Years ago my wife wanted to get a glimpse of newly-weds Prince Charles and Princess Diana, so we went to watch the polo at Cowdray Park. The Princess arrived in a cavalcade of limos, the Prince by helicopter and afterwards they departed in an Aston Martin that was delivered on a trailer.¤
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that the timber industry still has a way to go in making its environmental case. In the debate on climate change and saving the rainforest, it still comes second best to the heir apparent, a man with a carbon footprint the size of a small country.
The Prince’s latest green initiative is his Rainforest Project. This has aims nobody could criticise: to highlight the CO2 absorbing, biodiversity-enriching benefits of the forest and preserve it for future generations. Its latest triumph was a Times newspaper supplement last week in which worthies from David Attenborough to Jonathon Porritt lined up to express support. But in this, as in the Project’s other communications, the vital role sustainable timber production can play in maintaining the forest was ignored. Its strategy is to take commerce out of the equation by getting countries that don’t have any rainforest to pay those that do not to touch it.
A knock-on from presenting timber solely as part of the deforestation problem is that, even when it comes from patently sustainable forest, it is viewed with suspicion. Hence, as last week’s American Hardwood Export Council European Convention highlighted, the US hardwood sector is having to jump through certification hoops that clearly don’t suit its fragmented ownership structure even though its forest is growing at a rate of knots.
But the good news this week is that European timber sector bodies have helped convince the EU Environmental Council that sustainably-produced wood products have carbon storage and forest-preserving benefits. The Council, in turn, will take the message to the upcoming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, which Prince Charles, no less, is due to attend.
