Deforestation, Wood Harvesting Not Correlated

Industrial timber use has provided timber revenue that has helped make timber supply and demand more sustainable in the leading timber producing regions of the world. Sustainable development im-plies not consuming more resources today than we can replace tomorrow, but sustainable forest man-agement implies more than merely a non-declining supply of timber. Forests as a whole provide vital ecosystem services, as important atmospheric carbon sinks for example. According to the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change, global deforestation is a major contributor to global atmospheric car-bon emissionsand greenhouse gases, while forest growth is a major factor in removals of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and thus forest management and forest growth count among the largest available offsets of atmospheric carbon emissions (Nabuurs et al., 2007) conomical industrial timber utilization is a vital element in sustaining forests and avoiding large-scale deforestation, not by avoiding timber harvest but by making forestry more economical and sustainable.

Title: Global Sustainable Timber Supply And Demand
Publication: In: Sustainable Development in the forest products Industry, Chapter 2 GLOBAL SUSTAINABLE TIMBER SUPPLY AND DEMAND; pp. 29-41; 2010
Author(s) Ince, Peter J.
Year: 2010
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Source: Forest Products Laboratory

Deforestation rates are lowest in global regions with the highest rates of industrial wood harvest and forest products output, according to researchers at the USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) in Madison, Wis. The researchers also determined that forest carbon emissions, or changes in forest stock, are lowest in regions with high harvesting and product output.

“The historical data we examined in this study support the hypothesis that an economically vibrant industrial forest products sector has been key to forest policies and forestry practices that support sustainable timber supply and demand,” said FPL Research Forester Peter Ince.

The latest findings are detailed in the recently released book, "Sustainable Development in the Forest Products Industry."

The FPL makes a distinction between deforestation and plantation harvesting, explaining that "deforestation" is the permanent removal of forests. FPL explained that true deforestation is often simply a matter of economics. If a forest is providing only low-value wood, such as fuel wood, there is less incentive for sustainable management, and those lands are often given to more profitable ventures, like agriculture, cattle grazing or development. These activities are closely tied to deforestation in South America, Africa and parts of Southeast Asia, the FPL said.

Source: Hardwood Floors

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