"EU demand for wood pellets has increased forest harvesting for fuel, including clear-cutting fragile boreal forests in the EU and Canada, and wetland hardwood forests of the US South, write Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Mary S. Booth. [McBeth / Flickr]
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele is a climate scientist and professor at Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL). He is former vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2008-2015). Mary S. Booth is the director at the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PPI), an organisation promoting science-based policies to protect air, water, ecosystems, and the climate.
As the UN’s International Day of Forests approaches (March 21), it’s a good time to focus on the role of forests in fighting climate change.
But given the obvious climate and ecosystem benefits of protecting and expanding forests, people might well ask, why does the EU’s flagship policy on climate, the new Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) promote logging and burning forests for energy?
This question lies at the heart of a suit filed this month in the Court of Justice of the European Union on behalf of six plaintiffs from the EU and the US.
The suit is necessary because the policy process, which should have protected people, ecosystems, and the climate, has failed. There is no debate that burning wood for energy emits more greenhouse gases per unit energy than burning fossil fuels.
And there is no debate that EU demand for wood pellet fuel has increased forest harvesting for fuel, including clear-cutting fragile boreal forests in the EU and Canada, and wetland hardwood forests of the US South."
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