Managing the climate crisis: Outlook for forest and timber utilization
CAREFORPARIS presents scenarios by BFW, BOKU, Wood K plus and Umweltbundesamt
Vienna, October 2019: Forests can contribute to climate change mitigation; however, managing this contribution correctly requires a comprehensive understanding of how forestry and climate change influence one another. In Austria, a significant proportion of the national anthropogenic CO2 emissions are offset by CO2 uptake in Austrian forests. Furthermore, the use of wood instead of non-renewable materials leads to avoided emissions elsewhere. Nonetheless, forests and the forestry sector are, and will continue to be, impacted by climate change thus raising a question mark over the national future sink strength and anthropogenic emissions in other sectors. Direct climate change impacts as well as the consequences of climate change adaptation may diminish forest carbon storage and affect timber utilisation, which could significantly increase Austria’s future net greenhouse gas emissions.
This is demonstrated by scenarios from the project CAREFORPARIS, a collaboration of the Austrian Federal Research Centre for Forest (BFW), the University of Natural Resources Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Wood K plus and the Environmental Agency Austria (Umweltbundesamt). The results were presented at a workshop on October 23 2019 at BOKU.
Please find PRESS RELEASE here.
Dr Alice Ludvig and Dr Gerhard Weiss from EFI Forest Policy Research Network/University of Natural Resources Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) were involved in this project.
