World’s population is estimated to grow from current 6.5 billion to about 9 billion by 20501, an amazing growth of almost 50% in just 45 years. Furthermore, about 50%1 of the 9 billion is estimated to live in Asia, an area of fast economic growth at the moment. Even with a slower growth the incremental wealth accumulation will change the world’s consumption of raw materials. Indeed, the change in geographic gravity of consumption is in process at the moment.
Global wood removals were estimated at 3 billion m3 in 20052. If wood removals follow population growth estimates, there would be a need for 1.5 billion m3 more by 2050. The largest still untapped resource, about 50% of the world’s coniferous fibre, grows in the Russian Federation. Logging volumes do not depict this. Last year the total logged volume in Russia was estimated by FAO2 at 180 million m3 or just over half of the 337 million m3 logged in 1990. A corresponding figure for Finland, a much smaller country, was 64 million m3 in 2005 and 47 million m3 in 1990.
There is a clear discrepancy between availability and need on coniferous species around the world. IIASA3 and different UN sub-divisions have done excellent, detailed studies of the possibilities for future wood supply. They have, however, mainly concentrated on how much could theoretically be available from the forest rather than how much would be commercially accessible within the existing framework. There is also insufficient information on how the laws of supply and demand will affect the picture.
Predicting the future is always hard, even impossible. Experts are almost as often wrong as they are right. Predicting availability of wood 30-50 years from now is, however, slightly easier than most future-related tasks. Boreal trees grow to maturity in 80-100 years, so future commercial wood is already 40 years in growth. When existing growth data and existing infrastructure data is combined, a future picture of coniferous resources available in 2050 emerges.
The main goal is to make a new comprehensive, holistic methodology, which takes into consideration both hard georeferenced data and soft, future studies -related scientific data to as accurately as possible predict the future of wood flows. The approach will be as practical as possible.
Keywords: Future wood availability, Boreal coniferous resources, Holistic methodology for prediction
Authors
Miia Tähtinen
Helsinki University of Technology
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