The Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has recommended Chancellor Angela Merkel, of Germany, forest, reforest, this was much worse than in Brazil. Away from the controversy – this would be at all possible?
Huge areas of forest that have disappeared in the last few years, paths that are beaten, to build roads, an agricultural economy that is always in need of more space for your growing areas. The Forest is always more dramatic trains, the damages go into the billions.
It is not good to the forest. In Germany.
“We need not to speak about afforestation in Germany, as long as we stop the deforestation in a big way,” says Jana Ballenthien, technical officer forest of the non-governmental organisation Robin Wood. “The economic interests of the industry, but also the traffic to go in this country, still in front of Ecology.”
Environmentalists speak of the forest to die 2.0
The German forest that has lost, according to the German forest protection Association, in one year, 120,000 hectares, and thus an area of the Federal state of Berlin, is again the topic. This is probably only because the world is watching the fires in the Amazon region banned with the devastating consequences for the global climate. Germany has frozen, therefore, the funding for environmental and climate protection projects in Brazil.
The Brazilian President Bolsonaro countered, Chancellor Angela Merkel should use the funds for the reforestation of forests in Germany. “If you want to plant forests, such as here in Germany, with many tree species, with many age classes and a functioning ecological System is ideal, you need a minimum of 150 years,” explains Ballenthien.
“In Germany, the forests have been managed in the last few decades, shut down,” says Jana Ballenthien
This Thursday Minister of agriculture, Julia Klöckner, with forest owners, foresters and environmentalists about the forest and the climate change talks. Also, the CDU-Minister has understood that the fight against the forest to die 2.0 – according to the “acid rain” in the 1980s – a lot of money will devour. 1.5 billion Euro are to Klöckners evaluation in the next few years is necessary, in order to save the severely damaged forests. A massive reforestation would be even much more expensive.
Dryness provides dramatic development
There are in the Amazon now the fire, to put the trees in this country of the climate change with the drought and the bark beetle. “When there is sufficient low, the trees are beats actually vital enough to the attacks of bark beetles repel, because they produce resin as a defense mechanism,” said Ulrich Dohle, Chairman of the Federation of German forest people. “However, if you have too little water, you can not produce a sufficient quantity of the resin and the bark beetles have an easy game.”
The enemy bark beetles: up to 10,000 of them can make a spruce broad
Because of climate change, the trees can no longer withstand in this country, the Storms. “Even at wind strengths, such as 7 and 8 you bend simply because the dryness of the Roots of the trees back,” observed Daw. If the Ranger wanders through his territory in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, he sees a dramatic development: “Small lakes and streams simply dried up. We have had 2018 only half of the rainfall. I have experienced in 20 years.”
To a lot of mono-cultures, to a few foresters
In order to save the German forest, is a large effort is necessary. Also means: The mono-cultures which make up a quarter of the German forest, and, like the spruce, climate change not withstanding, need to be in stable mixed forms converted, especially with pines and oaks. But Ulrich Dohle this is all much too slow: “If we are to do with the previous speed, forests convert, then we are in 120 years. Climate change does not allow us this time.”
“The conversion to the stable mixed forest used to slow and is now running too slowly”, says Ulrich Dohle
In addition, it needs to be conversions, and reforestation personnel. More foresters would have to be set. However, the reality in Germany is different. Jackdaw is stunned: “In the last 25 years, half of it will be reduced to the forestry personnel. To the extent that in Saxony and Thuringia, it is thought, the German armed forces in order to combat the bark beetle.”
There is no place for afforestation in Germany
A study by the ETH University in Zurich made a few weeks ago, a stir that afforestation is the most effective tool against climate change. The new forests could save 200 billion tons of carbon. You simply had to replant only in the world, a land area the size of the USA with trees.
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Plant trees to tackle climate change?
But Jana Ballenthien ask yourself, where in the agricultural economy focused and densely populated country like Germany with room for the trees to be. “We have many industrial facilities, many of the roads and the agricultural industry. The fallow land that would have qualified for afforestation of the zero in question, there simply is not.”
The dream of a global reforestation of the forests finally to utopia, if countries such as the United States now want to give the rain forests of Alaska to deforestation-free. And it is not impossible, as long as consumers rethink the world, finally, and, for example, their meat consumption limit. “Meat is a double forest killer,” warns the conservationist Ballenthien. “The rain forest is being cut down in the Amazon to Soy plantations there. And then we have the animal production in Germany. And too much nitrogen here, and in South America is killing the forests.”