A landmark study led by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and Centre for Global Wood Security formally defines the concept of global wood security and identifies the 20 greatest challenges to wood security in the 21st century.
The authors urge the international community to elevate wood security alongside food, energy, and water security as a grand societal challenge of the 21st century.
The publication, authored by 41 experts spanning 23 institutions and 12 nations, and published in the journal Trends Open, defines wood security as the long-term, sustainable delivery of ecosystem services provided through forest use, restoration, and conservation.
Professor David Edwards, Head of Tropical Ecology and Conservation at Cambridge and senior author of the research, said: "Our understanding of global wood security lags behind that of food security. In bringing together this large team of wood security experts, we have been able to highlight urgent challenges that require sustained focus from forestry, research, and policy to ensure the sustainability and long-term resilience of forest systems and the services we obtain from them."
Lead author, Dr Christopher Bousfield from the University of Sheffield – a former member of the Tropical Ecology and Conservation group at Cambridge – said: "Forests face a multitude of pressures in the coming decades, from land competition and climate change to rampant illegal timber extraction. By establishing the concept of wood security and assessing its core issues, we hope to spur the collaborative research and action required to tackle these complex pressures."
Increasing pressures on forest ecosystems
Forests currently cover roughly a third of the Earth’s land surface, storing vast amounts of carbon that absorb nearly half of annual fossil fuel emissions while supporting the majority of terrestrial biodiversity. Timber production is a cornerstone of the global economy, generating approximately $1.5 trillion annually, with roughly one-third of all forests managed for timber production.
However, global demand for timber is expected to increase by between 50% and 200% by 2050, driven by rapid population growth, expanding urbanisation, and a societal shift towards wood as a low-carbon alternative to steel and concrete in construction. This burgeoning demand threatens to exacerbate existing pressures on forest ecosystems, including deforestation, forest degradation, land-use conflict, and intensifying climate risks.
Wood security core challenges
To address these emerging threats, the author team convened a workshop in May 2025 to systematically identify, score, and rank the most pressing current and future issues facing global forests using a modified Delphi horizon-scanning approach.
The study organises the 20 core challenges into 5 key conceptual themes:
- Forest management, conservation, and land-use change
- Climate change and mitigation
- Policy and governance
- Monitoring and technologies
- Innovation, trade, and circularity
Among the key issues highlighted are navigating the global land squeeze between commercial forestry, agriculture, and nature conservation, mitigating escalating wildfire and extreme weather risks, and strengthening legal governance and Indigenous land tenure.
A call to action for cross-sectoral engagement
The paper emphasises that tackling these challenges will require urgent and sustained interdisciplinary collaboration between academic researchers, industry partners, non-governmental organisations, policymakers, and local communities.
Many of the identified challenges offer synergistic solutions. For example, enhancing supply chain circularity through wood recycling, improving timber product durability, and optimising productive plantation yields can help satisfy wood demand without placing additional pressure on primary natural forests.
Similarly, advancing remote-sensing technologies combined with long-term ground inventory datasets can enhance capacity to track illegal timber trade and monitor forest recovery.
Ultimately, the study serves as a call to action for cross-sectoral engagement, stressing that securing global wood security is essential for preserving planetary health, mitigating climate change, and meeting global sustainable development goals.
Reference: Bousfield C.G, et al. ‘Twenty core challenges to global wood security in the Anthropocene’, Trends Open, DOI: 10.1016/j.treopn.2026.08.021.
Image: Burned ponderosa pine forest after a wildfire in Northern Arizona. Credit: Beata Whitehead / Getty Images.