When Europe seems to want to go green, some figures of what to leave perplexed. As revealed in the journal Nature from a study relayed by Le Figaro : in Europe, the area of exploited forests has increased by 49% between 2016 and 2018, in comparison to the period 2011-2015.
On the 26 countries of the european Union (including the United Kingdom, but not Malta or Cyprus), Sweden and Finland represent over half of the increase of the harvested areas, say the researchers of the joint research Centre of the european Union (JRC), who participated in the study. At the same time, thanks to satellite data, the authors of the work have found that the average size of plots operated has increased by 34 % over the whole of the Old Continent.
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An increase in part to last ?
"The application in Europe of the directive on the bioeconomy, in particular the use of wood as a renewable energy, in particular, could explain this request," analysis, for The Figaro, Thuy Le Toan, researcher emeritus, Centre d'etudes spatiales de la biosphere, Toulouse, france. She adds : "This directive has been strongly criticized by the scientific community for its potential negative impact on the forest at the global scale. "" We can expect that this increase continues ", continues the researcher, since the european target for renewable energy is 32% in 2030.
The above figures are, however, to qualify with another. In fact, if the areas harvested are increasing in Europe, the european forests, they are still more extensive : between 1990 and 2015, their size has increased by 90 000 square kilometres, thanks to the replanting of the cut trees.
