Let us recap. The climate crisis we face necessitates two vital responses that are both equally critical and need to be enacted in tandem: an end to nearly all greenhouse gas emissions including CO2 into the atmosphere and the removal from the atmosphere of existing greenhouse gases including CO2. A major contribution to the first of these tasks can be achieved by substituting the numerous carbon-intensive materials that we currently use in our built environment, including concrete, steel, plaster board, plastic, brick and block, and replacing them with timber-based products that store carbon (see Chapters 1–4). The second task can be tackled in part by planting trees in as many settings and configurations as possible. This will involve improving our sustainable forest management techniques, extending our existing forest cover as and where appropriate, moving closer to harvesting the net annual increment across all European countries (see Chapter 7) and redeploying abandoned farmland for afforestation (see Chapter 9). Together, these steps will increase the amount of CO2 that is sequestered.

Having increased our tree cover we also need to increase our use of timber as this demand is key to driving the “forest pump”, which we discussed in Chapter 2. Ideally as much timber should go into long-life harvested construction materials as possible so that we can store as much carbon as possible in the built environment and reduce the use of carbon-intensive materials. The felled trees are then replaced with new growth enabling the “forest pump” to continue its vital work of sequestering more carbon and then moving it via the timber to be stored in the built environment.