Sustainable forestry

Intact tropical forests are wonderful carbon sinks. However, if our forests continue to be destroyed or illegally logged, they could become net carbon sources and pose an additional threat to a stable climate.

- MARTIN OLIVER

Australia’s native forests have long been a stage for adversarial confrontations between loggers and protesters who engage in blockades and who are willing to lock on to equipment in order to immobilise it. They represent two divergent polarised viewpoints: one reductionist outlook that sees trees as a resource to be harvested, and another holistic perspective that views them as part of an ecological whole and a home to biodiversity.

Recently scientists and some of the media have been emphasising the role of the world’s forests in connection with climate change. Intact tropical forests are carbon sinks, although if they degrade they can become net carbon sources and pose an additional threat to a stable climate. The logging of forests contributes to climate change due to the release of the carbon they are storing, the loss of their carbon sink, and carbon generated from disturbed forest soils. Logging in peat-rich areas, often tropical, further multiplies climate impacts. This usually involves draining carbon-rich peat, and releases methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than CO2. In jurisdictions with a carbon price, there is also an economic value in leaving forests standing.

Deforestation and the illegal logging problem

Due to their high biodiversity, tropical forests generally have a greater ecological value than those in other parts of the world, but they are tragically being lost. Some of this is linked to timber harvesting for timber or paper, although much is tied to other commodities such as beef, soya, rubber, leather, palm oil, chocolate and coffee.