Oliver Gordon
Despite booming investment to increase energy efficiency and lower energy intensity, emissions and energy consumption from buildings and construction have rebounded… and decarbonising the sector is a priority to limit global warming. Aiming to do just that, agriculture ministers in Germany’s states called for the use of wood in new housing projects to be made easier. …Indeed, wood has a far lighter environmental footprint than other building materials like steel and concrete. A recent study by the Potsdam Institute, found that if most of the new urban population were housed in newly built timber buildings, constructed with engineered wood, it would save around 10% of the carbon budget needed to limit global warming to 2°C this century. To be of most use to the climate agenda… timber building materials would need to be maintained through multiple reuse and recycling loops. Today’s timber buildings are not designed with this circularity in mind, and it would require a shift in industry practice to improve longevity, modularity and ease of construction.
Nonetheless, there is a downside to mass-timber construction. Most net-zero scenarios foresee a role for biomass in the energy transition, and if demand for forest products was to grow equally across the economy, there would not be enough biomass to go around. …Debates around forestry and carbon often pit conservation against harvesting and replanting – but there may be a happy middle ground. Ecological forest management, such as ‘close-to-nature’ forestry, promotes a reasoned level of harvest to reap various rewards. By extracting some timber while also considering what vegetation is left to grow, foresters can enhance certain forest traits and functions such as their adaptive capacity. …“We think that timber buildings are a promising climate solution, but only when they also contribute to ecological forestry that protects and restores forest ecosystems,” says Samy Porteron, at ECOS, and author of its recent report.
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AUSTRALIA — Australian timber prices may have fallen from their Covid pandemic spikes but the respite might be short-lived, creating a headache for the critical housing sector and its role in helping address a severe shortfall in new homes. The housing industry is being hit by opposing forces, with rising interest rates designed to cool demand at the same time as a housing shortage stirs it. An impending resumption of the timber export trade to China is also raising questions over whether Australia has enough local supplies to meet its own requirements. …Two big forces are crashing against each other. Developers are holding off building tens of thousands of homes across Australia, despite already gaining planning approval, because of high construction costs. …“Australia needs one billion new timber trees planted to meet growing future demand,” the Australian Forest Products Association says.
The Perrottet government found native logging could be ended in New South Wales without costing the budget but opposition from the Nationals blocked the proposal. A plan to end the controversial and loss-making practice of timber extraction from native forests was prepared by the environment department by October 2022. It won backing from the Liberals, including the then environment minister, James Griffin, but did not make it to cabinet because it was opposed by the junior Coalition partners. The report found Treasury could cover the cost of compensating affected workers, companies and communities by finding markets for the avoided destruction of biodiversity and release of carbon emissions. Financial firms …would secure revenue streams from firms looking to offset their environmental impacts elsewhere, exceeding the compensatory costs. …Victoria’s move, announced in Tuesday’s 2023-24 budget, brought forward the end of the industry by six years and will cost an additional $200m in support payments.
Fungal networks interconnecting trees in a forest… have also been viewed as a means for trees to help their offspring and other tree-friends, according to the increasingly popular “mother-tree hypothesis”. …mother trees are believed to act as central hubs, communicating with both young seedlings and other large trees to increase their chances of survival… This is a very appealing concept attracting the attention of not only scientists, but also the media, where this hypothesis is often presented as fact. According to a study just published in New Phytologist, the hypothesis is however hard to reconcile with theory, prompting the researchers to re-examine data and conclusions from publications for and against the mother tree hypothesis. The study, led by Nils Henriksson at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, found that the empirical evidence for the mother tree hypothesis is actually very limited and theoretical explanations for the mechanisms are largely lacking.
Harnessing the carbon-capturing potential of forests is a key component of plans to mitigate global climate change. Planting new forests is a common strategy, but this approach can have negative social and ecological impacts and substantial costs. Roebroek et al. instead investigated how ceasing management (e.g., wood harvesting or fire suppression) of forests would change their global carbon sequestration capacity. The authors assessed the differences between the biomass of similar forests with and without human activities and used machine learning to predict the additional biomass gain from removing human activities from global forests. Even if all management ceased (an extremely unlikely scenario), global forest carbon would only increase by about 15%. This work provides further evidence that changing forest management is not an alternative to cutting carbon emissions.
A Chinese forestry company has been fined $180,000 after a worker’s arm got caught in a log debarking machine. The incident broke the man’s wrist and pulled the victim’s skin back, leaving him needing surgery to have plates put in to fix his broken arm and a dislocated wrist, workplace safety regulator Worksafe Mahi Haumaru Aotearoa said. CFGC Forest Managers (NZ), which is owned by China Forestry Group New Zealand Company, was sentenced in court on May 19. As well as being fined, it was ordered to pay the injured worker reparations of $10,000. Worksafe investigated after the 2021 injury at Northport near Whangārei, and concluded the bark-stripping machine did not have the appropriate safeguards for New Zealand use. The worker was troubleshooting the machine when its rollers closed and trapped his wrist, Worksafe said. A WorkSafe investigation found “significant safety modifications” were made to the debarker before it was put into use.
AUSTRALIA — Three of Forestry Corporation’s most experienced firefighters are part of the Australian firefighting contingent being deployed to Canada to assist with the wildfire emergency. The overseas deployment comprises a 222-strong contingent from Australian and New Zealand fire agencies, coordinated by the Australasian Fire Authorities Council’s National Resource Sharing Centre. AFAC CEO Rob Webb said…“Australia, New Zealand and Canada have a long history of supporting each other, and we are pleased to be able to help Canada as they experience significant wildfire activity,” he said. …“I’ve got to say the Canadians were awesome during our big firefighting season a few years ago so any opportunity to go over there and lend them a hand and return the favour is a great thing and I put my hand up for this straight away,” Peter Simon said. The firefighters are expected to complete a 30-day deployment.
The alarm has been raised over the increased likelihood of wildfires in parts of southern France. The prefect of Pyrénées-Orientales department says the lack of rain and wind gusts of up to 90km/h predicted on Tuesday mean the risk was now ‘very severe’. Authorities are trying to avoid a repeat of France’s first major forest fire of the year, which burned up to 1,000 hectares of land in Pyrénées-Orientales. It comes after some areas of the department were last week placed under a drought ‘crisis’ level due to lack of water. …The department also banned the sale of above-ground pools to prevent residents from being “tempted” to break drought rules and fill them up. …With water scarce, firefighters say they are having to turn to the sea and rivers for supplies.