defined as ‘residue’ or ‘waste’, making this industry appear to simply be using leftovers” … for so-called waste recovery products…

The Forest Owners Association says the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has laid down a blueprint for the New Zealand forest and wood industry, with the release of ‘Forest Products in the Global Economy’, as part of the COP26 meeting and events in Glasgow. The New Zealand Forest Owners Association Chief Executive, and former Chair of the UN Advisory Committee on Sustainable Forest Industries, David Rhodes, says while trees are best known here for their ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, the future of forest products, as a replacement for petrochemical sourced materials, is equally important. “This just released FAO Report details what can be done with both timber itself, and what can be achieved as well using wood materials.”

With the release of the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative 2020 dataset, adding to its existing collection, there is now a decade’s worth of global maps which can be used to track recent changes in forest biomass. As vegetation grows and plants perform photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is pulled from the atmosphere and stored as biomass, which is released back into the air during disturbances, deforestation, and wildfires. Forests are the largest store of carbon on Earth’s land, but their ability to sequester is being strained due to human exploitation. Above-ground biomass is considered one of the 54 Essential Climate Variables listed by the Global Climate Observing System and further research on the role of forest carbon storage will help to predict changes in future biomass and its influence on the Earth system.

Renewable wood-based products can help combat climate change and achieve Sustainable Development Goals, according to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Engineered wood products and wood-based textile fibres are two emerging forest product categories that can provide renewable and sustainable solutions to the global crisis.  The production and consumption of engineered wood products are rising, mainly due to increased application in wood-frame multi-storey construction. Lyocell fibres are modern wood-based textile fibres … are more environmentally friendly… Bioeconomy has emerged as a concept for tackling challenges such as the over consumption of an overreliance on non-renewable natural resources. Forests and the forest sector are important components of a bioeconomy. … Developing awareness as well as addressing knowledge and implementation gaps in the global forest product value chain is crucial in ensuring the sustainability of a circular forest-based bioeconomy …

Finland intends to vote against the EU’s Climate Delegated Act over concerns about the criteria outlined in the proposal for forest management. The Act is part of the EU’s classification system, also known as the EU taxonomy, which establishes a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. Parliament’s Ministerial Committee on European Union Affairs indicated the intention to vote against the proposal following a meeting on Wednesday morning, but Finland’s official position will be finalised at a later date by Parliament’s Grand Committee. In a statement released on Wednesday morning, the government welcomed the objective of the delegated act but expressed concerns that aspects of the proposal “are difficult to understand and open to interpretation”. …The criteria contained in the draft delegated act has also raised concerns within the Finnish forest industry.

…many world leaders and corporate boards are embracing an increasingly popular idea to solve climate change: trees. The United Arab Emirates – one of the biggest oil producers in the world – promised to plant 100m mangroves by 2030. India said it aims to plant enough trees to cover a third of its land area with forests. Earlier this month the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, announced a $1bn fund towards planting trees, “revitalizing” grasslands in Africa and restoring landscapes across the US. … “These great teeming ecosystems – these cathedrals of nature – are the lungs of our planet,” Boris Johnson said, exalting the effort. But environmental groups and climate change researchers say there’s a serious problem with overrelying on such pledges: there just isn’t enough land on Earth to plant enough trees to soak up all the carbon that big polluters keep spewing into the atmosphere.

A protester has climbed on top of a train near a power plant in North Yorkshire. The Axe Drax campaign group said one of its activists “halted the train”, which was carrying wood pellets and heading to Drax Power station in Selby. Images on social media show the activist, dressed in orange, waving a flag bearing the Extinction Rebellion logo. It comes as the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow draws to an end. Drax said there had been “no impact”. Axe Drax said the demonstration was being carried out “to send a clear message to COP26 – stop the fell”. The activist, who goes by the name of Coffee, said: “We need to keep the trees in the ground, we need a U-turn on the decision to phase out deforestation by 2030, we need to slam on the brakes. 

The EU’s agriculture ministers have welcomed the publication of a new EU forest strategy for 2030. In conclusions adopted during today’s agriculture and fisheries meeting, ministers recognised the need for forests to contribute more to the European Green Deal and global targets such as the 2030 Agenda. In particular, they: highlighted the essential role of forests for human health and a healthy natural environment; agreed that forestry can play a key role in the EU’s transition to a green, climate neutral and competitive circular bio-economy… and welcomed the new strategy’s emphasis on promoting sustainable wood-based products and the proposal to set up a new partnership for forestry research and innovation. The Council also highlighted the need to strike a balance between the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable forest management, and stressed the importance of respecting and maintaining the diversity of forests and forest management practices in different member states and regions. 

The Forest Stewardship Council welcomes the Declaration issued by 105 countries at the Glasgow CoP26 meeting, stating their commitment to work together to halt and reverse the loss and degradation of the world’s forests by 2030. The focus on protection and sustainable management of forests is imperative in any solution to the world’s climate crisis. Without increased efforts to protect forests, it will not be possible to meet the ambition of the Paris Agreement to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2°C. The Declaration, though not the first of its kind, has seen a higher majority of countries endorsing it than any previous attempts, including those areas most at risk of deforestation and dependent on the economic value of the forest industry.

