Forests must be managed for the long term

The following article has been sourced from AFPA Occasional Paper No 1 AFPA article

Forests must be managed for long term environmental and economic benefits. With a global population of about 7 billion and the prospect of the global economy doubling in the next twenty years, we need to take seriously the fact of global demand for forest products.

Wood products and extracts are used in an enormous variety of products - construction, furniture, paper, bioenergy, pharmaceuticals. The demands on forests for goods and services
is not going to go away and the value of forest services is likely to increase. Moreover, we
need to think globally. In Australia, we have one of the world’s best sets of forest practice –
sustainable, ecologically responsible, respectful of the bio diversity of the forest and capable
of delivering multiple outcomes for many different beneficiaries. The more we produce,
the less we import. The more forest product we produce the more we displace forest product
produced without our high standards of forest stewardship. This displacement is positive.
The more that wood gets used in construction, the greater is the level of emissions forgone in
construction and the less the carbon footprint created in building.