Impact of world economic and demographic growth on forest-products consumption and wood requirements

Abstract

A model fitted to cross-sectional observations is proposed which links the growth of consumption of structural wood materials and paper and paperboard to the economic and demographic growth of developed and developing economies. It was found that the response of consumption per capita to a specific growth of income per capita decreases systematically as the level of consumption attained increases. The consumption functions, for both groups of products, differed significantly for high-income and low-income countries. A set of input-output relationships was also established to estimate the amounts of wood pulp and industrial roundwood required to produce specific amounts of structural and paper materials. Those relationships have significantly shifted during the period 1961–1971, indicating an improvement in the efficiency of raw-material usage by the wood-products industries. The full model was applied to calculate the levels of consumption and of raw-material requirements consistent with Timbergen's indicative world plan (Timbergen, J. 1976. Development and environment aims: an intuitive view. In World modeling: a dialogue. Editedby C. W. Churchman and R. O. Mason. North Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 55–61). Given Timbergen's targets for world economic and demographic growth, a considerable improvement would occur in the balance of consumption between developed and developing countries but consumption per capita of industrial roundwood equivalent would still be three times higher in developed countries by the year 2010. The main growth of industrial roundwood consumption would occur in the paper and paperboard industry which would consume 65% of the world output by the end of the period. Developing countries would by that time become the main market for paper and paperboard products.