Basing worldwide forestry practices on Sweden’s system could stop climate change, researchers at Södra have said.
This would see forest cover increased by 1% in half the world’s forests each year, combining “intelligent forestry” with harvesting to continuously grow the world’s timber reserves.
This would initially help reduce increases in carbon dioxide emissions, but could halt further increases altogether, “possibly within as little as 20 years”.
“To implement this, we would need to break the negative trends of deforestation, forest damage and poor forest management on a global basis,” said Södra’s siviculture manager Göran Örlander.
“But we’d be rewarded with an increase in carbon uptake of almost two billion tonnes per year.”
Forests cover around four billion ha of the world’s surface although only two billion ha are suitable for management based on the Swedish system, added Södra.
