Dr. Eugene Hendrick:

The forestry sector employs around 12,000 people per year. Our harvest is approximately 3.3 million cu. m of wood per year. We forecast that to increase to about 7 million cu. m by 2035. Almost all of that increase will come from the private forestry that has been established over the past 25 years.

On climate change mitigation, we forecast that between 2021 and 2030 approximately 22 million tonnes of CO2 will be sequestered by our forest estate, which will make a significant contribution to our climate change targets between 2021 and 2030. There is considerable potential with afforestation increase in area. There are very good grants and premium rates available to private growers to engage in afforestation. From a macroeconomic perspective, the level of production from forests offers considerable potential for jobs and rural development. The CO2 taken in by forests as they grow offers a considerable potential contribution to our climate change mitigation targets. The benefit is not just from the growth of the forests but also from the produce of those forests. The use of wood biomass for combustion has a very significant potential to reduce the level of emissions from other materials used in the building sector. The benefits of the forest sector to employment, macroeconomic development and climate change mitigation should also be taken into account.