Just Forests - The Importance Of Wood In Our Lives

The purpose of this website and indeed all of Just Forests activities is to heighten awareness of the implicit/explicid role wood/trees play in our lives – from the man or woman who works with wood here in Ireland for a living, to the African and others, who need it merely to survive. We also endeavour to guide society towards a more responsible stewardship of this finite resource before it’s too late.

The following line from an early Irish poem lamenting the destruction of Ireland's forests could very well apply to many countries today where forests are threatened with commercial over-exploitation and illegal-logging.

Cad a dheanfaimid feasta gan adhmad, ta deire na gcoilte air lar.
What shall we do without timber, all the woods are cut.

WOOD is one of the earth’s most versatile and probably most familiar natural raw material and the important role it plays in our daily lives often goes unnoticed. Each day millions of people around the world derive their livelihoods working with wood. The quality of our lives has been greatly enhanced because of this wonderful resource.

ITS MYRIAD OF USES is staggering. Wood, in its easy to recognise natural state provides us with furniture, building components, musical instruments, sporting equipment, household utensils, etc. In its altered (processed) form its role is not so obvious, yet it is there, under the guise of paper, fabric, glue, alcohol, rubber, food medicine, etc.

IN MANY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES fuelwood is the major source of energy, supplying as much as 97% of total consumption. Already millions of people in Africa experience dreadful hardship on a daily basis in their search for fuelwood just to boil water to render it suitable for drinking. Over the coming years 3 billion people worldwide will face acute fuelwood shortages as this dwindling resource dissappears from traditional fuelwood sources.

How much forests is available on Earth per person?

While the world's forests have disappeared faster in the last 100 years than ever before, the same time period also saw human population more than triple in size from 1.65 billion to over 6 billion. As a result, the forest-to-people ratio has fallen sharply. This ratio is defined as the area of forest available to each person to supply the broad array of goods and services that forests provide.

In the last four decades, the ratio of forested land to people has fallen by more than 50 per cent from a global average of 1.2 hectares in 1960 to 0.6 hectares in 1995; while the same period saw population double from 3 billion to over 6 billion.

Using a ratio of 0.1 hectare of forest cover per person (roughly a quarter acre) as a benchmark reveals that 1.7 billion people now live in 40 countries with critically low levels of forest cover. Many are vulnerable to scarcities of key forest products such as timber and paper and risk the collapse of vital forest services such as control of erosion and flooding in populated areas.By 2050, the global population is expected to increase to a total of about 9 billion, with growth occurring primarily in developing countries where the potential to increase arable land is minimal.

Future declines in forest resource availability will be greatest in developing countries, where 95 per cent of population growth is projected to occur and where many forests are already over-exploited for timber, fuel and farmland.

Photo curtesy of Worldwide Fund for Nature © WWF-UK

Degraded environments contribute to absenteeism. More time spent collecting firewood and water means less time in school.
Irish Aid - Key Sheet #07 - Environment and Education.

The Irish Aid - Key Sheet - Environment and Education [Download].

For Centuries native Irish grown wood was the only wood available to the artisan, and those involved in all aspects of construction. In recent years that trend has changed. For well over 350 years Ireland has been a major importer of exquisite tropical woods-our main supplies coming from African countries and elsewhere...

First sample of "Spanish" mahogany from Cuba brought into Ireland by a Dublin timber trader in 1855 © Just Forests

...since the Siege of Limerick... Irish timber traders have been importing tropical timber into this country for centuries. Above is probably the first sample of Cuban “Spanish” Mahogany to come in to Ireland in 1855. (Note the hand-written comments)

The following references are of interest: “The Irish Woods since Tudor Times” – McCracken, E. 1971. Chapter 10 of "Anatomy of a Siege" - Wiggins, K; Pub. Wordwell, 2000, ISBN 1 869857 37 2, refers to the use of imported timber in mining during the Siege of Limerick in 1642.

