While there are risks for the forest products industry, it largely stands to gain from efforts to address global warming due to new opportunities for sustainable forestry.
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- Amanda Sauer, Senior Associate
The world is entering an era when natural resource constraints, environmental policies, and shifting consumer values will create unprecedented demands on the private sector. Recent spikes in the prices of energy and food commodities illustrate the dynamic forces that are changing the world. In this new business context, the concept of “creative destruction”—a process by which innovation builds long-term value even as it destroys the value of the status quo—may extend beyond individual companies and apply to whole industries.
One example is the forest products business. What was once a simple business of turning trees into lumber and paper is now uniquely positioned—or exposed—to political and economic forces that are reshaping regulatory and market landscapes. Can this industry take a new position as a sustainable producer of fiber, energy, and materials to meet the world’s growing needs? And can the industry be a supplier of ecosystem services—the valuable benefits provided by nature—such as carbon storage?
The forest products industry has a unique opportunity to provide sustainable solutions to climate change, but clear, long-term climate policies are necessary to realize this opportunity. Nonetheless, the industry is fragmented and, in many cases, divided over what represents appropriate climate policies.
This report provides insights into the complex array of issues related to climate change. It will help companies, investors, and the sector as a whole to develop a more proactive and informed position on climate change policies and what constitutes an effective business response.
With the right regulatory frameworks in place, both internationally and nationally, the forest products industry could be a major solutions provider to climate change while seizing some of the greatest market opportunities of the 21st century.
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4 Comments
Thank you for this excellent
Thank you for this excellent report. For Linda or others with similar questions, may I humbly suggest my recently completed paper "Implications of Climate Change for Conservation, Restoration and Management of National Forest Lands," available at www.defenders.org/climatechange/forests.
One of the key solutions to
One of the key solutions to increasing the carbon storage capacity of temperate coniferous forest ecosystems is to manage them on long rotations. Apart from the ecological benefits, one can only consider wood products to be forms of long term carbon storage if they are of high durability and minimal engineering. In other words, old growth timber instead of toilet paper, pianos instead of particle board.
The current industrial ideology, trapped in a short term economic cycle, is to manage temperate coniferous forests on shorter rotations as "fibre farms", but not only does this radically reduce the carbon storage and sequestration capacity of the whole ecosystem, but the model can only produce what most woodworkers would call "junkwood", with a very high percentage of sapwood compared to heartwood. How durable is this as stored carbon? One needs to add chemical preservatives to sapwood to keep it from decay. a tree will do this naturally as it ages. Whenever nature can accomplish something for us for free, we should respect that gift.
This long-rotation model is probably applicable to tropical forests as well, but I am more familiar with temperate forests. Managing mature forests with an eye to reducing natural wildfire risks is also a key component of climate mitigation.
Trees where I live in Canada grow at about 2 or 3 percent each year over their life cycle. Young plantations cannot sequester as much carbon per year as 100 year old stands. We must learn to work with the ecological momentum of natural cycles, instead of truncating them through haste and greed. We cannot redesign forests for a single product. We must think of whole living systems. Healthy forests are like a carbon blanket over the Earth that is 150 feet thick!
It is very interesting that
It is very interesting that you bring this point up. I was in a conference maybe a month ago now about forests and adaptation in the US. There were several folks from government and the NGO world, and what I heard loud and clear is that there isn’t a lot of work being done. The group that seemed the furthest ahead in their thinking was NWF; they are at least starting to think about the issue, although very much in terms of wildlife and habitat conservation. Not sure they had taken it to the point rethinking the USFS mission however. I would actually guess that California and other West Coast state agencies would be the most active on this type of work. I know there has also been some work (and increasingly more) in Canada on the west coast.
Your excellent report is so
Your excellent report is so timely.
We need an equally thorough analysis of the economics etc of the future of US publically owned forests in light of climate change including forward thinking long term strategies for federal forest land managers that ensure we protect our resource, our ecosystem services, etc.
One fundamental question comes to mind: Do we need to rethink the mission (law, regulations, and policies) of the USFS in light of global warming?
Do you know of any innovative/visionary folks thinking along these lines?