Darmstadt demonstrates that forests become climate-resilient on their own if left undisturbed

When Darmstadt decided to take the forest of Westwald completely out of use in 2020 and leave it to its own devices, it was in a desolate state. Climate change appeared to have taken a heavy toll on the forest.

Since then, scientists have been monitoring the unmanaged forest and have observed the following: The tree mortality rate has fallen from 6.4% to 1% within a year. The forest is establishing a new ecosystem of its own which is adapted to climate change.

By declaring the forest a protected area, Darmstadt has prioritized climate benefits over economic interests and, according to scientists at Darmstadt University of Technology, can help cool the city’s overheated climate in summer.

The situation is different in Switzerland, where forests around towns and villages are currently being clear-cut for energy wood, destroying the forest’s role as a water reserve, rainmaker and climate regulator.

Photo: One of many: the excessively managed Könizberg Forest / Canton of Bern

North Yorkshire’s Green councillors file a complaint: biomass plants are not carbon-neutral, clean or have low emissions

Drax, one of the world’s largest pellet manufacturers and operators of biomass power stations, repeatedly claims that the energy it generates from wood pellets is clean, low-emission, carbon-negative and contributes to decarbonisation.

The Green councillors in North Yorkshire have filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) challenging these claims, describing them as misleading and false.

Councillor Warneken emphasises that environmental claims should be clearly evidence-based and understood by the public, so that genuine low-carbon innovations are recognised in the market.

In Switzerland, too, wood-fired power stations and pellet heating systems are declared to be climate-neutral, environmentally friendly and low-emission, even though countless scientists and organisations worldwide – including, amongst others, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – prove the opposite.

Photo: Fiedler Beck Ingenieure AG / New Basel wood-fired power station, which allegedly produces largely CO₂-neutral district heating

Hofheim: ‘Forest rather than timberland’ – without heavy harvesting machinery, the forest has no problem coping with climate change

Since as far back as 2013, the local population has been made aware of the reckless devastation caused by logging tracks that are far too wide in the Hofheim Forest. Now, the new association ‘Waldwärts’ is calling for 1,400 hectares of the municipal forest, which consists mainly of beech trees, to be placed under protection.

According to Dr. Christian Storm, a biologist at Darmstadt Technical University, an intact forest has no climate problems, as the forest creates its own climate (with the help of a balanced water ecosystem) – provided it is not damaged by heavy harvesting machinery and the trees are allowed to grow old.

In Switzerland (particularly in the canton of Bern), beech trees are being clear-cut for fuel because they are apparently not ‘climate-fit’. Storm comments: ‘Trees have the ability to adapt to changing conditions. One can even detect changes in their genetic material.’ Beech trees could live to be over 350 years old if the forestry industry did not fell them.

Subsidising clearcutting to create “climate resilient forests”

Take a forest. Clearcut it. Replant with “climate resilient” species. And presto. Problem solved.

Or so some cantons will have you believe. Indeed, a number of them are offering forest owners generous subsidies to replace their existing forests with “rejuvenated forests adapted to climate change”. 

The Burgergemeinde Bargen, in the canton of Bern (pictured) accepted the challenge in 2024, clearcut a section of its forest and received CHF 18,000 in return. But the canton isn’t stopping there and intends to subsidise the clearcut of an area the size of 500 football fields so that it can experiment with creating “climate-adapted” Bernese forests and “preserve their vitality in order to guarantee the long term forest services which the public demand.”

How very thoughtful. 

There is though a slight fly in the ointment… or could that be a woodworm in the woodwork?

Natural ecosystems, be they wetlands or woodlands maintain themselves. They are self-organising, self-regulating and therefore self-sustaining and do not require human intervention.

Logged forests by comparison are artificial systems where these natural processes have been interrupted. The brittle, exposed ranks of the replanted trees in their plastic tree guards and the brittle, exposed soil in the above photo have nothing in common with the complex mixed forest which they replaced. Not only that, but clearcutting causes particularly large emissions of CO2 and it can take almost two decades for clearcut forests to stop emitting CO2 and actually start compensating for CO2 losses. Moreover, if the cleared forest consisted of hardwood, then you can be pretty sure it was burnt because two thirds of our precious hardwoods are now going up in smoke. 

Yet logging and clearcutting are now being prescribed to actually “improve forest health” or, to use the latest catchword, to “promote forest resilience” in the face of climate change.

You couldn’t make it up if you tried.

And here is another woodworm for you.

“Resilience” is a scientific term which simply means the time which an ecosystem requires to regain its structure and composition (its mix of tree sizes, ages and species in the case of a forest) and function (its nutrient, energy and carbon cycles for example) after a disruption.

