Good practice:

Recovery of poplar groves to boost biodiversity and carbon capture through structural bioproducts

For decades, construction in many European floodplains, particularly in Granada, has turned its back from a local ecological resource with a high capacity to absorb carbon: Poplar plantations. Today, technical wood derived from innovative manufacturing processes offers a great opportunity to develop a local industry and a building sector with a low ecological footprint and circular economy practices. LIFE Wood for Future aims to recovering of poplar groves, instead of the extension of intensive herbaceous crops, to absorb more CO2 and fight against climate change and promote a circular economy in the building sector
Objectives: Demonstrate and commercialize new structural bioproducts in order to provide a negative CO2 footprint to the timber building sector; increase the value and the demand of local wood to boost the poplar forest sector; boost the circular economy.
Actions:
Creation of Ecoproducers' Association, which will apply a forestry model for an environmental improvement of poplar and Carbon Farming schemes.
Creation of a local nursery for certified poplar plants, with genotypes for timber plantations and local varieties for environmental restoration.
Creation and commercialization of a technological tool (TIK tool) for the evaluation of the quality of the wood in the whole value chain.
Incorporation of poplar wood to the standard EN 1912.
Development of close-to-market MCLam and MCLam BS products based on poplar.
Transfer and replication in the EU.

It is founded by the LIFE program through the LIFE Wood for Future project (LIFE 20 CCA/ES/001656), with 1,642,073€ (Total budget: 2,985,886€). More than 30 people from 5 partners are actively participating. It also involves regional and national administrations, and primary and construction sectors

It is a chain practice, involving the entire value chain: the primary sector (nurseries and poplar growers), the processing industry, public administrations, and the construction sector. Its main outputs are the creation of a certified plant nursery and a group of producers, two recyclable wood-based structural timber products close to the market, and a demonstration building.

-To bring all stakeholders together, from the primary forestry sector to the industrial and building ones, as well as the policymakers.
-To search for industrial investors is the major challenge of this practice
-Shifting the paradigm of the construction sector towards a low-carbon circular

This practice includes in its objectives a plan for replicability and transferability to other regions of Europe. Poplar is common in many European countries (France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Romania, etc.) and lessons learned will be able to be transferred to these regions, in particular: 1) the grouping of producers; 2) the carbon farming model for the sale of carbon credits; 3) the development of structural poplar-based products and the implementation of a local industry in each region that produces these products; 4) the life cycle of the products, including their recyclability (circular economy) and carbon sequestration; 5) the enhancement in society of the environmental values of poplar plantations and their cultural identity; 6) the incorporation of poplar plantations in the aid schemes of the different administrations within the rural development plans; 7) the enhancement of using timber in construction.