40% of the EU is covered with forest and these trees absorb at least 10% of our carbon emissions.  If we planted more trees as they are doing in the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands we could absorb more carbon.  Sequestering carbon in this way is one of the easiest ways in which the EU can deliver the commitments it made at the UN Paris climate change conference in 2015.

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Forests also help clean our air and provide us with a place to walk, cycle and bike ride to the benefit of both our physical and mental health.  In the long term trees can be felled for timber and are the feedstock for the expanding bio-economy.  Increasingly science is telling us that what we once made from oil we can instead make from trees!