After being invited as an observer last year, I was privileged this year to join the prestigious UN FAO’s Advisory Committee on Sustainable Forest-Based Industries (ACSFI). The ACSFI brings together a select group of CEOs of organisations, similar to Confor, from across the globe. It meets with officials from the UN FAO and provides an industry view on research projects and international discussions about forestry and timber, including the Climate COPs.
At both this and last year’s annual meeting it was fascinating to hear that future wood supply is the big issue globally. Three years ago, Confor part-funded a report commissioned by UN FAO which demonstrated that significantly increased productive forest creation would be required to meet the growing world demand for timber by 2050. That report was launched at COP27 by then Scottish forestry minister Mairi McAllan and played a key role in raising domestic awareness of the important issue of future UK timber security.
For me, the issue of future timber supply is, if anything, becoming more pressing. The loss of forest area in Canada and central Europe is well known, and now the EU is focusing on maximising carbon in forests, which means a reduction in potential timber harvesting. The EU has a big challenge to balance emissions and, in the absence of technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere, it is pressing for countries to prioritise carbon accumulation in the forest at the expense of fibre production.
There is also continuing pressure from environmental NGOs in countries such as Sweden to designate more areas of forest as ‘protected’ for nature, which means timber harvesting would be severely limited in those areas. Yes, there is a climate emergency, but powerful NGOs are as much or more concerned with nature.
The UK is the second largest importer of timber products (up to 81% of the fibre consumed) and the government has rightly sought to maximise use of wood in construction and housebuilding. This policy choice will add to the existing growth of demand for timber and provide excellent opportunities for producers and merchants.
With much of the world’s fibre resource controlled by hostile actors and UK fibre consumption increasing, it is important that government and the domestic forestry sector redouble efforts to increase domestic fibre production.
I spoke with a business adviser to the UK government recently and set out the facts above along with a retelling of the crucial role that timber products played during the pandemic – maintaining the movement of food and pharmaceuticals and much more. His advice was that this was a potential issue of national security.
With growing demand for fibre, the UK forest-based industry will never be able to supply all the timber products required, but it makes sense for the industry to be able to supply considerably more than it currently does. That requires urgent action on new woodland creation as well as protecting the existing resource and increasing its productivity.
