After 2 years of negotiations, Dutch NGO’s and Utility Companies agreed on a biomass policy for wood pellets currently burned for electricity. We in the Southern states know all too well that the drastic increase and scale of demand for wood pellets, driven by countries such as the Netherlands, have had devastating effects on forests and communities. Biomass policies from European countries must be more aggressive with timelines for adequate sustainability standards; our forests depend on it.
The US Forest Service’s Southern Research Station released a report assessing the current and potential impact of the rapidly expanding wood pellet export market on the forests of the US […]
Dogwood Alliance is excited to announce the addition of 3 Greencorps organizers to our team! This month, John Qua, Rita Frost, and Katya English joined the Dogwood team to help stop the expansion of the biomass industry and to save our Southern forests. They will be working in key biomass export cities: Wilmington, Savannah, and Baton Rouge. They join our team at a crucial time as the biomass industry gears up to expand, threatening some of our most biodiverse wetland and bottomland hardwood coastal forests.
Over 50,000 US citizens are appealing to European Commissioners Arias Cañete and Vella for a change in the EU legislation that has caused a boom in the demand for wood pellets produced from Southern US forests. Their demand is today being delivered to the European Commission by BirdLife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau.
The longer forests are allowed to grow, the greater the climate benefit. This basic biological fact has given rise to a number of international programs and policies designed to encourage the protection of forests as carbon sinks. In fact, the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which many European nations are signatories, has developed a variety of tools and policy frameworks to encourage greater forest conservation.
