Paper industry: Ensuring sustainable domestic wood use
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The German pulp and paper industry urges, also against the background of increasing demands on forestry, to ensure the use of domestic wood and to implement political demands on forestry only on the basis of a solid volume balance.
While a high demand for wood can be assumed in the future and the forestry industry is trying to cope with climate change, there are increasing demands in politics for the renunciation of use in domestic forests. "The reforestation of the damaged areas created in recent years and the active conversion to climate-adapted forests will be the central challenge of the forestry and timber industry in the future," explained the chairman of the Forestry and Timber Committee in the Association of DIE PAPIERINDUSTRIE, Wolfgang Beck. However, there is currently no reliable volume balance that supports the demand for restrictions on use.
"Renewable wood from domestic forests is indispensable for a whole range of value chains," said Beck, "including the paper industry." Before political goals, such as the expansion of set-aside and a renunciation of use with transfer payments to forest owners - as recently in the ministry's draft for the remuneration of ecosystem services - are implemented, the creation of a reliable data basis in the form of a volume balance is imperative, he said. This should be reviewed and revised every year.
The Committee's Vice-Chairman, Otto Bruder, referred to the calamity events of recent years and urged that private forests in particular be put in a position to cope with the upcoming challenges of climate-stable reforestation.
