Toward a future of wood cities and restored forests - modelling pathways for development of a new forest industry in the Global South

We propose a novel Wood Building–Forest Restoration system to meet the urgent calls to stop and reverse climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and inequality and instead transition to a fair and sustainable bio-based economy.

We call for future urban growth to be met with modern engineered wood building, and for this new market to drive large-scale forest restoration and emergence of regional forest-based industries. We focus on the Global South, where the majority of urban growth, deforestation, and forest degradation occur.

Starting from where we are today (standard concrete building, degraded forests, small informal wood-processing industries), we must model pathways of coordinated incremental change across the entire value chain to arrive at the desired end state (wood cities, fully restored natural forests, prosperous regional wood industries).

This is a new area of research in forestry, and we will refine the methodology using Tanzania as a case study.

We will (1) assess current forest resources across Tanzania using recent inventories, (2) develop feasible products and production systems using available species and dimensions, (3) model forest dynamics according to proposed harvests and management to encourage growth of desired species, and (4) propose incremental and integrated system development pathways.

We will work with diverse industrial, governmental, and research partners with the explicit aim of increasing, awareness, capacity, and support.