Global Economic Wood Supply and Demand: The Opportunity

Abstract

World supplies of industrial wood on a sustainable basis are estimated to be adequate to meet future demand to the year 2000 without effecting real price changes. A degree of uncertainty with respect to supply appears around 2025 by reason of demographic pressures on the indigenous (largely tropical) forests in many of the developing countries in the southern hemispere.Emerging global trends for the supply of and demand for industrial roundwood suggest a shift in the production, consumption and trade in forest products. Such a shift is predicated on a number of supply and demand factors. The key demand factor is the slowing down of population and economic growth in the developed countries accompanied by a greater application of technology in wood processing and/or new products. The key supply factor is the rate of establishment of plantation of fast-growing species in the tropical and sub-tropical regions.The notion of scarcity, as manifest in the forester's vision of increased timber production goals, will have to be tempered with the reality that market prices in real terms for the major categories of forest products have not materially increased and are unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future.These potential developments suggest that Canada's comparative advantage based on old-growth stocks of timber will be diminished and future gains in trade will for the most part be based on new products/processes that in turn will call for a more dynamic approach to market development than that characterized by passive exploitation of a fortuitous endowment of natural resources.