The impact of the global economic downturn during 2008-09 has resulted in the consumption of wood and paper products falling by 11.6% in the UNECE region in 2009. This is the largest year-on-year drop since the oil crisis of the 1970s.
The figures, revealed in the UNECE/FAO’s Forest Products Annual Market Review 2009-2010 show that industrial roundwood harvests fell to 880 million m³ in 2009, their lowest level since the organisation started collecting market statistics in 1964 and the first time in more than 20 years that they have fallen significantly below the 1 billion m³ mark.
The only segment of the market that did increase last year was wood energy.
However, there are indications that consumption began to rise in the first part of 2010 and thre is an expectation of a modest recovery in both timber harvests and timber consumption across all three UNECE subregions (North America, Europe and the CIS).
