+ Kyoto Protocol - Clean and Sustainable Development

Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to United Nations, specifically to the Convention on the Climate Changes. According to the principles established by the Protocol, the industrialized countries should reduce in 5.2% their emissions of greenhouse effect gases until 2012, mainly carbon dioxide. Notwithstanding the established percentages, measurements carried out after 2012 indicated that the world emissions increased by 16.2%, what means that the goals of the Protocol were not reached.

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)

In times of greenhouse effect, forest plantations represent a real alternative to the environmental balance. While growing, the trees are big consumers of carbon dioxide and simultaneously release oxygen. Thus, the forest based activities enable the enterprises to fit within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in accordance with the principles established by the Kyoto Protocol.

Independently of any legal commitment, growing trees for any purposes enormously contribute to capture CO2 from the atmosphere, and therefore to reduce the greenhouse effect. When they are grown to produce energy, or any other industrial purpose, the trees must be periodically re-planted. That means that there will never be “waste” of CO2 in the atmosphere, since, all the gas released during the use will be captured again by the growing forests.

A good example of this process can be observed in ironworks industry based on charcoal. Each ton of pig iron produced with charcoal captures about 890 kg of carbon dioxide and releases 303 kg of oxygen in the atmosphere. There is no other better example of clean development mechanism.