Report on current and future trends in the use of wood and demand for wood and wood properties
Abstract
Forests provide a wide range of economic, environmental and social benefits to society. Due to their potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and to support and maintain biodiversity, the EU Commission is ambitiously targeting European forests in the EU Green Deal. Specifically, forests will play a pivotal role in reaching greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of 55% by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050. Forests and their central role in reaching these goals are highlighted in several existing EU strategies, such as the forest, the biodiversity and the bioeconomy strategy. The European Commission aims to meet these ambitious targets in part by supporting forest owners, managers and foresters to manage European forests so as to enable a forest-based bioeconomy, while balancing this with planting billions of trees, preserving biodiversity and the multi-functionality of forests. Understanding how forests are managed to meet the supply and demand of various ecosystem services (ES) is important to inform evidence-based and coherent EU policy.
In this report we contribute to this need to qualify supply and demand for forest ESs, addressing ESs categorized into three groups - provisioning, cultural, and regulation and maintenance - as well as several wood products (bioenergy, construction, and furniture). The overarching aim of this report is to identify trends in demand for wood and wood-based products, link these patterns with the forest management strategies and to identify systematic gaps in the literature related to both. Though we do not explicitly address ES supply in this report, we do reflect on its interlinkage with demand throughout the report, and more concretely in the conclusion. To assess the demand for wood and wood-based products, we conduct a systematic literature review on current and future demand for wood and non-wood based products as they relate to managed forests across Europe. This systematic literature review builds on a corpus of 155 articles spanning Europe and diverse forest management approaches. We supplement findings from the literature with interviews performed with forest-related stakeholders, including forests managers and industry actors.
We find that there is relatively little information on the quality and related challenges of specific tree species; most research in our review considers some mix of coniferous and/or deciduous trees. There is relatively scarce information on hardwood. Additionally, demand for wood products mostly comprises assessments of bioenergy, and to a much lesser extent, demand for construction or furniture. While there might be structural factors contributing to this, such as the source of information considered, the role played by different wood products in existing policy, or the inherent challenges posed by these areas of research. This poses a potential knowledge gap that needs to be addressed both for the purpose of this report but also in the wider context of policy on forest management.
To contextualize our findings, we adapt and apply the typology proposed by Winkel et al. (2011). This typology proposes three prevailing forestry paradigms driven by different forest management approaches, namely sustained yield, multipurpose forestry, and ecosystem management. Our findings are confirmed across all forestry paradigms. While carbon sequestration is mostly highlighted in research assessing the EU level or countries following the sustained yield paradigm, countries prescribing to “Multipurpose forestry” consider the relationship between forests and climate change mitigation in a more intricate manner, explicitly taking trade-offs between different ESs into account. Overall, the assessed literature suggests that the demand for roundwood and biomass is likely to increase in the EU, especially for coniferous (soft) wood. This is mostly driven by additional demand for bioenergy that is supplied by forest biomass. Regarding cultural ESs in the form of recreational activities, there is a clear preference for mixed forest stands over monocultures. Most research also identifies a low acceptance of deadwood, which is often due to a poor understanding of the underlying ecological processes and their relevance to the ecosystem or an insufficient communication of said processes. Finally, there is a willingness to pay for regulating and maintenance services across the board. Show more
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publishedPublisher
s.n.Subject
Wood demandOrganisational unit
08693 - Gruppe Natural Resource Policy / Natural Resource Policy
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Is part of: https://www.climbforest.eu/products
Notes
Deliverable 3.1 of EU-Horizon Project "Climb-Forest" (HORIZON-CL6-2021-CLIMATE-01; Project-Nr. 101059888)More
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