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Wood accounts for 67 percent of global renewable energy supplies - International Institute for Environment and Development
Rising demand for wood could drive yet more land-grabbing in developing countries where food insecurity is rising and land rights are weak, a new paper by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said.
Wood is the dominant form of renewable energy worldwide and accounts for 67 percent of global renewable energy supplies, the paper said.
It said increased use of wood in the global North means investors are looking to tropical countries in the South. The paper warns this risks displacing “poor and marginalised communities from land they have tended to for generations but have no formal claim over.”
“Wood is a vital renewable energy source, and countries in the South should develop it for local energy security, not export it to fuel Northern energy deficits at the expense of their own people,” Duncan Macqueen, a senior researcher at IIED and co-author of the paper, said in a statement.
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