Why sustainable logging matters

Who would ever have believed that the mighty Amazon would switch from being a carbon sink to a net carbon emitter as it did in 2021? EU forests also lost 25% of their annual carbon sinks from 2002 to 2020 and some, like Austria’s, have completely lost their forest carbon sink because of increased biomass use. Although Swiss forests have some of the highest forest CO2 stocks in Europe, a 2021 study co-authored by BAFU and WSL warned that they could become net emitters of carbon in as little as 30 years if logging increases. 

And logging is all set to increase.

The Swiss government aims to “adapt forests by increasing resilience to climate change” and “reduce CO2 emissions by substituting […] fossil fuels”. Simply put, we will cut and burn ever more trees to heat our homes. The canton of Bern, which logs and burns more wood than any other, wants to increase its energy wood production by up to 170%, despite the Federal Office for the Environment’s (FOEN) warning that “strategies that only increase the use of wood as biofuel are not efficient from a CO2 balance perspective”. The canton of Zurich has already admitted that demand for energy wood exceeds regional supply and that the planned biomass plants exceed the estimated exploitable potential. Yet sales of domestic pellet burners are soaring and wood-fired district heating systems are multiplying across the country. 

Where is all the required extra wood going to come from?

Swiss trees are subject to the same market forces as Amazonian and EU trees. Increasing demand will mean more logging regardless of our “robust” forestry laws. And, if our laws are so robust, why are clearcuts multiplying and why is logging on the Mittelland already unsustainable? Officials admit that the rate of extraction and tree death is outpacing growth, but they now argue that logging is sustainable “in the long term”.

It is time to cut the greenwashing, not the trees.