Suddenly all eyes are on timber. The attention has been building slowly, bubbling below the surface and behind closed doors, like a volcano rumbling and ready to erupt.
Commercial pressures haven’t helped. There’s an enormous surge in developers, designers and occupants all wanting to enjoy and, to be fair, signal their green hearts by this demonstrable and beautiful material.
At Lendlease’s Barangaroo buildings visitors in the early days were exhorted to smell the walls and enjoy the pleasant scent of nature – a vast contrast to the toxic paint and chemical smell of new buildings in all too recent times.
But as the construction sector undergoes the post Covid hammering things have worsened.
There’s been the supply chain disruption, soaring costs and the Ukraine war that halted timber from major supplier Russia – at least in theory; never mind that the timber was often re-routed and re-branded through China.
The latest blow is that big buildings have been halted at the blueprint stage. So expensive plants and equipment needed to process mass timber and associated products have been starved of a steady supply chain – much like offsite prefab manufacturers that desperately need a steady supply chain like a big social housing program (looking at you Mr Albanese).
These big facilities are now vulnerable.
Even so we were shocked to learn that a friendly get to know you event about alternative bio-based building materials at New South Wales Parliament House earlier this month produced some old fashioned bullying from forest industry sources forcing companies such as XLAM to stay away (leaving their business cards behind, however).
This was confirmed by a source familiar with the event and caused apparently by some perceived threat of alternative materials such as hemp and bamboo.
It’s not something that’s immediately apparent. As we certainly understand it, this is not a binary choice – either or – but an inclusive choice of “and, and”.
Tensions have been exacerbated by the much-loved national icon of koalas and fears that their habitats are being destroyed. So a big national koala park was established by the NSW government recently, but to the consternation of foresters who say that if these forests are left untouched, they become more vulnerable to intense bushfires.
Indigenous people cooled-burned the forests to prevent such catastrophes, they say.
Another highly unverified note we heard but which we will share to underscore what’s going on in the underground rumbles is that eucalypt plantations have been established only to have koalas move in!
Then there are the plantations seeded in areas that became too hot, so failed.
Climate change.
There are also questions about the enormous amount of building that’s expected/called for around the globe with the follow up question of – is there enough timber to meet the demand?
Clearly not.
There’s more, much more to unearth and understand in the timber debate.
Sadly the scientists attached to the NSW government are not permitted to speak publicly (the PR chokehold again) but we can see the industry is confused.
Should it now start to feel guilty for using the beautiful forests for our timber when we need biodiversity and carbon sequestration?
The recent news that our own beautiful rainforests in Queensland have now started emitting carbon instead of sequestering it because the trees can’t “breathe” in the heat is a devastating turn of events that puts us on the same road to hell that the Amazon is on.
Seriously? In bountiful, gifted, “lucky” Australia?
So you can see there are numerous conflicting feelings, facts and strategies that need to be ironed out.
We could spend days on this but at Circular Disruption we will have a simple Big Debate. It will be strictly designed to produce calm measured inputs and responses.
This will be in the skilled hands of the much practised Maria Atkinson so we feel safe – we won’t need to call crowd control.
The technique for this debate is borrowed from the University of Sydney’s Nicole Gurran to discuss the other volatile topic of abundance and whether it can solve our housing problems, at a recent Festival of Urbanism event.
Book now to make sure you get the best possible deep ordered dive we can give you.
I know that these are the sort of issue you will cover in your great debate but I can’t let your provocation stand of the ‘consternation of foresters who say that if these forests are left untouched, they become more vulnerable to intense bushfires’ . This has been shown to be categroically untrue and not backed by science. See for example: https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/logging-amplified-severity-of-black-summer-bushfires.
And I do hope that you distinguish in all of your consideration of htis between plantatiosn and natural forest. The industry trieds to conflate them as much as they can. It’s really important in working through these issues to realise they are two different industries with very different environmental impacts, and climate impacts or benefits.
And yes koalas do move into bluegum plantations – and they can be humanely removed – the critical thing is having suitable habitat to remove them to – which in fact is actually pretty easy to grow – see the inspirational work here for example https://www.koalaclancyfoundation.org.au/
Thanks Janet – all issues we intend to flag and discuss…when I say what the foresters think and say it’s exactly that… the debate is for what we are going to think, say and do about this. We are just a newspaper and reporting what the experts say, I wish we had the resources to be the decision maker — actually, no, I don’t … this industry keeps evolving way too fast.
I am delighted that this bug has finally been picked up, even if ever so gingerly – although kudos for lifting the veil on the collusion of building and forest industries. CLT and other mass timber products are, generally speaking, NOT carbon-positive, or offer any other form of climate solution. This illusion has been nurtured by skewed and narrow accounting systems, and basic misunderstandings about how the forest carbon cycle works.
The Great Koala National Park announcement, while celebrated by conservation groups, comes at a time when Australia is grappling with a housing affordability crisis and growing reliance on imported timber.
In 2024, Australia imported 46% of its solid timber needs, despite being the 7th most forested country in the world.
Despite claims to the contrary by conservationists, who say houses are only built from plantation pine, hardwood timber – which makes up one-third of the timber used in the average single or double-storey detached home – will be hardest hit by the new restrictions.
As a forester and a Director of the Timber NSW, Forest and Wood Communities Australia and the Federally-funded research centre, the North East Forestry Hub, I’m more than happy to help you iron out any of the “conflicting feelings, facts and strategies”
thanks so much and of course we’d welcome your input. Please come along on the day! We have a full panel but the format of the debate is that each person gets 5 minutes each. Then a QandA from the floor with a summing up at the end. We need great QandAs!!!
Curious to have Maria Atkinson, a stalwart of the concrete industry with Holcim, in a debate on timber.
Jack Maria is the moderator – and the entire event is our idea and our design … Maria had nothing to with it. She has not even been briefed on the session yet! Also, my personal feeling is that if concrete one day became carbon neutral thanks to a decarbonised grid and artificial sand… that would work, wouldn’t it? There are people who think forests are amazing and hugely valuable for our biodiversity – also Queensland’s forests have now become carbon emitting thanks to the heat choking them. Timber is clearly gorgeous but is it a gorgeous luxury product? Given how long it takes to grow. Anyway these are the issues we want to thrash out at the debate.