The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
has said that forests have an acclaimed role as a carbon sink needed to tackle
climate change and called to mind that when protecting forests, people should
not forget the trees, reports NaijaAgroNet.
FAO, in its latest study said that less known
is how their contribution could be scaled up even after a tree has been logged.
NaijaAgroNet gathered that the new
publication, Forestry for a low-carbon future: Integrating forests and
wood products in climate change strategies, offered insights in
how to catalyse a "virtuous cycle" that exploits the life cycle of
wood products - ranging from home furniture to wood pellets burned for fuel -
to enhance and even multiply the well-known ability of forests to remove and
store carbon from the atmosphere.
The Assistant Director-General for Forestry, René
Castro-Salazar, said that forests are at the heart of the transition to low-carbon
economies, stressing "not only because of their double role as sink and
source of emissions, but also through the wider use of wood products to
displace more fossil fuel intense products."
Forests, Castro-Salazar pointed out, do
herculean work in locking carbon dioxide into leaves, branches and soils, while
deforestation and forest degradation account for up to 12 percent of worldwide
greenhouse gas emissions. The relative speed and cost-effectiveness with which
forests make their presence - or absence - felt is one key reason they figure
prominently in the plans countries are crafting to meet commitments made in the
Paris Agreement on climate change.
Designed primarily for policy makers and
experts but of interest to architects and the energy industry, the report -
the fruit of innovative collaboration involving more than 100 experts - looks
at how forests can be harnessed to the global climate change challenge.
FAO further said that its guiding message is
that optimal engineering of the carbon lifecycle of trees and wood products
allows, over the long term, for sustainably harvested forests to complement and
even enhance the climate mitigation benefits provided by conserved forests.