Idioma principal del documento: Inglés
Resumen en Inglés: Cork oak landscapes cover approximately 2.7 million hectares of Portugal, Spain,
Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia and France. As well as providing a vital source of
income for more than 100,000 people, these landscapes also support one of the
highest levels of biodiversity among forest habitats, including globally endangered
species such as the Iberian Lynx, the Iberian Imperial Eagle and the Barbary Deer.
Cork is a truly sustainable product – it is renewable and biodegradable. Cork
harvesting is an environmentally friendly process during which not a single tree is cut
down. The bark renews itself ready for the next harvesting.
Over 15 billion cork stoppers are produced every year and sold worldwide to the wine
industry. These stoppers are processed from bark harvested from cork oak
woodlands that have existed in the Western Mediterranean for thousands of years.
Cork for bottle stoppers accounts for almost 70% of the total value of the cork
market. The wine industry thus plays a vital role in maintaining the economic value of
cork and the cork oak forests.
The increase in the market share of alternative wine stoppers, specifically plastic
stoppers and screwtops, could reduce the economic value of cork lands therefore
leading to conversion to other uses, abandonment, degradation, and finally loss of
one of the best and most valuable examples of a human–nature balanced system.
Because the forests have an economic value to local communities, people care for
the forests. This helps maintain their environmental values as well as reducing the
risk of fires and desertification.
Unless the commercial value of cork stoppers is maintained, and especially demand
for cork stoppers, there is a risk that the Western Mediterranean cork oak landscapes
will face an economic crisis, an increase in poverty, an intensification in forest fires, a
loss of irreplaceable biodiversity and an accelerated desertification process within
less than 10 years, according to the worst case scenarios.
Palabras clave en Inglés: cork, cork stoppers, cork oak, Quercus suber, cork oak landscapes, montado, dehesa, threats to cork oak landscapes
Palabras clave en Portugués: cortiça, rolhas de cortiça, sobreiro, Quercus suber, montados, dehesas, ameaças
Tipo: Libro/Libro electrónico
Áreas temáticas: Ciencias Agrárias Desarr. Rural,
Ciencias Ambientales,
Economía y Empresariales
Año de publicación/producción: 2006
Institución: WWF Mediterranean Programme Office
Publicación: WWF Report
Referencia bibliográfica: WWF/MEDPO (2006). Cork Screwed? Environmental and Economic Impacts of the Cork Stoppers Market. WWF Report, Rome.
Número de páginas: 36
Precio: 0 €
Formato: pdf
Tamaño: 1,7 Mbytes