"Irish Country Furniture" - Kinmouth, C, Pub. Yale University Press, ISBN 0 300 05574 9 and "Irish Furniture and Woodcraft" - Teahan, J, Pub. National Museum of Ireland, ISBN 0 946172 39 0 refer to imports of various woods, particularly mahogany from America.

The earliest reference (for England) for tropical wood is 1661 referring to the use of "Jamaica wood" (Mahogany) for 2 tables and 5 "paire" of stands for Hampton Court. There is also a reference to "Dantzig" oak for panelling in the Mansion House, Dublin, dating back to the 1400's. (Source: Knaggs, G. 2002.) See Just Forests publication A Timber Policy for Everyone for more on this matter.

That supply of tropical wood is rapidly coming to an end with what can only be described as further devastating ecological, environmental, climatic and humanitarian consequences such as have already been experienced in the Philippines and elsewhere.

Our Attitude towards wood/trees needs to undergo drastic re-appraisal now if this great life enhancing resource is to continue to be of benefit to all of mankind.

Waste NOT Want NOT!

This large piece of Honduran Mahogany below (a center leaf from a gate-leg drop-leaf table) was found in the Tullamore Town dump in 1986. Someone had used it as a mortar board. The finder cleaned off some of the mortar and restored a section to let you see how beautiful it still is.

The wasteful mentality behind this piece of mahogany became the driving force behind the establishment of Just Forests in 1989.

The above picture shows three young girls from Rhode, Co. Offaly, Ireland, posing with the mahogany top - 20th August 2009 © Just Forests

Deforestation-Emissions from deforestation are very significant globally. Independent estimates of the annual emissions from deforestation are put at more than 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, greater than that produced by the whole of the global transport sector. These emissions could potentially be cut significantly fairly quickly – no new technology has to be developed – although considerable challenges have to be addressed, as discussed below.
Extract from chapter 25 of the STERN Review - The Economics of Climate Change

Without forests, we lose the fight against poverty and climate change.

Rationale:

The overall programme of Just Forests has been conceived and designed to highlight the established -but still not yet fully recognised and understood- role and significance of timber/forests in the overall debate on sustainable human development. After gas and oil wood/timber is one the largest traded natural resources in the world today. Millennium Development Goal 7 (MDG -7) has clearly highlighted this significance in both policy and educational terms.

The programme has also been conceived against a backdrop of some 20 years of Just Forests activities, including 18 years of the ‘Wood of Life’ exhibition and programme and the demonstrated interest and engagement of schools, teachers, students, the general public, and in more recent times, professional bodies and politicians in the issues and the exhibition. The programme also ensures that our development education initiatives raise public awareness and understanding amongst our target groups of the underlying causes of global poverty and inequality and Ireland’s role in tackling these issues.

Skip outside the new Civic Offices in Mullingar

Engaging with the above mentioned target groups is now all the more urgent in light of a Proposed Commission Regulation (December 2008,) which makes “the placing” of illegally-logged timber on the European market “an offence”. Also the focus on T4-TechnologySubjects Teachers, Local Authorities, the CIF, the RIAI and Irish Timber Traders is highly relevant and is the most strategic focus for our work. Our links with all the above is very important.

The ‘development’ rationale of our programme pivots around a number of key issues and challenges:

wood and poverty, wood and energy, wood and livelihoods/construction, wood and health, wood and education, wood and biodiversity, wood and sustainability, wood and climate-change, wood and conflict/war, wood and waste and wood and economic development.
The programme seeks to specifically address and explore these issues in the context of both education and industry in Ireland.

The Just Forests programme is designed to engage with the expressed needs of the ‘target groups’ involved, the expressed objectives of development organisations such as Irish Aid, Concern, Trocaire, Gorta and other international NGOs (such as The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005 – 2014) and the ongoing needs of both industry and education on the links between timber usage and sustainable development within the broader framework of 'development' itself.