The protection of forests is the cheapest and most effective measure available for the abatement of climate change.
Did you know that there is more carbon stored in the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems (plants and soil) than in the oceans and atmosphere combined? Forests suck carbon out of the atmosphere like a giant vacuum cleaner during the process of photosynthesis, when converting carbon dioxide into biomass (such as branches, trunks, roots and soil carbon) and the oxygen that we breathe.
Australia’s forests store a huge amount of carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. The forests of south eastern Australia, for example, have been found to contain 640 tonnes of carbon per hectare - and some Mountain Ash forests can contain 2,000 tonnes per hectare.
Logging releases much of this carbon back into the atmosphere. A dangerous new logging industry is under development in Australia, which aims to cut down and burn our forests to produce electricity - called ‘biomass burning.’ This would be a disaster for our climate as well as for biodiversity.