Climate Change and Wood Production

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the direct (i.e., natural disasters) and indirect (i.e., temperature change) impact of climate change on wood production. To do so, we use wood production data from 166 countries over the period 1995–2020. Our results show that the wood production is sensitive to climate change. While temperature change reduces wood production by 4.1%, an increase in the number of natural disasters leads to an increase in wood production of around 1.1%. We also observe that following a natural disaster, industrial and energy wood production increases by 1.9% and 0.9% respectively. Similarly, products from both stages of wood processing, such as paper, cardboard, and pulp, also benefit from this increase in production. Furthermore, we find that wood production’s exposure to climate change varies according to industry characteristics, location, and type of natural disasters.