A chip on the old block could save the forests
Source: Agencies |
October 12, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A CHAINSAW buzzes, branches snap, and an Amazon tree crashes to the ground.
It could be just another of the thousands of trees felled each year in Brazil's portion of the world's largest forest except for one detail: a microchip attached to its base holding data about its location, size and who cut it down.
With a hand-held device, forestry engineer Paulo Borges pulls up the tree's vital statistics from the chip - a 14 meter tree known as a "mandiocao" cut down in Mato Grosso state, the southern edge of the Amazon where the forest has largely been cleared to create farmland.
It is only a small pilot project, but its leaders say the microchip system has the potential to be a big step forward in the battle to protect the Amazon.
The chips allow landowners using sustainable forestry practices to distinguish their wood from that acquired through illegal logging that each year destroys swathes of the forest.
Each microchip tells a tree's story from the point it was felled to the sawmill that processed and sold the wood, key information for buyers who want to know where it came from.
"People talk a lot these days about wood coming from sustainable forestry practices - this is a system that can prove it," said Borges, of the organization Acao Verde, or Green Action, which is managing the project.
Brazil is under international pressure to reduce deforestation that destroys thousands of square miles of the Amazon each year and make the country one of the world's biggest sources of greenhouse gasses.
The project is part of a growing trend toward lumber certification that gives buyers a guarantee the wood was produced without damaging the forest it came from.
Unlike illegal slash-and-burn logging, selectively cutting trees can generate timber revenues without damaging forests, and, according to forestry experts, can in some cases even increase the amount of carbon dioxide the forests trap.
Acao Verde says widespread use of chips in trees would help eliminate corruption that allows illegally harvested wood to be "cleaned up" through bogus certification papers, and aid in spurring Brazil's sustainable forestry movement.
Similar projects in Bolivia and Nigeria use technology such as bar code readers or satellite tracking to help crack down on illegal logging and preserve delicate ecosystems.
Such technology can help isolate fraud originating where the trees are cut, said Gary Dodge, director of science and certification at the Forest Stewardship Council, which has led a global push for lumber certification.
It could be just another of the thousands of trees felled each year in Brazil's portion of the world's largest forest except for one detail: a microchip attached to its base holding data about its location, size and who cut it down.
With a hand-held device, forestry engineer Paulo Borges pulls up the tree's vital statistics from the chip - a 14 meter tree known as a "mandiocao" cut down in Mato Grosso state, the southern edge of the Amazon where the forest has largely been cleared to create farmland.
It is only a small pilot project, but its leaders say the microchip system has the potential to be a big step forward in the battle to protect the Amazon.
The chips allow landowners using sustainable forestry practices to distinguish their wood from that acquired through illegal logging that each year destroys swathes of the forest.
Each microchip tells a tree's story from the point it was felled to the sawmill that processed and sold the wood, key information for buyers who want to know where it came from.
"People talk a lot these days about wood coming from sustainable forestry practices - this is a system that can prove it," said Borges, of the organization Acao Verde, or Green Action, which is managing the project.
Brazil is under international pressure to reduce deforestation that destroys thousands of square miles of the Amazon each year and make the country one of the world's biggest sources of greenhouse gasses.
The project is part of a growing trend toward lumber certification that gives buyers a guarantee the wood was produced without damaging the forest it came from.
Unlike illegal slash-and-burn logging, selectively cutting trees can generate timber revenues without damaging forests, and, according to forestry experts, can in some cases even increase the amount of carbon dioxide the forests trap.
Acao Verde says widespread use of chips in trees would help eliminate corruption that allows illegally harvested wood to be "cleaned up" through bogus certification papers, and aid in spurring Brazil's sustainable forestry movement.
Similar projects in Bolivia and Nigeria use technology such as bar code readers or satellite tracking to help crack down on illegal logging and preserve delicate ecosystems.
Such technology can help isolate fraud originating where the trees are cut, said Gary Dodge, director of science and certification at the Forest Stewardship Council, which has led a global push for lumber certification.
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