Live Webinar - Wood's Latest Move: from Carbon Neutral to Climate Smart

Wood products are widely considered to be inherently “carbon neutral.” The current surge of interest in mass timber was spurred by this belief.

But could scaling up our demand for wood actually make climate change worse?

It’s a huge risk. Our forests are a massive carbon bank and a critical climate buffer, and they’re already under threat from wildfires, pests, and other accelerating climate impacts. If we’re going to start using a lot more wood in buildings, we need to think hard about where that wood is going to come from and how it will be harvested. If we focus too much on a single metric, we don’t learn those things.

Enter climate-smart forestry.

The people working to define this concept are focused on a broad, holistic assessment of a wood product’s climate impacts—not just its embodied carbon. That means a big emphasis on healthy and biodiverse ecosystems that promote resilience, build in adaptation, and support the small rural communities that depend on these forests’ existence.

In this webinar, you’ll hear from people who are:

• Finding the sweet spot where forest regeneration and logging intersect

• Unlocking local supply chains by building trust in unlikely places and asking for information in new ways

• Carrying on Indigenous traditions and forestry practices to provide products that sustain their communities

• Applying novel forestry models to optimize the dynamic interplay of carbon storage and economics

Afterward, you will be able to:

• Consider all aspects of sustainability—economic, social, and environmental—when vetting and sourcing wood products.

• Explain the importance of healthy, thriving, intact forests to our global climate future.

• Articulate multiple ways that climate-smart stewardship can make forests more resilient to climate impacts while also producing timber.

• Appreciate the complex dynamics and interdependencies among many different systems and impacts associated with wood products, like rural communities and cultures; forest biodiversity and resilience; and local and global economies.