Report calls for forest preservation

A new report says sustainable forestry could take hold in developing nations if wealthier countries contributed funding to help build capacity for environmentally friendly forest practices.

The report from the U.K. calls on the international community to enable rainforest countries to halve deforestation by 2020 and make the global forest sector carbon neutral by 2030.

"That can be achieved through a 75 percent cut in deforestation, and the remaining 25 percent by reforestation," said Johan Eliasch, the author of the report, in a news conference.

Eliasch, chairman of the management board and group CEO of Netherlands-based sporting goods manufacturer Head, is U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's special representative on deforestation and clean energy.

He's also co-chairman of Cool Earth, a U.K. charity set up to protect endangered rainforests around the world. Eliasch became invested in the fight against deforestation in 2006, when he bought a 400,000 acre plot in the Amazon rainforest from a logging company for a reported $14 million.

The report, called 'Climate Change: Financing Global Forests,' was an independent review commissioned by Brown and led by Eliasch, who worked with the U.K.'s Office of Climate Change on the review.

The lofty goals of the report, which could be a boon to the sustainable forestry industry, comes with a hefty price tag. Eliasch said, "Access to finance for this needs to be done through carbon markets and other funding initiatives."

But the proposal will need some cash upfront to build capacity. "We need $4 billion, we estimate, over the next five years."

And the cashflow isn't likely to stop there. The report said if deforestation is to be halved by 2020, additional public-private financing of $11 billion to $19 billion per year may be required to fill the funding gap left by carbon markets as they grow.

According to the review, forestry produces around 17 per cent of global emissions, making it the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions – larger than the entire global transport sector. In the tropics, it's estimated that an area of forest the size of England is cleared every year, and current annual emissions from deforestation are comparable to the total annual CO2 emissions of the U.S. or China.

A number of forestry companies are already involved in sustainable practices, as well as the use of waste material for new products or fuels.

Last year, Helsinki, Finland-based forest products company UPM-Kymmene started selling a wood composite called UPM ProFi that's made from leftover paper and plastic into a wood composite it calls UPM ProFi (see UPM making wood from waste).

The company, which manages over 4.9 million acres of forest in Canada, Finland, the U.K. and the U.S., uses 2.9 million tonnes of recovered post consumer paper annually and said biofuels account for 60 percent of the fuels used at its plants.

UPM has also set up a division to develop biomass to liquid diesel, and is aiming to become a significant producer of liquid biofuels for transportation (see Finnish forestry products giant to start producing bio fuel).

With the new report, Eliasch is hoping to do more than just raise awareness, he's looking to make sustainable forestry a significant part of a global climate change framework.

He said "it's essential that deforestation is included in Copenhagen for a post-2012 agreement."

A treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol is expected to be adopted at the December 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

"If we act together — we're quick, decisive — we can make this work," said Eliasch.

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