FT participates in Environment Tasmania’s Forest and Climate Change Forum

As part of Forestry Tasmania’s ongoing commitment to engage with its critics and maintain lines of communication with the public, Dr Hans Drielsma will take part in the upcoming “Forests and Climate Change - Issues in a Tasmanian Context” forum. The event is being put on by Environment Tasmania and will be held at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, 23 April at the Dechaineax Theatre, University of Tasmania (UTAS) School of Art, Hunter St, Hobart.



Dr Drielsma will be participating as one of the panel speakers and we would like to encourage as many people as possible to attend and participate in the debate.

The forum will be chaired by Dr Kate Crowley, climate change policy analyst with UTAS’ School of Government. Other invited speakers include Professor David Bowman (UTAS School of Plant Science), Mr Peter Boyer (The Climate Project), Mr Barry Chipman (Timber Communities Australia), and Mr Alistair Graham, (Tasmanian Conservation Trust).

Wood and wood-based building materials have important advantages when compared to building materials made from cement and steel, which require enormous energy inputs as part of production. Further, forests and trees absorb greenhouse gases (GHGs) as they grow (and regrow). In light of these considerations, and all the other factors that are attributed to greenhouse effect, it’s suprising that Environment Tasmania would want to limit this climate change debate to forestry.

It is important that Forestry Tasmania shares its expertise and knowledge with the community so that people are informed about forest carbon and understand that well-managed forests are part of the climate change solution.

The relationship between carbon and trees is sometimes misunderstood, and in some cases misrepresented. To help inform the public on how trees and carbon interact, Forestry Tasmania has published a new brochure that explains how trees, forests, and forest products store carbon.
click to download FT's new carbon brochure (1,389 KB PDF file)

According to an independent report commissioned by Forestry Tasmania, state forests are currently storing around 326 million tonnes of carbon. By 2050, the amount of carbon stored in state forests will increase by some 31 million tonnes to 357 million tonnes, or an average of 720,000 tonnes per year. To put it another way, each year Tasmania’s state forests are absorbing the carbon released by 585,365 cars, or 24% of the entire state’s annual emissions.

Trees eat carbon for breakfast, to say nothing of lunch and dinner. Young growing forests remove carbon from the atmosphere at a greater rate than mature forests. Given that trees are growing in Tasmania faster than they are being harvested, the result is that an increasingly large bank of carbon is stored on the landscape, with harvesting accounting for a withdrawal of only a portion of the interest.

Did you know that using timber in home construction instead of steel or concrete can save up to 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide per house? For more information on trees and carbon, download a copy of the new brochure from Forestry Tasmania’s web site or drop by any FT office.

return to Branchline Home

---