Staatsbosbeheer is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. In this context, Staatsbosbeheer's forests will be in the spotlight during a number of autumn debates this year. The debate of 17 October was called "A new Veluwe needed for the raw materials transition?"
During the debate, the following people gave a short in-depth reflection: Gert-Jan Gruter (Avantium, special professor at the UvA), Maarten Hajer (professor of Urban Futures at Utrecht University), Marjan Minnesma (director of Urgenda), Nienke Homan (chair of VNCI) and Zwier van Olst (Staatsbosbeheer) discussed developments in the use of materials and, for example, plastics, the use of bio-based raw materials and land use. And the question of whether more space should be created for forests and wood production in order to meet the growing demand for sustainable raw materials.
We know of various national plans with ambitions for the development of a circular and bio-based economy. Key words are: reduction and reuse of raw materials, phasing out fossil, use of renewable and bio-based. In these plans, the origin of renewable raw materials is not often discussed.
Sustainable construction usually involves the use of wood or other available cultivated agromaterials. Usually there is no concern about the origin or availability. The exception is the National Approach to Bio-based Construction. In that approach, a lot of attention is paid to the source, but only to the cultivated agricultural crops. In that program, there is a budget of €54 million for stimulating farmers to develop cultivation systems for agro-bio-based products.
In addition to new agricultural crops, lignocellulose materials, wood in particular, will prove to offer opportunities for numerous developments to replace non-renewable materials. I will not go into all the advantages of wood compared to other materials in this blog. Because that will take me a while. But with bio-based construction, for example, we simply cannot ignore wood. In the future, we will need more wood for construction than we use now. We currently import more than 90% of our wood. One trend is that less and less wood is being produced in the Netherlands. Incidentally, I see that the availability of wood in other European 'wood' countries is decreasing as a result of diseases and pests (due to climate change). The claim we place on foreign wood will therefore probably increase. And we can expect that the use of wood in construction and chemistry will also increase in other countries. I therefore expect that wood will increasingly become a strategic raw material, if it is not already. At the same time, we have increasingly come to regard our own forests as nature, which means that wood production and wood harvesting are becoming less popular in the Netherlands. To such an extent that in the province of Gelderland, for example, there has been a plan to discourage timber harvesting in the forests on the Veluwe and eventually ban it altogether.
I advocate a different route. In the Netherlands we have natural forests and so-called multifunctional forests. In multifunctional forests, different functions are pursued alongside each other: nature, recreation and wood production. And that of course clashes, because nature en production are concepts that many people find incompatible. In a discussion about nature versus wood production, the latter is quickly pushed into the corner. The effect is that the space for wood production is gradually but steadily decreasing. And that is not convenient if we actually need more wood. If we want to continue to harvest wood in Dutch forests in the future, we need to stimulate wood production rather than ban it. The national government and provinces should tackle this together. Forest regeneration is generally lagging behind what is needed. The costs involved in planting forests and fencing young plantations (against game damage) are high and should be considered an investment. The current subsidy systems for nature and landscape (SNL and ANL) do not provide for this. I therefore advocate stimulating forest regeneration by adjusting the SNL and ANL. It is also a missed opportunity that no budget has been made available in the NABB for promoting forest regeneration in the Netherlands or the realisation of new forests with wood production.
Finally, I advocate abolishing the term multifunctional forest, just call it production forest on an organic basis again. Because that is what it is. If we compare forestry with agriculture in the Netherlands, we can say that in the Netherlands, organic forestry is predominantly practiced, where natural processes are used, no chemical pesticides are used and there is room for the development of biodiversity.
About the author
Henk Wanningen
Forestry Commission
Henk Wanningen has a forest and nature management background and works at Staatsbosbeheer on high-quality use of green raw materials from the green environment. He works closely with land management organizations and with companies that realize innovations and development, aiming to ensure that the use of these bio-raw materials through sustainable applications leads to a high climate impact. This includes timber construction, insulation materials, bio-based materials, green chemistry and renewable energy.
