BCSEA Victoria Chapter Event: Managing BC’s Forests for a Cooler Planet

Managing BC’s Forests for a Cooler Planet: Carbon Storage, Sustainable Jobs and Conservation

Forests are one of the few important natural assets that we have to combat the effects of climate change. Living, healthy trees and plants store atmospheric carbon. The more of them we have, the more carbon stored.

At the same time forests, and more particularly the wood in trees, are viewed as potentially "green" and renewable sources of energy. BC is now a major exporter of this wood-based energy in the form of wood pellets. Many European countries are engaged in switching heating sources from coal and oil to wood, and are claiming carbon credits for such activities on the basis of wood being a renewable resource. The intention in BC is to export more wood to meet this growing global demand.

But how green is forest-derived energy? In pursuing markets for such exports, is BC compromising both its own and global efforts to maximize carbon storage and reduce GHG emissions? In this talk, Ben Parfitt, will lay out a blueprint for how BC's forests could—with greater care—be managed in a manner that truly maximizes carbon storage. There is a role for wood-based renewable energy in the mix, but a limited one. Far more important will be conserving older forests; delaying logging elsewhere so that trees can grow older and store more carbon; making significant and sustained efforts at reforestation; and doing a much better job of diversifying the forest products that we make.

The BCSEA welcomes you to this free presentation. No registration is required.

Ben Parfitt has been writing on natural resource issues in BC for the past 25 years and is the recipient of numerous awards for his investigative journalism on a host of topics involving the forest and natural gas industries, endangered wildlife, the environmental impacts of introduced species, global warming and hazardous wastes. He is an author and co-author of two books on forestry and currently divides his time between work as a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, where he researches and writes on natural resource and environmental issues, and work as a freelance writer and researcher. He lives in Victoria with his wife and fellow-scribe, Alicia Priest, and their daughter, Charlotte.