Sustainability Assessment

Management of forests and timber utilisation not only has environmental but also economic and social impacts.

Hence, besides having an impact on our climate, forests and forest industries, for example, create jobs in particular in rural areas and income. One can quantify these and other impacts by means of indicators that express how sustainable forest management and timber utilization is. We develop indicator based methods and procedures for assessing the environmental, economic and social sustainability of forests and wood products for material and energy purposes. Our focus in the process is preferably on complete value chains. This allows us to assess how sustainable it is to use wood and show the advantages and disadvantages of timber use compared to other materials. Based on our assessments we can also indicate how to improve forest management and timber utilization from a sustainability point of view.