Expanding EU forests may aid climate goals By Alister Doyle,
Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Forests in the
European Union are expanding surprisingly fast and could be
enlisted to help the EU achieve goals for fighting climate
change, researchers said on Thursday. Forests grew by a net 10
percent in western EU countries and by 15 percent in the east
from 1990 to 2005, they said. The reasons included better
conservation, migration to the cities, and increased
productivity on farms that need less land. "Forests in Europe
have captured and stored very much carbon in the past 15 years
-- we were surprised by the numbers," said Pekka Kauppi, who led
the University of Helsinki study, published in the British
journal Energy Policy. Trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas, as they grow, and release it when they rot or
are burnt. The scientists estimated that the net expansion of
forests in the 27 EU nations absorbed 126 million metric tons of
carbon dioxide from 1990 to 2005 -- equivalent to