Using wood from a sustainably-managed forest as fuel instead of oil, coal and natural gas, can also reduce global warming, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said today stretching forests through higher temperatures, altered rain patterns and more frequent and extreme weather.

At the same time, the world’s forests and forest soils currently store more than one million tons of carbon twice the amount found floating free in the atmosphere – however, when destroyed or over-harvested and burned, forests can become sources of carbon dioxide, FAO said.

“We need to stop deforestation and expand the land are covered by forests, certainly,” says Wulf Killmann, who chairs FAO’s interdepartmental climate change working group.

“But we also need to substitute fossil fuels with biofuels, - like wood fuels from responsibly managed forests – in order to reduce carbon emissions, and we should use more wood in long-lasting products to keep trapped carbon out of the atmosphere for longer periods of time,” he added.

The FAO said that this could be achieved not just by preventing forests fro being cut down, but through afforestation (new plantings) and reforestation (replanting of deforested areas) of non-forested lands.

Particularly in the tropics, where vegetation grows rapidly and therefore removes carbon from the atmosphere more quickly, planting trees can remove large amounts of carbon from the air within a relatively short time.

FAO and other experts have estimated that global carbon retention resulting from reduced deforestation, increased forest regrowth, and more agro-forestry and plantations could make up for about 15 per cent or carbon emissions from fossil fuels over the next 10 years.