How forests can power the economic revolution we need
We need to rethink our extractive, fossil-based economy if we want to rewrite our future – to create an economy that ultimately relies on life and its diversity.
Over the next two decades we need to put forward the greatest economic transformation in human history to achieve a climate-neutral, inclusive and nature positive economy – a ‘bio’ economy. Forests and the circular bioeconomy are crucial to catalyse the radical change that is needed.
The circular bioeconomy is an economy centered around the restoration, protection and sustainable use of natural capital. It is rooted in regenerative landscapes that enhance biodiversity, contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation, and support human health and wellbeing while ensuring a sustainable, inclusive and resilient economy.
Forests power the bioeconomy
Forests are central in transitioning to the circular bioeconomy. Not only because they are our main biological infrastructure, our largest terrestrial carbon sink and main host for biodiversity, but also because they are the main source of non-food, non-feed biological resources.
Bioeconomy innovation uses bioresources from forests to develop and deliver new solutions across multiple industries that can replace and environmentally outperform fossil products. Forest products can replace carbon-intensive materials like steel, concrete and plastics: wood can become bioplastics, textiles and nanocellulose, or be used in construction materials like mass timber. You can see these innovative forest-based solutions in the New Wood: Building A Bio-Based Future exhibition organised by the CBA, The King’s Foundation and the Finnish Forest Association at the Garrison Chapel in London, until 27 March.
Importantly, these bioeconomy solutions will not only help us to transition to a circular bioeconomy, achieving critical pollution, climate and nature targets. They also support resource security, especially in regions with low availability of fossil resources, as well as job creation and economic growth – bioeconomy offers us the greatest business opportunity.
What will help us succeed? There are three key areas we need to think about:
Biodiversity is crucial
We need to ensure sustainable and resilient forests in the long term. This means placing biodiversity at the centre of sustainable forest management. Primary forests should remain as biodiversity reserves, producing high-value low volume products (as Indigenous people have for millennia). Managed forests for timber production should also aim to enhance biodiversity to build resilience, adapt to climate change and ensure healthier ecosystems.
Using wood wisely
We also need to make sure we make the most of the wood we produce. Half of the wood harvested globally is used for low efficient energy use, mostly in the global south1. We need to replace this with more efficient renewable energy sources, and use wood for higher added value products that can replace plastics, concrete and steel. On top of this we need to think about circularity – wood resources are renewable by nature but are not unlimited! We need circular economy systems that use wood in a cascading way, optimising its value along different supply chains.
Reimagining the bigger picture
Nature explains our planet – it is what makes our planet special. It is the keystone infrastructure that regulates our planetary system, including our climate, the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe.
Nature is the basic fabric that supports all living processes on earth, including all our economic activities. Our economy does not realise this, because trees, birds and bees do not send bills to us, and because our economic system derives value from price rather than price from value. We cannot deliver the vision and ambition of the circular bioeconomy without fundamentally rethinking our economic model and the way in which we understand, value and invest in nature. We need a system change, replacing our current consumption-first economy with a nature-first economy that overcomes the past artificial dichotomy between ecology and economy.
- Hetemäki, L., Palahí, M. and Nasi, R. 2020. Seeing the wood in the forests. Knowledge to Action 01, European Forest Institute. https://doi.org/10.36333/k2a01 ↩︎
Image: Piotr Krzeslak/Adobe
