Forest Calendars: 1997 Editorial

Forests - More Than Just Timber, But The Wood
They Provide Is Critically Important

by Dr. Jim L. Bowyer

The benefits of forests are many: they cool the earth beneath them and regulate and cleanse the flow of water through the watersheds on which they stand. They are home to a myriad of plant and animal life. They produce oxygen and possess, as well, an incredible beauty. And, they produce wood.

Consider for a moment all of the things you have made use of over the past week.... your car, house, easy chair, clothing, jewelry, newspaper, novel, soft drink, dishes, utensils, evening meal, or.... Think about how many of those things had their origin in something other than farming (including fishing), mining (including drilling), or forest harvesting.

You don't have to think too long before coming to the perhaps surprising conclusion that other than the air we breathe and the water we depend upon, nothing originates from anything but these three activities. Even the quality of the air and water are likely to be influenced by forests. Although in our highly urban society of today it is easy to forget where things come from, the fact is that virtually everything we use on a daily basis is traceable to the sweat and ingenuity of loggers, miners and farmers.

Consider now how much of what you used over the past week was made of wood or derived from it. Your list will be quite long, even though it is likely that you'll miss a few things like the wood/plastic composite that comprises the bucket seats of your car, the flavoring in your vanilla ice cream, the handles on the screwdrivers and chisels in your tool box, or the wood fiber in your kitchen cabinet counters. The incredible reality is that today, more wood is used annually worldwide than the combined weight of all metals and all plastics combined. Moreover, demand for wood continues to increase.

As rapidly as consumption of wood is rising- slightly more rapidly than the dramatic growth in global population - consumption of other materials, such as aluminum, concrete, plastics, and energy resources, is rising even faster. With these increases in demand, the scale of raw materials extraction is steadily increasing and associated environmental impacts are becoming more and more visible. How to meet growing human needs for raw materials while protecting the global environment has become a major challenge for this and future generations.

As demand for raw materials has grown, environmentally-based opposition to raw materials extraction has also grown, particularly within the most highly economically developed nations around the world such as the United States. Somewhat ironically, those nations in which opposition to resource extraction is greatest, such as the U.S., are those characterized by very high consumption levels and substantial reliance on developing nations for supplies of basic raw materials. The irony is further magnified by the fact that residents of the economically advanced nations are often the most strident in expressing concern for environmental degradation within developing regions from which much of their raw materials come.

In his book Earth In The Balance, Vice-President Al Gore eloquently describes how environmental impacts of air pollution can extend far beyond the borders of the nations responsible for generating the pollution. Mr. Gore thus notes that nations have a global responsibility for limiting their emissions. It is a point well taken. The point might also have been made that nations which consume greater quantities of raw materials than they produce also create environmental impacts that extend far beyond their borders. Such nations would seem to have a global responsibility to more closely align their consumption and raw materials production.

An interesting dichotomy is that within the U.S., widespread opposition to resource extraction is not matched by widespread opposition-or-really any significant opposition to all-to high and increasing levels of consumption. Thus, efforts to reduce demand for raw materials are limited to activities such as recycling, technological improvements in raw materials conversion and use, and development of new materials. As important as such activities are, it is interesting to note that despite ongoing improvements in technology and considerable increases in recycling activity over the past several decades, raw material demand has continued to grow on a per capita basis. An obvious question is where will raw materials come from in the future?

Fortunately, in an age in which mankind is searching for an answer to the raw materials dilemma, in part by seeking to harness the power of the sun, we are blessed with an abundant resource that is totally produced using solar energy. It is a resource that can be converted to useful products with little additional energy input. This resource can be readily shaped and fastened using simple tools. It is durable, resilient, versatile, recyclable, biodegradable, and beautiful. And, it is the only major industrial resource available today that is renewable. And, what is this material? It is, of course, wood - a material so useful and so beneficial that if it did not exist, we would need to mount an all-out campaign to try to invent it.

The current campaign within the United States to markedly reduce domestic forest harvesting activity makes little sense when viewed in the context of global realities. Yes, forests must be managed on a sustainable basis, and measures of sustainability must clearly include factors such as water quality, and maintenance of genetic and biological diversity, in addition to relative rates of tree growth and harvest. And, yes, attention to aesthetics and outdoor recreation are important. But it makes no sense whatsoever to set aside ever larger areas of land in largely unmanaged parks and preserves, when proper management could provide both needed raw materials and long-term environmental protection.

Wood is a critically important raw material. It is, in addition, a renewable raw material that can be produced with less overall environmental impact than any other critical material. Rather than seeking to reduce the harvest of wood, what we need to be doing as a nation is finding ways to increase its' production. We need to apply what we know about management of land for a multiplicity of purposes. We need to identify the most productive forest lands - public and private and manage them accordingly. We need to provide incentives for timber production on private lands and to remove uncertainties for landowners resulting from nebulous laws and regulations. We need to promote development of tree plantations where it makes economic sense. We need to finance research into more efficient ways of growing and using wood and wood fiber, including aggressive pursuit of recycling technology. And, we need to do all of these things at the same time that we are doing as much as we can to develop raw material alternatives and raw material saving practices and technologies.

Wood is critically important, and it is vital that we keep this in mind in managing our forests.