The Effects of Climate Change on Forest Industry and Environment : Finland and Morocco

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to present the climate change problems and to describe how this affects the Finnish and Moroccan forest industry. This thesis also aims at explaining the scientific basis for climate change and the possible impacts of changing climate. The natural climate change, climate forcing, emission from forest industry, predicting climate change, and avoiding dangerous climate change are introduced and discussed to illustrate their potentials and impacts on the environmental and economic prospects domestically and internationally. As an application of the effect of climate change on forests, the experimental part in laboratory is about the effect of air humidity on hand sheet paper properties. Two different research methods were used to complete this thesis work in different chapters and also for different evaluations. The information in this thesis has been collected by researching and studying the existing literature and other sources on the relevant subjects with the supervision and guidelines from instructor. The second method used was team interview of experts on the effect of climate change on forests. The respondents are mainly from Finland and Morocco. Among the respondents contacted were a researcher, three experts on environment, six pulp mill operators and random questionnaire respondents. It was found out that pulp and paper industry is air emissions from recovery boiler and lime kiln as well as malodorous gases and chlorine compounds from bleaching chemical preparations are responsible for a big amount of greenhouse gas emissions which accelerate the climate change. It therefore becomes important that necessary corrective measures must be taken urgently.