Biodiverse by Design: How wood construction can advance nature-positive outcomes

22 October 2025 Event report

Turning promises into practice - that was the challenge set at the IUCN World Congress in Abu Dhabi, where PEFC brought together global experts to explore how sustainably sourced wood can help deliver on the world’s climate and biodiversity goals.

The session, “Biodiverse by Design: Wood Construction and Forest Value Chains for Nature,” made one message unmistakable: responsible wood use is one of the most scalable, verifiable nature-positive solutions available today.

Co-organised with the Sustainable Wood for a Sustainable World (SW4SW) initiative, the event gathered leading voices - Ewald Rametsteiner (FAO), Robert Nasi (CIFOR-ICRAF), Healy Hamilton (SFI) and Yuuko Iizuka (Sumitomo Forestry) - to explore how forest value chains can translate intent into credible, competitive outcomes for the built environment.

“Let’s start with a simple truth: using wood is good - if it comes from sustainably managed forests,” said Thorsten Arndt, Head of Advocacy at PEFC International, who moderated the discussion. “Because when it does, wood is more than a building material – it’s climate-positive, biodiversity-positive, and people-positive.”

From climate to biodiversity to people

Speakers highlighted that the construction sector - responsible for roughly a fifth of global emissions - can become a driver of both climate mitigation and biodiversity recovery, and that using wood not only helps to keep forest standing, but it also offers tremendous potential to restore forests. The dialogue underscored that sustainably sourced wood is a renewable, circular, scalable, and tangible solution that we need to benefit from to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework. 

Momentum toward COP30 and beyond

The Abu Dhabi session is part of a broader movement leading into COP30 in Belém, with the launch of the “Sustainable and Resilient Constructions Acceleration Plan”, a joint initiative of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), the Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP), and Built by Nature that is supported by PEFC. 

In Abu Dhabi, that message resonated clearly: responsible wood use is not just about building differently - it’s about building for nature. In Belem, the message will be further amplified to accelerate the decarbonisation of the construction sector by promoting the use of wood from sustainable and responsible forest value chains.