Logging lowers resilience, but the canton is not listening to science. It is listening to the professional forestry and the biomass industries which have always been concerned first and foremost with timber exploitation.

August 2026

Subsidising clearcutting to create “climate resilient forests”

Read our new article in the We Expose section to find out how cantons are generously subsidising clear-cutting and the entirely unscientific practice of climate-adapted forest conversion with taxpayers’ money.

Canton of Zurich: No more subsidies for the use of wood energy

A study carried out as early as 2023 showed that Zurich burns more wood than is growing back – as is now the case in many other cantons in Switzerland.

Now, both the Canton of Zurich and the Federal Office for the Environment have confirmed that the potential for energy wood from local forests has almost been exhausted. This is primarily due to district heating systems, wood-fired power stations and wood-burning heating systems, which were installed as replacements for oil or gas heating systems. Wood now has to be imported from abroad to meet demand, which is why Zurich has stopped subsidies for wood-burning heating systems, such as pellet boilers, and recommends the installation of heat pumps.

Around the world, organisations and scientists are calling on governments to stop burning forests to produce heat and electricity, as this has been shown to emit more pollutants and CO₂ than fossil fuels, causes maximum damage to the climate, pollutes the air to the detriment of public health, and accelerates the loss of forests and biodiversity.

Scapeler helps people who suffer from wood smoke

Pollutants from wood burning pose a major health risk. A risk that usually goes unnoticed because, as is the case in Switzerland, for example, air quality monitoring stations are located in irrelevant places (along motorways, on the outskirts of villages, in fields, etc.) where the air is clean. However, it is also because the health risks posed by wood-burning heating systems are concealed or downplayed by governments, authorities and industry representatives.

Scapeler, a Dutch company, is now putting an end to this game of hide-and-seek. It helps people affected by wood smoke to make the pollution visible where it actually occurs by providing tools such as monitoring systems, analysis tools and visualisations, conducting research and sharing knowledge. The measured data can’t be disputed by either the polluters or the authorities.

Switzerland, on the other hand, is tackling the problem of pollution from wood burning by having the authorities refuse to carry out measurements in areas with wood-burning heating systems.

European Citizens’ Initiative: Nature should be able to take legal action

Spain set an example in 2022: the court granted a lagoon in south-eastern Murcia the right to exist as an ecosystem and to develop naturally, and ordered a seven-year prison sentence and compensation of over 500,000 euros for a company that had contributed to the deterioration of the situation.

A European Citizens’ Initiative is now calling on the European Commission to enact legislation allowing deforested forests or polluted rivers to take offenders to court.

The petition is part of a broad, global movement and, amongst other things, a backlash against the EU’s policy of failing to implement some of the strictest environmental laws or even relaxing them.

The situation is no different in Switzerland, where even areas strictly protected under the Bern Convention are being cleared, with no consequences to follow. At least, climate-adaptive forest conversion is increasingly being exposed as unscientific and devastating for forests and biodiversity.

Deforestation and reforestation are possible because the logging industry and governments simply redefine what counts as a forest.

Forests are being transformed in many countries.

Also in Switzerland, hectares of intact forests are being clear-cut in order to create a newly defined, ‘climate-fit’ forest by planting supposedly climate-resilient saplings, without acknowledging the loss that precedes the planting.

A forest is a living system: soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals – complexity accumulated over decades, specific to its land and climate. A forest is a cooling system, a water system and a climate system. A forest cannot be designed. A forest cannot be harvested and replanted.

You don’t need to be a forestry engineer, a forester or a biologist to understand that it takes decades for planted saplings to become part of the forest ecosystem (if at all), yet we need the forest NOW.

Climate-resilient forest transformation changes the very definition of a forest, rather than protecting existing intact forests.

Photo: right: an intact forest that fulfils the functions mentioned above / left: a “forest” made ‘climate-fit’

Warning of the German Federal Centre for Health Education: Wood smoke increases the risk of dementia

Scientific evidence shows that we can influence up to 40 per cent of our risk of developing dementia.

The 12 modifiable risk factors also include wood-burning heating systems, as listed in a leaflet published by the German Federal Centre for Health Education (Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung)as part of the National Dementia Strategy. According to the leaflet, people should avoid using wood-burning heating systems and, where possible, avoid exposure to second-hand smoke, whether from tobacco or from burning wood.

This is no easy task in Switzerland. Wood-fired heating systems are promoted and subsidised. Yet even modern pellet heating systems, which are praised for being clean, are major polluters. According to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Achim Dittler (Head of the ‘Gas-Particle Systems’ research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), a single pellet heating system is enough to pollute the entire surrounding area.

Low-smoke heating systems, in particular, emit a significant amount of ultrafine dust particles that are harmful to health – not to mention soot and toxic gases.