Letter: Green building and timber use

Sat, 05/03/2008 11:14 AM  |  Reader's Forum

I was appalled to read the green architecture article in The Jakarta Post, April 29, p. 5, which suggests that architects and builders should use steel instead of timber to save trees.

Yes, illegal logging is a problem in Indonesia but there are now nearly 900,000 hectares of independently certified sustainably managed forests in Indonesia, with much more in the pipeline in the next few years.

So no, green architects should not switch to steel to save the planet, but they should be careful to specify certified sustainable (FSC or LEI) or verified legal timber and make sure their builders buy from suppliers that can provide certificates proving this.

Your own paper ran an article last week on the Asia-Pacific forest conference reporting on a company's plea for more incentives for its sustainable timber -- to then publish an article with such a contradictory message seems at best inconsistent.

Sustainably managed timber is the greenest construction material in the planet -- it is renewable, recyclable, has excellent thermal and noise insulating properties and provides long-term sustainable jobs in poor rural areas. In addition, specifying such timber provides the market incentives progressive Indonesian companies are crying out for, and will go a lot further to save this planet than using finite resources such as steel or aluminium.

If you add climate change to the equation the case for timber in green construction is even more secure. A cubic meter of timber has absorbed a ton of CO2 during its lifetime (CEI Bois 2006) and if used in a structure it is sequestered from the atmosphere until that structure is demolished. In 2006, the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management estimated a reduction of up to 86 percent in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the embodied energy of building materials if timber is used compared to typical building practice in Scotland.

Thus the trend in Europe and North America is toward specifying legal and sustainable timber to meet green building requirements, rather than materials such as steel, plastic and concrete.

With the Indonesian government determined to set up a comprehensive and effective Timber Licensing Assurance Scheme in partnership with the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade program (FLEGT), supplies of verified legal timber on the Indonesian market will undoubtedly increase even further.

ANDY ROBY
Jakarta

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