President of the German Forestry Council
Georg Schirmbeck has decades of practical experience in sustainable forestry and broad knowledge in the context of environmental protection, climate change, and ecosystem conservation. He is president of the German Forestry Council. This council represents all stakeholders involved in forestry and forests in Germany and it is committed to the interests and concerns of sustainable forest management. He is also a board member of the Agency for Renewable Resources (Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e. V., FNR). FNR is the central coordinating institution for funding research, development, and demonstration projects in the field of renewable resources used to produce bio-based products and bioenergy in Germany.
Georg Schirmbeck uses his influence to support the transformation of the German forests toward forests with a variety of tree species that are resilient to climate change. He also promotes using wood as construction material as an efficient way to avoid CO2 emissions. By using wood, energy-intensive materials such as concrete or steel are replaced. At the same time, CO2 is permanently stored in the wood used.
As member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), Georg Schirmbeck has been an active politician for several decades. He started his political career in the seventies as member of the municipal council of his home town. In 1990, he was elected to the Landtag of Lower Saxony and acted as environmental policy spokesman of the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament for eight years. From 2002 to 2013, he was member of the German Bundestag. His political focus is on agricultural and forestry policy, both nationally and internationally, with an emphasis on Eastern Europe and Russia.
