John Healey, Professor of Forest Sciences at Bangor University, joined an international panel of experts as part of research led by the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge and coordinated by the Centre for Global Wood Security.
The authors urge the international community to elevate wood security alongside food, energy, and water security as a grand societal challenge.
The publication, authored by 41 experts spanning 23 institutions and 12 nations, and published in the journal Trends Open, defines wood security as the long-term, sustainable delivery of ecosystem services provided through forest use, restoration, and conservation.
In addition to the availability of harvested timber to meet a huge range of economic and societal needs, wood security includes many other benefits delivered by forests, including the conservation of biodiversity and the success of their restoration. However, wood security is increasingly threatened by many pressures on the world’s forests.
Forests are expected to play a bigger role in reducing the rate of climate change by storing carbon absorbed from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, yet their health is being severely threatened by the effects of climate change, including increased intensity and frequency of wildfires, and extreme weather events, such as droughts, heatwaves and floods.
Within the broad theme of forest management, conservation and land-use change, the experts identified challenges including competition with other land uses, such as farming, human encroachment into undisturbed forests, and the lack of finance and long-term commitment to forest restoration.
The growing global demand for timber is outstripping the capacity of forests to supply this sustainably, a challenge that is worsened by illegal timber trafficking, poor international coordination, and inefficient use of wood when greater circularity is needed.
Better inventory and long-term monitoring of forests is crucial to inform improved management. This includes better assessment of the combined impacts of different pressures on forests, and the uncertainty of long-term changes in forest biodiversity.
Overarching all these challenges is the need for stronger and more consistent global and national forest policies and governance. This requires better engagement with public and political audiences, effective protection of the rights of indigenous peoples, improved balancing of forest production and conservation targets, and better regulation of wood production and trade.
John Healey, Professor of Forest Sciences at Bangor University, said, “The panel was made up of a broad range of expertise spanning forest ecology, conservation and environmental sciences, remote sensing, forest and wood science, and forest management. The two days of deliberations were challenging yet also creative, with strong areas of consensus emerging across a broad range of topics. This was important in extending the focus well beyond the narrow perspectives that so often dominate such assessments.
“The overall challenge of how we can more effectively combine human priorities for an enhanced role for forests in combating climate change, and better conserving the world’s biodiversity, while achieving sustainable production of wood as a vital material for the economy was made vividly clear. Yet, many innovative solutions to tackle this 'grand challenge' emerged from the panel’s deliberations and are now explained in our report on the outcomes of this process, published in the international journal Trends Open. These insights are integrated into the nationally-leading degree programmes in forestry delivered by Bangor University at the BSc and MSc levels, a legacy of 122 years since forestry was first taught at the University.”
Dr Chris Bousfield of the University of Sheffield, who led this study, said, “Forests face a multitude of pressures in the coming decades, from land competition and climate change to rampant illegal timber extraction. By establishing the concept of wood security and assessing its core issues, we hope to spur the collaborative research and action required to tackle these complex pressures."
Dr David Edwards of the University of Cambridge and Director of the Centre for Global Wood Security added, "Our understanding of global wood security lags behind that of food security. In bringing together this large team of wood security experts, we have highlighted urgent challenges that require sustained focus from forestry, research, and policy to ensure the sustainability and long-term resilience of forest systems and the services we obtain from them."