The Centre for Global Wood Security has launched a new website to promote and support the Centre’s work.
The cross-disciplinary research centre led by Professor David Edwards from the University of Cambridge brings together over 50 partners from academic, industry, NGO and policy organisations.
The aim is to deliver research and build capacity to enhance the sustainability of forest use and future-proof forest management and restoration.
Forests are vital for timber and fuelwood production, carbon stocking and markets, and biodiversity conservation, yet their future is increasingly insecure under global environmental change.
Many of the trees we plant today will not be harvested for decades, if at all when they are grown specifically to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. The decisions needed to ensure global wood security must be taken in the next few years to prevent major losses of timber, fuelwood, carbon stocks and biodiversity over the coming decades from multiple stressors including wildfire, pests and diseases, and drought.
By embedding resilience and minimising unintended outcomes in forest management, the Centre for Global Wood Security aims to secure forest-based ecosystem services and biodiversity.
The Centre is focusing its work on three key research themes:
- Enhancing sustainable forest use to ensure that timber production is sustainable, legal, and meets both biodiversity conservation and essential societal needs.
- Securing forest services under global change by developing global understanding of climate and land-use risks to forestry and how to develop sustainable management approaches that secure timber, carbon stocks, and biodiversity.
- Building the forests of the future by developing core scientific understanding of how to upscale restoration that maximises environmental outcomes, ecosystem services, and societal benefits.
Professor Edwards said that “The time to focus on securing the future of forest-based products and biodiversity is now. The new Centre is an exciting international collaboration to deliver world-leading science, train the next generation of forest-security thinkers, and translate new scientific discovery into meaningful action that ensures forests continue to deliver for people and nature.”
Image: Tropical forest logging concessions in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by David Edwards.