Timber Debate Round One – what they said

Here are highlight of what the panel on The Big Debate on timber had to say at Circular Disruption on 12 November. It provides an insight into how complex and emotional this topic can get. Following is a lightly edited version of the original debate.

Don’t miss the Big Debate on timber Round Two, Tuesday 9 December

Panellists were:

Barnaby Hartford-Davis, Cox Architecture
Jason Ross, Wood Central
Matt de Jongh, Responsible Wood
Melanie Robertson, Forest Stewardship Council
Susie Russell, North Coast Environment Council
Jonas Bengtsson, Edge Environment

Barnaby Hartford-Davis, associate director, Cox Architecture

The practice had its start with timber in a project designed by founder Philip Cox about  60 years ago. In recent times founder Philip Cox told a “beautiful and poetic story about walking into the forest and hand selecting the tree that became the central column for the major building”

I wanted to be a little bit provocative … to challenge the use of timber generally.

We are obsessed with the image, and I’d love to be challenged by the architects in the room on this, but the image is of a freshly completed project with attractive people in it, walking, you know, casually by, really enjoying our spaces.

The reality of timber is that it yellows. It cracks over time when you expose it. There’s quite a limited range of uses, where it can be as fresh and beautiful as day one.

 Throughout its life cycle, you’ve got to recoat it by sanding or chemical stripping. There’s a whole bunch of processes that we don’t think about over the long term. And then there’s the treatment for fire safety.

So I think there’s something going wrong there. But the best use of timber that I’ve seen is at 55 South Bank Boulevard in Melbourne, where an existing building was adaptively reused, had seven storeys where the GFA (gross floor area) was expanded, using a very lightweight product.

one of them is that we should think about mass timber. That not masses of timber. So I think, for example, last year, headquarters in Sydney, using concrete as a hybrid material, and then timber is an infill material, working on a project in Singapore where we’re doing that as well. The second one is to think about timber as an urban forest. So think about how we can design for disassembly in the future. If you think about concrete, concrete is a product that at the end of its design I’m talking about equivalent products here, at the end of its design life will be down cycled so it can be crumbled up and chucked into other concrete or other products. And steel can obviously be infinitely recycled, but there’s a very carbon intensive process to that. The great opportunity with timber is to actually just see it as a resource that can be. Very simply extracted and almost directly reused. And that’s probably, probably all I want to say.

Jonas Bengtsson

I work a lot in life cycle assessment, so measurement of carbon and other environmental impacts across the life cycle timber has a great story in the beginning, but then you start to add carbon into the life cycle of managing the forest, cutting it down, processing and transporting the timber. So you have to look at the lifespan, the durability and maintenance, and it all starts to add up.

But the real question is about the end of life. So timber ending up in landfill. It decomposes and emits methane, which is a very important greenhouse gas. So unless we close the cycle on timber, it actually isn’t an awesome material from carbon perspective, because of the end of life and because of the lifespan. You have to look at it from that holistic perspective in order to make it work.

 It’s not simply, use timber, it’s good. It’s how you use it. Some of the CLT and engineered timber also have added chemicals. So it’s not clear cut, it certainly has benefits.

The other question I have is around the availability of timber. How much the market can actually provide.

The last point I want to make is how other materials will compare in the future; how will it stack up against (the new low carbon) materials coming online?

Matt de Jongh from Responsible Wood

I’m a forester. As a forester, I’ve managed native, natural forests and also plantation forests. I used to formally work for forestry Corporation at New South Wales and our work in forest chain custody certification.

Responsible Wood is actually a forest and chain of custody certification scheme. That means if the consumer purchases a product, whether it be timber, paper or cardboard, it’s got my company’s logo on it. That means it’s come from a sustainably managed forest, but the forest is still a forest. The trees have been regrown, replanted, and also followed an ethical and responsible supply chain.

We certify forest managers, forest growers, processors, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. I’ve seen firsthand how certified sustainably managed forests are actually managed based on science, best practice management, and I can assure you, here in Australia, we have the strictest legislation, regulations and codes to practice the government forestry anywhere in the world.

I’ve been privileged to travel around the world and see forestry practices in other parts of the world, whether it be in Southeast Asia, Europe or North America. I can assure you, the sustainability of our forest and our share in Australia is absolutely world class, where plants and animals are protected, and you know, biodiversity, cultural heritage and economic and social values are also predicted as well.

So, we’ve been talking a little bit about carbon here. I base my evidence on science and facts.

So the Australian government, for example, puts out a five year report called the state of the forest report that actually describes sustainably managed forests, the forests that are managed for timber production. Those forests have actually sequestered about 125 million tonnes of carbon.

At the same time, forests that are not managed sustainably for timber production, for example, have actually emitted about 300 and 20 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

So that’s not only the fact that the trees do regrow and regenerate. I see trees as the ultimate carbon sequestration machine.

About half the dry weight of timber, or wood, is actually carbon sequestered from the atmosphere. For example, if you’ve got a 100-kilogram dining room table at home, like I do, about half the dry weight, 50 kilos, that is actually biochemical carbon.

There’s timber buildings in Japan that have been there for thousands of years and held that biogenic carbon for all that time.

