In Austria's forests, the principle of sustainability is lived out in practice. More grows back than is harvested. The forested area has grown by 330,000 hectares since the 1960s. Forest management actively contributes to climate protection: the CareforParis project showed that this is achieved above all through the use of timber products and the substitution of non-renewable materials and energy sources with wood. However, the primary goal must be the avoidance of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil raw materials.

Forests play an important role in climate protection — they can act as a buffer, but they are not the solution to the climate crisis. Because, depending on how they are managed, forests only have a buffering effect for 30–100 years, and then no longer. This was the result of calculations using different scenarios in the CareforParis project, in which the Federal Research Centre for Forests (BFW), the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Wood K plus and the Environment Agency Austria all took part. "What's crucial above all is that we manage to phase out the use of fossil raw materials," says Peter Mayer, director of the BFW. According to Statistics Austria, 70% of the energy sources currently used come from fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal). The forest therefore cannot solve all the problems of the climate crisis.

You can find the full press release here.