COP26 recently wrapped up in Glasgow and, as expected, ambitious climate goals were agreed. Perhaps the most poignant takeaway from the conference is this: The private sector is “all in” when it comes to driving climate-cooperative investments via environmental, social and governance initiatives. Longtime financier Mark Carney noted that $130 trillion in assets are now pursuing net-zero emissions by 2050. We’ve seen this type of excitement before—most recently with the Paris Agreement in 2015—only to see very little in the way of meaningful action. Will this time be different? …Using wood as a feedstock avoids any sensitivities associated with food-to-fuel conversion. …Innovations and the production of biofuels are going to continue to increase because climate change pressures are driving it. Enabling a complementary range of existing renewable resources that includes sustainable biomass will help us reach climate goals faster… regardless of what happens at COP26.

Ginger Cassady

World governments representing 85 percent of global forests including the Amazon, the Boreal and the Congo Basin recently signed a pledge, said to be backed by $19 billion in public and private spending, to end deforestation by 2030. The pledge isn’t perfect, it asks for another decade to end deforestation when frontline communities are clear that deforestation in places like the Amazon and Indonesia needs to end now before we pass critical, potentially irrevocable tipping points of destruction. Ending deforestation is a much-needed step forward. But the pace, amount of resources allocated and the details on how actual implementation will be monitored and verified are seriously underwhelming in contrast to the urgent scale of what’s clearly needed. Even this imperfect pledge risks being utterly undermined by U.S. banks and brands that remain greedy and myopically focused on reaping record profits year after year.

GLASGOW, Scotland — The European Union brags that its climate ambitions are more aggressive than anywhere else in the world. There’s just one problem: Europe gets 60 percent of its renewable energy from biomass fuels, a process that uses wood scraps, organic waste and other crops to generate heat and electricity in specially designed power plants. U.N. rules allow the European Union to write off the emissions as carbon neutral, so long as sustainable guidelines are met, even though burning the fuel can release more warming gases into the atmosphere than coal. …For now, much of Europe’s emissions reductions are being achieved by burning biomass instead of coal — and then not counting the resulting greenhouse gases, which critics say they should. That contributes to the gap detailed in a Washington Post investigation that found that many countries are significantly underreporting their emissions.

Sustainable forestry looks like becoming a key part of the battle against climate change. With COP26 well underway, there have already been a number of commitments regarding deforestation. For example, more than 100 world leaders have signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forest and Land Use. This is a commitment to end deforestation by 2030. For these targets to become a reality, logging practices are going to need to change. So, what exactly did nations agree to at COP26? Ending and reversing deforestation by 2030 sounds all well and good, but it’s a little light on detail. …The first thing these signatories have agreed to do, is to hurl some money at the problem. The parties have pledged $19.2bn of public and private funds. This money will go towards sustainable logging, as well as helping to restore damaged land, tackle wildfires and support indigenous communities.

David Hopkins

LONDON — Billed as a “call to action” from the global private sector involved in forest management and timber production, the Tropical Timber Accord – “Global Forests need Global Governance“, developed in concert by the UK Timber Trade Federation (TTF), highlights that strong, inclusive legal frameworks are essential for the sustainable management of tropical forests. The paper proposes a new governance approach for the global tropical forest sector based on national standards within an international framework. Crucially, it also proposes supporting an international secretariat to administer and oversee the development of this framework. Produced from a series of workshops led by TTF, the Accord is supported by both producer and consumer nations. …David Hopkins, CEO of the TTF, said… “This is the first time that the global private sector has come together to advocate for greater global governance and enforceable legal frameworks.”

The UK Met Office has announced that it’s launching an experiment that will measure the Amazon rainforest’s response to climate change. Speaking at an event at COP26, researchers explained they will pump controlled amounts of carbon into small areas of the rainforest in Brazil in a process called Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE). The experiment – named AmazonFACE – will then measure how this carbon affects the trees, and use this information to get more accurate predictions of how rainforests can help in the fight against climate change. …The Met Office thinks this experiment will allow us to see how trees will react when there’s even more carbon in our atmosphere in the future. They’ve said the AmazonFACE experiment will “work like a time machine” – they’ll replicate what the conditions are projected to be like in 2050, and measure how the forest copes.

In the opening days of global climate change conference COP26, more than a hundred countries signed a declaration saying that they would reform land use, clean up agriculture, trade, and “reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030.” The countries, including the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, contain 90 percent of the world’s forest cover, and the declaration came along with $20 billion worth of pledges from governments and private industries. …In 2014, a smaller group of 39 countries signed an agreement called the New York Declaration that aimed to cut tropical deforestation in half globally by 2020. …Successes under the declaration have been fleeting. …Even if countries follow through on the commitment, they may have different understandings of what it means to “halt deforestation.” …Sustainable forest management could mean policies that allow cutting old-growth forest as long as the land was replanted later, or offsetting cut forests by replanting elsewhere.