Trees are wonderful things, as a new exhibition in Cork illustrates in abundance, but there is a sinister side, too. Trees are the lungs of the planet, a resource that should be managed carefully, but is not. We like our fine furniture, but where does it come from? And do we care? The Wood of Life exhibition, which is on at the Cork City Library until February 21st, is designed to make us think about it and to start asking questions.One person who does care is Tom Roche, a cabinet-maker based in Tullamore, Co Offaly. In the 1960s he availed of the assisted passage scheme to Australia. Then he went to the United States, after which he visited Africa. His love of wood and his ability to turn it into items of great beauty made him think.He remembered shop fronts in Ireland with teak facades - painted, unfortunately - as if a wood as noble as teak needed any embellishment. He saw, too, that the country of his birth, per capita, was importing some 70,000 tonnes of tropical wood each year, 80 per cent of which came from unmanaged forests in Africa.This is a stark comment: "Thirty acres of African forests are chopped down daily to provide the Irish joinery industry with tropical wood. The Irish are the largest per-capita consumers in the EU of Iroko, an excellent west African hardwood, commonly called teak."He's formed Irish Woodworkers for Africa because of his concern for the tropical forests and the level of imports to the Republic. His aim is to heighten awareness among consumers and industry about where our wood is coming from, to impress on people that there is something they can do. Woods such as teak, rosewood and meranti (a hardwood from the Philippines) are being stripped from forests in which there is no management or conservation policy.But, says Roche, Irish industry and consumers are not asking the hard questions. The EU has identified forest certification and timber labelling as an equitable method of exploiting forests for timber; basically a scheme of conservation with a licence to harvest in a responsible, planned manner.Irish Woodworkers for Africa hopes to make the construction and timber-based industries aware of this and to encourage them to accept only licensed woods. If there was sufficient support for the movement, he believes, not only here but everywhere else, the pressure would force the hands of the greedy and ruthless harvesters, making them aware that there will be no demand for unlicensed or uncertified wood.If the forest is not properly managed, do not accept wood from it, is his message. And, as a cabinet-maker, he wants to emphasise that there are alternatives. Home-grown woods, such as Douglas fir, could be used to replace teak, for instance.The governments of Brazil, the Ivory Coast and India have already taken steps to halt further forest losses to commercial logging, but more action is needed if the decline of a natural global resource is to be halted. Together with enthusiastic colleagues, he is talking to schools as well as targeting industry.All this is by way of encouraging people to visit the exhibition in Cork. It first opened in Tullamore Library in 1990 and over the past seven years has visited 50 venues in the Republic.The exhibition, says Hanna O'Sullivan, the city librarian, has something to interest all ages. It contains more than 200 samples of wood from around the world and highlights the importance of wood in our daily lives, well as the role played by forests in our environment.