Alternative wood products come from a completely non renewable resource. Wood is the ultimate renewable product. For some of the products that we talked about today you actually have to dig a hole in the ground to get those non-renewable resources.

Melanie Robertson, Forest Stewardship Council

There’s so many similarities between to third party verified systems. As Matt said, if you’re seeing a logo on your timber, you know that the timber is sustainably sourced. It’s responsibly managed and transparently verified.

The FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC, or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification are aligned, and we actually take a little bit from each other.

So, we’re reviewing standards at the moment. We use what we call a standard development group, and we look at some definitions of Responsible Wood, and we look at the definitions from our international counterparts to get best practice. So there is a lot of sharing between the two certifications.

One of the things that we are continuing to invest in is honouring Indigenous rights and knowledge, and at the heart of our responsible forest management are our Indigenous people, not just in Australia and New Zealand, where I manage.

We are talking now about them not being stakeholders, but right holders –  their knowledge, their consent and their leadership are central to the forest that we look after.

So we’re not only committed as FFC to protecting rights, but elevating indigenous leadership in forest governance, and we’re continuing to work with Indigenous communities right throughout the globe on how we can actually have sovereignty over the forest, but also value much more than the trees.

I was in New Zealand (and a recent conversation with a M?ori leader) resonated with me that we talk timber and we don’t talk forest management.

It is the source of our medicines. It’s the source of our cosmetic industries. It’s a source of so many other oils, etc.  ‘The value isn’t in that tree up there, the true value of our forest is down here, and what it provides to a community’ (the M?ori leader said).

So we’re looking deeper and deeper into ecosystem services and also what the forests provide.

FSC has an interesting system from a governance point of view as well. It brings contention and it brings some challenges. We have a three-chamber system – a social chamber, an environment chamber and an economic chamber. And those are equally weighted. So that’s unique.

And within that chamber balance, comes negotiated outcomes.

And we agree, when everyone’s a little bit upset on the outcomes, that’s when the system works, because we can’t come to the table without getting that level of collaboration between those three chambers.

And only last week, we had our General Assembly in Panama, attended by around about 600 FSC members, and we voted on motions in which way the organisation heads. And certainly, you know, if you want to see a system at work, come and see the FSC system at a global scale, voting on a motion. We’re very much a member based driven organization.

We have scientific studies now looking at the certified forests that have high biodiversity. They have more species and healthier ecosystems. We have greater carbon storage in certified forests. We protect cultural heritage, sacred science and Indigenous lands, and we have thriving local communities providing local so livelihoods and wellbeing.

I think we’ve got to look at it not just as timber, but how we actually manage our forests. I sit here and believe that we can have our timber, we can have this ultimate renewable resource, but we can also have our forests. We’ve just got to manage them appropriately.

Susie Russell, North Coast Environmental Council

I want to make it very clear that I love wood. I live in a very old farmhouse made of wood from trees that were cut over 100 years ago, trees the like of which it’s very hard to see these days. And I think I am here today to speak for the trees, and to speak for all that depends on the trees and the ecosystem that is the trees.

So I think that’s what get lost in the forestry debate. I would suggest that [some people] are much more invested in the spin about what is happening. The main logging industry for hardwood from native forests is run by the state native forest logging companies, and they obviously say they’re sustainable. They developed their own certification system when it was clear they weren’t going to be able to reach the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council, so they decided to come up with their own standard, which at the time, was called the Australian Forestry Standard, and it was then renamed to be Responsible Wood.

It’s far from sustainable. When we started logging the forests of this country, those trees were about two metres in diameter.

Now they’re talking about trees with a diameter of 19 centimetres. The size of the trees gets smaller and smaller. Why is that? It’s because trees take a really long time to grow. So it’s not a sustainable industry if you’re constantly eating away at the natural capital, which is what the logging industry is doing.

The values that forests give us,  the ecosystems –  yes, they sequester carbon – they also mitigate flooding, they hold the land together. They draw in the rain. They help create a coolness, a temperature. They are aesthetically beautiful. They are home to hundreds of species, many of which are not found anywhere else in the world.

And all of those values increase as forests age. They all diminish as the forests become younger. And what’s happening in our public land, is that the forests are getting younger and younger, and they’re less able to support the suite of animals that would have been there 200 years ago.

So much so that animals like the koala and the greater glider are now endangered.

we need to remember that there are alternatives to using trees, to using our native forest. We can make really smart products from engineered pine. We can make amazing substitutes from bamboo.

There are hemp alternatives. We’ve seen other options as well, and there are smarter things that we can do.

The smartest thing we can do with our trees, our forests, at the moment, our native forests, is protect them for all of the benefits they would provide us with and for the future.

If you have a look at Google Earth, just have a look at Google Earth, and look at Australia, and look at where our forests are. It’s a thin green line down the east coast of Australia. That’s it, a little patch in Western Australia, basically just a very thin green line of forests on this continent. Most of those forests have now been logged at some point.

You know, they’re fragmented, they’re degraded and they’re and they’re overwhelmingly young, and the best thing we can do for them is give them time to be able to grow back in peace, give the animals that depend on them a chance, allow them to help make the planet cooler and store carbon and use the other things, which are alternatives, which we’ve been hearing about over the last few hours.