“‘We still have an opportunity to do something,’ William Moomaw, a leading author of a Nobel Prize-winning U.N. report on climate change told a diplomatic conference in Brussels, calling on EU leaders to swap out routine, if ambitious, political declarations for science-based action.
Citing recent scientific reports on the remarkable carbon-absorption capacities of old-growth or primaeval woodlands, Moomaw said it was urgent for EU leaders to stop turning a blind eye to illegal logging practices devastating old forests in Eastern European countries like Romania.
The continued chopping and burning of old-age trees, some of which Moomaw said were being shipped to countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, is a central obstacle stifling the EU’s capacity to achieve climate goals like the ones adopted in the Paris Accords of 2016.”
— The Brussels Times