In Austria and Europe: use the forest, protect the climate?

2023-07-01 06:30:10

COMÚN Foundation, Innovation Salzburg and Bioeconomy Austria invited to a fireside chat with committee chairmen and MEPs at “Consumer Dialogues: Textiles”.

Hallein/Vienna (OTS) – The forest plays a central role in climate protection and the question of use or non-use is increasingly becoming the focus of a broader public. Can the raw material wood be a sustainable engine in bioeconomic transformation? Is the management of local forests a prerequisite for effective climate protection or does it have the opposite effect? What are the next steps for national and European projects and what effects will they have on the economy?

A panel of selected representatives from business and civil society discussed these and other questions with four key political decision-makers on June 30, 2023. The two chairmen of the National Council Committees for Agriculture, Forestry and the Environment, MPs Georg Strasser and Lukas Hammer, as well as the two EU MPs Simone Schmiedtbauer and Thomas Waitz, were available for an exciting dialogue.

“I am very pleased that the representatives of politics, companies, NGOs and interest groups accepted our invitation to exchange views on current developments on the one hand and, above all, to share their perspectives. The best projects are doomed to failure if they are not adopted. If we want to advance climate protection and the bioeconomy, we have to put the common focus in the foreground,” says organizer Sebastian Bohrn Mena.

Werner Balika (Innovation Salzburg/Bioeconomy Austria) agrees: “We can only achieve the green transformation if politics, science, business and civil society join forces. More and more decision-makers and players recognize the opportunity to use this necessary change for an ecologically, economically, socially and sustainably coordinated business.”

The fireside chat, deliberately organized in a confidential setting, took place at the invitation of the non-profit federal foundation COMÚN in cooperation with Innovation Salzburg and Bioeconomy Austria as part of the “Austrian Consumer Dialogues: Textiles” in Hallein near Salzburg. It also represented a contribution to the ongoing “Forest Material” project. More information on the consumption dialogues can be found at www.konsumdialoge.at/textilien.