Andy Gibson - <i>THE IMPACT OF SUCCESS RATES IN FOREST MANAGEMENT ON THE</i>

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a method to quantify net carbon additionality from increased timber use, linking forest management success rates to construction material choices.

🏢実務担当者:Helps construction firms and timber suppliers understand the conditions under which timber can be considered carbon positive, informing procurement and carbon reporting.

🏛政策担当者:Suggests policy interventions to improve forest management success rates to realize carbon benefits from timber construction, relevant for carbon budgets and land-use policies.

The Climate Emergency calls for us to achieve ‘Net Zero’ by 2050. As it is accepted that <i>total</i>decarbonisation of human activity is unlikely by then, there is a requirement for us to begin drawing carboncompounds from the atmosphere at scale over the next 25 years. Amongst the mechanisms for carbondraw-down that exist in the natural world, the opportunities in forestry are manifold and are driving a movetowards increased use of natural materials in building. Construction is an almost exclusively extractiveindustry. Circular Economy principles look to reduce this overall impact by promoting the ‘Reduce/Re-use’decarbonisation approach but using more natural resources seems to offer the promise of accelerateddraw-down. However, whilst ubiquitous in the grey literature, the claim that timber is a “carbon negative”material is challenged here.In Whole Life Carbon (WLC) assessments promoters of timber propose that biogenic carbon is usedto offset timber’s modest embodied carbon. This is problematic, as the sequestration happening in plantsas a direct result of harvesting them for building materials happened entirely in the past for all but the veryfastest growing plant types. Whilst this has huge benefit to future carbon fluxes, by locking-away carbonfor multiple generations, there is no promise that near-future atmospheric carbon can by employing a plant-based product. Claiming net carbon benefit relies on a belief that the managed forest from which woodwas harvested will be replenished to a degree that replaces the lost draw-down potential and goes beyonda break-even point. In this study, a value of true additionality was sought, to enable promotors of timber inconstruction to say with confidence that improved sequestration can be directly attributable to its increaseduse.This was done by linking timber extraction (for the purposes of use in construction), to the successrates (or otherwise) of the forestry activities that follow, in managed forests. A baseline was establishedby taking a ‘business-as-usual’ case for the projected values of carbon sinking and projecting scenariosfor increased usage of timber in three UK building archetypes – low rise domestic, high rise domestic andhigh rise non-residential. A set of formulae was arrived at, aiming to synthesise a value for the net benefitarising from higher consumption, but with varying degrees of successful replacement in forest stock. Tocontrol for other factors, some elements of the discussion around increased timber harvesting wereexcluded. A review of both academic and industrial literature was used to find consensus values and todraw narratives for the ways total carbon benefit is affected by changes in conversion rates (to timber,from other methods of construction), in both absolute terms, and in behaviour change over time.It was found that only a modest increase in carbon-optimisation behaviour is needed, in forestsilviculture, to be able to make a claim of net sequestration additionality. However, it was identified thatcontemporary methods of post-harvest management likely do not provide enough additionality yet.Proposals are made for establishing accurate benchmarks and creating programs for forest managementwhich optimise for carbon pooling.

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