Sustainable Forestry in the Balance

In the United States we increasingly restrict wood production in the name of sustainability while going abroad for an ever larger share of the wood we consume, even though our own forest resources per capita are greater than the rest of the Earth. The unintended consequence is we transfer impacts of harvesting and consumption elsewhere. If we believe impacts of harvesting and consumption are primarily positive, we should embrace them locally. If we believe impacts are negative, we should take responsibility for them locally and mitigate them. … contemporary notions of sustainability do not discourage us from creating “sustainable” forests at home by simply going elsewhere to get the wood and products that improve our lives, and, of course, they should. Currently, there is no social or economic penalty associated with overconsumption or underproduction of forest products as long as we can export our environmental issues to other nations that feed our demand for wood.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org