ONCE, in an African country explored by a prominent Scot, there was a family living in a simple brick house. Papa sometimes went up the hill for days at a time to chop down trees. His bundles of wood were left to smoulder under blankets of earth. The charcoal was bound into cubes, and taken into the city to provide people with fuel to cook.
Chopping down trees was not allowed, but there was no alternative fuel, so it happened. Not enough wood grew to replace what was felled, so animals and birds no longer had a home.
Everyone noticed the weather was changing. In the dry season, the
sun was getting hotter, and the ground becoming drier. In the rainy season, downpours were heavier, and water often rushed down the parched, treeless hillside, flooding the villages.
Thousands of miles away, in a country of mountains and lakes, a group of people talked about chopping down trees to make heat. It was seen as a good thing in this country. In fact, the people had embarked on a quest to make much more heat from wood in an attempt to help stop the weather changing in the African country.
This modern fairy tale is no fantasy. Forest conservation in the southern hemisphere, and using more wood fuel in the northern hemisphere, are now recognised as defining issues in the heat of climate change policy. How we manage, and use, our forests is critical for all our futures. Like huge lungs, forests soak up and produce oxygen.
Tropical deforestation is the second largest cause of climate change and the Stern Report on the issue says: "The loss of natural forests contributes more to global (carbon] emissions each year than the transport sector. Curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way to reduce emissions."
Forests regulate climate patterns in their area, acting as giant reservoirs of moisture and warmth. They slowly release water into streams and rivers. Around the world, 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods.
In the UK, we too once chopped our trees for charcoal, and for boats and buildings. Ninety per cent of Britain's forest cover has been lost in the past 5,000 years. Once our forests were used, we turned to semi-fossilised trees under our feet – coal.
We now want to burn more wood to meet our renewable energy targets. To play its part in meeting a European target of 20 per cent of energy from renewables by 2020, Scotland needs to increase its renewable heat generation from 1 per cent to 11 per cent.
A large proportion will come from biomass (wood and agricultural waste). Burning wood to tackle climate change sounds counterintuitive, but it is a good thing, as long as new planting replaces what is taken for fuel. Wood fuel is carbon neutral, having soaked up as much carbon as it will emit when burned.
Whether we will manage this tenfold increase in renewable heat energy, in just ten years, is open to debate.
David Cameron is chief technical adviser of the trade association, Scottish Renewables. He recently told a conference he hoped a quarter of a million Scottish homes would be installed with renewable heat technology by 2020, creating more than 2,000 jobs. He was confident that is achievable.
Keiran Allen, of the Carbon Trust, was not so sure. He told the audience it was highly unlikely we will meet the targets – but we could get close.
Whether or not we meet our wood burning targets will ultimately come down to incentives, policies and costs. The same goes for halting deforestation in the tropics.
In Copenhagen in December, a climate treaty will be negotiated to replace the Kyoto Protocol. A key strand of this will be global agreement on how to protect forests. Redd (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is the acronym used to summarise these policies.
Some are doubtful about Redd. Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation, says: "We believe there are dangers in bringing 'avoided deforestation' credits into the global carbon markets. It could flood the market, drive down the price of carbon, and make pollution abatement in industrialised countries uneconomic."
He continues: "We believe the best way of protecting forests is to give local people stronger rights over the environment they depend on, and encouraging them to develop new enterprises based on sustainable forest management."
Whether this shift in land ownership is realistic, in volatile tropical countries, is doubtful. Last week, clashes between Peruvian security forces and forest-dwellers led to more than 30 deaths.
Redd, although imperfect, is likely to feature in some form in the global carbon agreements later in the year.
Scotland's Climate Bill is also ready for a stage three debate in Holyrood in the coming weeks. This will help pave the way for more biomass energy. This most modern of fairy tales could yet have a happy ending.
• Charles Henderson is managing director of Climate Futures
