Seeing the wood for the trees

Using harvested wood products offers unique potential for a greener world, as Jane Molony, executive director, Paper Manufacturers Association of South Africa explains.

Our biggest allies in building a greener, low-carbon world are trees, and trees of all kinds. Trees and countless plant species take up carbon dioxide for energy and growth. In turn, they give us oxygen. Photosynthesis is quite remarkable.

A tree-poor country by global standards, South Africa has 500 000 hectares of closed-canopy indigenous forests. It is for this very reason that indigenous trees are never used for commercial production and why we have 1.2-million hectares of planted forests or timber plantations.

The latter supports our wood value chain, supplying wood for use in pulp, cellulose, paper, packaging, sawn timber and poles among other things. Akin to farming, forestry involves the sustainable and scientifically backed cultivation of specific tree species for such purposes.

For the pulp and paper industry, we have 850-million trees growing on more than 676 000 hectares. Less than 10% of this total area is harvested during any year and the same area is replanted with new trees – specially cultivated saplings.

These plantations share land with indigenous landscapes – grasslands, woodlands and wetlands – which are actively conserved on forestry-owned land, complementing biodiversity and waterstewardship efforts. Opponents of the forestry sector do not see the bigger picture. Many fail to recognise the difference between sustainable forestry, as described above, and deforestation.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations defines deforestation as “the conversion of forest to other land use independently of whether human-induced or not”, adding that deforestation is essentially referring to a change in land use, not in tree cover. Deforestation includes areas of forest converted to agriculture, pasture, water reservoirs and urban areas.

Sustainable forestry ensures that not only do we improve carbon sequestration by planting young trees, but also keep carbon stored in harvested wood products. And it’s not just conventional wood and paper that have this potential.

Cellulose has found application in textiles, sponges, paint, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, detergents and even laptop screens. And of course, by recycling paper, carbon in the paper fibres is kept locked up for longer. Recycling is not about “saving trees”.

By using more sustainably farmed harvested-wood products, we can take up more carbon, store more carbon and find low-carbon solutions for everyday needs. ■