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SANTIAGO, March 9 (Reuters) - Chile's key forestry sector may see exports fall by around 15 percent this year after a giant earthquake destroyed processing plants, an industry executive told the daily Diario Financiero.

Chile is one of the world's top producers of cellulose used to make paper and Jose Campino, the president of timber company Corma, said the industry was the hardest hit by the Feb. 27 quake in south-central Chile.

"The forestry sector is in the epicenter of the earthquake," Campino was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

A strong franc and a weak market are chipping away at the Swiss timber industry. Sawmill owners say they fear a looming wood shortage and possible layoffs.

The eastern regional branch of the country’s Wood Industry Association has urged private forest managers to harvest more trees to keep blades whirling and save jobs but foresters remain reluctant. They say soft demand has driven prices into the ground.

South African paper group Sappi, which is to supply state utility Eskom with 45 MW power from its plants, said on Friday companies should prepare for another power crunch by cutting their reliance on Eskom and on fossil fuel wherever possible.

In late 2008, a series of blackouts crippled gold and platinum production facilities in South Africa, sending prices for both commodities soaring.

Writing for Carbon Positive, Michael Zammit Cutajar,  who was Chair of the key UN negotiating group at Copenhagen on long-term cooperative action, assesses negotiating prospects in 2010 in the lead up to Mexico talks at the end of the year...

The technological boom poses a potential threat for the pulp and paper industry in that, globally, more people are turning to digital media rather than newsprint. Pulp and paper producer Sappi is responding to this threat with its own initiatives.

COPENHAGEN – EU leaders meeting in Brussels ground through late night talks in a two day summit to arrive at a figure of € 7.2 billion over the next three years in so-called “fast start” funding for poorer nations and developing countries to adapt to climate change.

By Reimund Schwarze, John O. Niles, and Jacob Olander

Delegates at the global climate summit failed to figure out a way to stop the destruction of the world's forests. But some lawmakers think they have a solution, and it relies on financing from some of America's biggest polluters. Michael Montgomery reports in collaboration with Mark Schapiro.

I spent a good chunk of last week working with US and Mexican colleagues, looking at data from a forest conservation program in Mexico. This “Payment for Environmental Services” (PES) program is in the highly threatened area where Monarch butterflies stay over winter. The program pays producers and communities not to log their forestland, as a means to halt the rapid deforestation that has threatened the area for years. While in many cases, PES programs have been placed in regions with little initial threat of logging, this region is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

According to the Russian State Statistics Service, in 2009 export volume of timber and pulp and paper products from Russia decreased by 15.4%, which can be explained by significant decline in supplied volume of unprocessed timber.

Export from the RF in Jan-Dec 2009 compared to  Jan-Dec 2008  

(data provided by custom statistics service, incl. data of the Republic of Belarus)

German carbon consultancy Forest Carbon Group AG last week took a 30% stake in Canadian project developer ERA Carbon Offsets, and for reasons many will find surprising. Number one on the list: anticipation of growing demand for forestry offsets among German voluntary buyers, who have traditionally been leery of non-industrial offsets.

One of these days I hope to write a blog about accompanying a Nature Conservancy scientist in exploring an isolated forest cove in Tennessee and discovering a graceful new orchid species growing near the entrance of a cave.

One of these days…but for now, I work on public policy for the Conservancy, so adventure for me is doing things like exploring what’s actually down in the weeds of the federal budget, and there is, in fact, some very cool stuff in the budget proposed by President Obama for 2011.

Payments for forest conservation under the proposed REDD mechanism are unlikely to provide a viable economic alternative to oil palm agriculture at current prices. Lian Pin Koh (ETH Zürich) and Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com

STOCKHOLM, Feb. 24, 2010 (RISI) - It's taken the industry a while to come round to the idea of hedging when it comes to market pulp, but there's an increasing recognition that anything which helps to secure a more stable pricing environment for pulp has to be a good thing, for both supplier and buyer alike. The volatility of the price cycle has done significant damage to the share value of the industry over the years and cyclicality is unlikely to go away in a commodity market which is driven by supply and demand.