Forests largely contribute to global carbon removal, and increasing forest greenhouse gas mitigation potential has been considered as one of the most effective and economical approaches to mitigate climate change. Harvested wood products (HWP), as the post-harvest part of forest management, can significantly affect carbon removal of forests by storing carbon overtime and reducing carbon emission via replacing high carbon intensity products. A country’s HWP sector is intensively involved in the global supply-and-use chain, and consequently tracking trade-induced HWP transition is one of the major constraints to accurate country-level life-cycle greenhouse gas inventory assessment of HWP and forestry sector. By using the Eora multi-regional input-output table to link global HWP supply and use, we developed an approach that can be used to track carbon stocks and emissions of HWP that are produced by a country in the comprehensive global supply-and-use chain. Based on the developed approach, the impacts of consumption changes of final HWP consuming countries on changes of semi-finished HWP production of its producing country (the reporting country) and timber supply changes of wood harvesting countries, can also be evaluated.
Results/Conclusions
Our Chinese case study showed that 20% of China’s raw wood material consumption were imported from global market and 25% of China-produced semi-finished HWP were export for end uses in other countries in 1992–2015. Foreign countries accounted for 15% of the total 3605 teragram carbon stocks of the HWP produced by China in the period, in particular, in-use HWP and HWP in solid waste disposal sites accounted for 23% (521 teragram carbon) and 14% (47 teragram carbon) of the total carbon stocks of China-produced HWP in these two life-cycle stages, respectively. Despite the significant role that foreign countries played in the life-cycle carbon stocks of China-produced HWP, the impact of final consumption changes of a single leading foreign consuming country on the life-cycle carbon stocks was much smaller than that of China in 1992–2015; however, we reported the impacts of all the leading foreign consuming countries strengthened constantly, an opposite trend than that of China. Our case study demonstrated the importance of tracking the trade-induced HWP transitions and associated carbon and emissions stocks in a country’s post-harvest carbon cycle, and the cautions should be paid to the post-service fate of exported HWP.