Putting wood security on the global agenda: Researchers outline 20 core challenges
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A study led by the Centre for Global Wood Security formally defines the concept of global wood security and identifies the 20 greatest challenges to wood security in the 21st century.
The authors urge the international community to elevate wood security alongside food, energy and water security as a grand societal challenge of the 21st century.
The publication, authored by 41 experts spanning 23 institutions and 12 nations, and published in the journal Trends Open, defines wood security as the long-term, sustainable delivery of ecosystem services provided through forest use, restoration and conservation.
Lead author Dr. Christopher Bousfield from the University of Sheffield—a former member of the Tropical Ecology and Conservation group at Cambridge—said, “Forests face a multitude of pressures in the coming decades, from land competition and climate change to rampant illegal timber extraction. By establishing the concept of wood security and assessing its core issues, we hope to spur the collaborative research and action required to tackle these complex pressures.”
Professor David Edwards, head of Tropical Ecology and Conservation at Cambridge and senior author of the research, said, “Our understanding of global wood security lags behind that of food security. In bringing together this large team of wood security experts, we have been able to highlight urgent challenges that require sustained focus from forestry, research and policy to ensure the sustainability and long-term resilience of forest systems and the services we obtain from them.”
Increasing pressures on forest ecosystems
Forests currently cover roughly a third of the Earth’s land surface, storing vast amounts of carbon that absorb nearly half of annual fossil fuel emissions while supporting the majority of terrestrial biodiversity. Timber production is a cornerstone of the global economy, generating approximately $1.5 trillion annually, with roughly one-third of all forests managed for timber production.
However, global demand for timber is expected to increase by between 50% and 200% by 2050, driven by rapid population growth, expanding urbanization and a societal shift toward wood as a low-carbon alternative to steel and concrete in construction. This burgeoning demand threatens to exacerbate existing pressures on forest ecosystems, including deforestation, forest degradation, land-use conflict and intensifying climate risks.
Wood security core challenges
To address these emerging threats, the author team convened a workshop in May 2025 to systematically identify, score and rank the most pressing current and future issues facing global forests using a modified Delphi horizon-scanning approach.
The study organizes the 20 core challenges into five key conceptual themes:
- Forest management, conservation and land-use change
- Climate change and mitigation
- Policy and governance
- Monitoring and technologies
- Innovation, trade and circularity.
Among the key issues highlighted are navigating the global land squeeze between commercial forestry, agriculture and nature conservation, mitigating escalating wildfire and extreme weather risks, and strengthening legal governance and Indigenous land tenure.
A call to action for cross-sectoral engagement
The paper emphasizes that tackling these challenges will require urgent and sustained interdisciplinary collaboration between academic researchers, industry partners, nongovernmental organizations, policymakers and local communities.
Many of the identified challenges offer synergistic solutions. For example, enhancing supply chain circularity through wood recycling, improving timber product durability and optimizing productive plantation yields can help satisfy wood demand without placing additional pressure on primary natural forests.
Similarly, advancing remote-sensing technologies combined with long-term ground inventory data sets can enhance capacity to track illegal timber trade and monitor forest recovery.
Ultimately, the study serves as a call to action for cross-sectoral engagement, stressing that ensuring global wood security is essential for preserving planetary health, mitigating climate change and meeting global sustainable development goals.
More information
Christopher G. Bousfield et al., Twenty core challenges to global wood security in the Anthropocene, Trends Open (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.treopn.2026.08.021
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Putting wood security on the global agenda: Researchers outline 20 core challenges (2026, October 16)
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