Forests must now meet people’s needs, no matter their ability to do so. They are expected to absorb carbon, protect biodiversity, support rural communities and provide livelihoods, while also supplying the wood needed for other industries where construction, packaging, furniture, paper and newer low-carbon products are being developed through these trees. The problem is that at a time when forests are facing increasing pressure from agriculture, fires and logging, the demand for timber is rising as well.
A report which was published recently by Reuters this week highlights the growing tension that is present between these competing demands. It is noted that the demand for wood, that is, globally, is projected to rise by 37% by the year 2050. At present, the question is no longer about how much wood the world can produce; rather, it is about whether it can produce enough without sacrificing the forests that provide it.
The scale of the challenge becomes much clearer when it’s seen with the data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Its most recent Global Forest Resources Assessment has estimated that the world has about 4.14 billion hectares of forest, and that generally covers roughly 32% of global land. Even if the rate of net forest loss has slowed considerably over the last few decades, forests are still disappearing at a significant rate. FAO estimates that net forest losses averaged about 4.12 million hectares a year between 2015 and 2025.
The next complication is the fact that not every forest loss is caused by the timber industry. Agricultural expansion continues to be a main driver, while increasingly severe wildfires are adding another layer of damage and disruption. Changes of climate can make forests more vulnerable to heat, drought and fire. This situation creates a cycle in which damaged forests become less capable of providing environmental services, which poses a problem for communities and the economy that heavily rely on trees.
At the same time, wood itself is not the main problem. Timber can be a renewable material when forests are responsibly managed and harvested at sustainable levels. FAO has raised arguments that wood products can contribute to a more sustainable bioeconomy, while also warning that future demand will put forests under major amounts of pressure. Its 2024 forest report projected that global roundwood demand could increase by as much as 49% between 2020 and 2050.
There are also efforts to expand wood production without clearing natural forests. In Brazil, for example, Suzano has promoted eucalyptus plantations on degraded land, using traceability and geolocation systems to monitor production. Such plantations remain controversial because replacing natural ecosystems with commercial forests cannot reproduce all the ecological functions of native forests.
Another approach that has been coming up for some time is through forest finance. Brazil‘s Tropical Forest Forever Facility is working towards mobilising up to $125 billion to reward tropical countries for maintaining standing forests, including payments based on the area of forest preserved. The initiative shows how there is a growing recognition of how keeping forests intact needs to have an economic value as well as an environmental one. Due to all of this information, the future of wood is not simply about planting more trees. A plantation can produce timber, but an intact forest offers biodiversity, carbon storage, water regulation, and livelihoods that are difficult to replicate. It is not something an organisation or a movement can do; rather, it takes a move from everyone who depends on trees to improve the situation.
The real challenge will be finding a way to satisfy a growing appetite for wood while making standing forests more valuable than clearing them. If global demand continues rising, sustainable forestry will have to become more than a label on a product. It will need to become the foundation of how the world’s forests are managed.
