GRAMPIAN REGIONAL FORESTRY FORUM SIGNS UP TO TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE

Guest speaker Aberdeen University’s Professor Pete Smith, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave a talk that highlighted the roles that forestry and land use can play.

The awareness raising talk to invited stakeholders from across Grampian will help the sector to identify ways of working together locally to address the changes that are expected to arise from climate change.

The Forum - made up of representatives of the range of interests in forestry, including environmental, social and business interests - advises Forestry Commission Scotland on forestry policy and practice in the Grampian area.

Priscilla Gordon-Duff, Chair of the Forum, said.

"Professor Smith was very clear that life is changing and whether we like it or not we will have to change too.

"Agriculture and forestry have as important an impact on climate change – though perhaps not as great – as transport and energy supply. Adapting our ways of working will help us to prepare for and to lessen the impact of climate change.

"We have recently experienced for ourselves some unusual weather here in the north east – including droughts, floods and high winds. From a business perspective, the forestry and land use sectors have to make sure that it is prepared for these sorts of changes. It may involve some financial cost but burying our heads in the sand and taking a ‘business as usual’ attitude will prove a lot more costly.

• Planting trees on mineral soils rather than on organic soils
• Woodfuel
• Promoting timber in the construction sector (locking up carbon in buildings)
• Changing harvesting techniques
• Cultivating the appropriate species on the appropriate site