Confor presents an industry response to RSE report

Firstly, I will say that this is a very difficult task to take on the work of the Royal Society of Edinburgh – an institution for which I have a lot of respect and owe a lot of thanks. It’s also not in my career interests to irritate RSE. Unfortunately though, I do not think they have done good work with this report and I fear it will cause damage to the very things it states it wants to support.

In paragraph 85 of the report, under the subheading of “import substitution”, the RSE dismisses the premise that the UK should reduce its reliance on timber imports to help limit our contribution to damage and loss of the world’s natural forests. It does so with a very panglossian view that all is OK because we import from countries with “good environmental standards” (without explaining how, or if, these countries avoid the problems it outlines for the UK – or how the countries we import wood products from might be importing the wood they use from other countries).

In the face of rising global demand for timber, climate change, tree pests and diseases, and political strife, we cannot reasonably expect the supply of imported timber to continue as we are used to. This is issue 14 in Tew et al 2023 which is referenced in the RSE’s report (paragraph 162) but without any mention of this element of it. 

Paragraph 71 of the RSE report seems to suggest that there has not been a strategic need for a domestic timber supply since 1957 – as if political sanctions on timber are not a thing. Even if you do not buy the sustainability argument, a domestic timber supply helps to ride out the peaks and troughs of the import market.

Paragraph 161 says there is “no current economic need for public money to facilitate commercial tree planting” to which I ask – what kind of commercial timber planting does that refer to? The type they criticise or the type that we should be moving to for the better public good?

While the RSE report takes on an enormous task, in reviewing the wide range of factors relating to forestry and the services and benefits that it delivers, it appears to have gone into greater detail in some sections than others. In the case of the timber industry, and the storage of carbon in harvested wood products, it appears to have had access to relatively limited information, and therefore arrives at a relatively shallow understanding of the industry.

The timber and wood products industries in the UK form a complex web of products and technologies, which combine to provide efficient use of timber. The process of converting cylindrical commodities (logs) into rectangular units (sawn wood) leads to a large proportion of offcuts which are rapidly transferred to other industries manufacturing wood based panels or other products. Thus solely pursuing sawn timber is inefficient, whereas connecting the value chain allows for efficient use of the material.

This review could be extended to discuss a great deal more examples and subtleties, or to consider species mix, grades of timber, typical availability and suitability for different products. However a balance was required between detail and brevity. The complexity itself is the central message, requiring a holistic approach to proposing solutions for the wood products industry. This requires a re-consideration of Section 8 of the RSE report, and to cautiously steer away from an over-simplified desire to promote mass-timber in the UK.