Wood should be the easiest of sustainable products to produce, use and monitor. In the battle against climate change trees take up carbon from the atmosphere; forests store water and then produce rain by releasing moisture to form clouds. Using wood for building or furniture stores the carbon for generations. Wood products are becoming ever more important, for example replacing plastic bags with paper ones.
It is therefore shocking to read in a report from the Zoological Society of London that only 6% of the world’s most important timber and pulp producers and traders are taking steps to understand the threats of climate change to their business. In addition only 20 out of 97 companies in the study have committed to zero-deforestation – cultivating as many trees as they cut down. Together these companies control forests covering a land area 20 times the size of Belgium and are carving them up with roads, sawmills and forest clearances.
The Society says that, if humans are to succeed in saving the planet from overheating, forests will have take up one third of the carbon that needs to be removed from the atmosphere. It is also concerned about the catastrophic loss of species while bluntly pointing out to investors that bankruptcy faces companies that run out of trees.
