A WORLD CONSULTATION on the use of wood in housing was held at Vancouver, Canada, from 5 to 16 July 1971. The Government of Canada acted as host and main organizer of the Consultation which was sponsored jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Centre for Housing, Building and Planning (UNCHBP) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in collaboration with the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO).
Over 250 participants from 57 countries attended the Consultation and, in addition to FAO, UNCHBP, UNIDO and IUFRO, other international organizations and agencies represented were the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Office of Technical Cooperation (OTC), the European Confederation of Woodworking Industries, the World Association of Industrial and Technological Research Organizations and the International Cooperative Alliance.
The Consultation was the first of its kind to involve so many ministries, agencies and organizations in providing one forum to discuss the use of one of the world's most important natural resources, forests, to meet one of the world's most pressing needs, housing.
The exchange of views was between a variety of disciplines: forestry, wood technology, architecture, engineering, timber and wood products manufacture, the building industry, planning and finance. This integration of disciplines reflected the actual working conditions of the housing industry.
The basic ideas behind the Consultation were originally conceived by FAO: wood is one of the world's principal building materials, and in recent years between half and two thirds of the world's sawnwood production has been used in housing and construction. Wood-based panels and other wood products have also found increasing use in a number of countries. Forestry and forest industries and the building sector are thus intimately linked with one another. But in most developing countries there was a flaw in this link. Modern and efficient forest industries require a market for their products, but such a market can only come into existence if suitable products are forthcoming. Industries and markets are interdependent, yet each requires the simultaneous existence of the other. It was felt that such a situation, a form of vicious circle, could only be resolved by bringing both sectors together in common discussion, which was one of the principal aims of the Consultation.
In the meantime, a large part of the world is rapidly moving into an explosive situation. The urban populations in developing countries are growing at an unprecedented rate. Tens of thousands of newcomers into the cities are forced to live in miserable shacks and have no stake in the societies in which they live. At the same time there are unused forest resources which could provide them with both work and housing.
There seemed to be a remarkable imbalance of knowledge of the techniques of utilizing wood in building. This, together with the influence of techniques and customs implanted without proper adaptation from industrialized countries, had led to a degree of resistance against the use of wood in many countries of the developing world with ample forest resources. There was evidently a need to clarify the factors mitigating against a fuller use of this renewable natural resource and to exchange information and experience on an international basis. It was to fulfil this need that the Consultation was convened.
Participants were welcomed at the opening meeting by the Hon. Jack Davis, Canada's Minister of the Environment, on behalf of the Canadian Government; by Stephane Hessel, Assistant Administrator of UNDP, on behalf of the sponsoring agencies; and by Walter H. Gage, President of the University of British Columbia, on whose campus the Consultation took place.
In his address the Hon. Jack Davis welcomed FAO's choice of Canada as host country for the Consultation. Canada was a country which had always made extensive use of wood in housing, and Canadian engineers and architects had developed its use to a point of excellence. Canada had experience with many techniques, designs and treatments which rendered wood a highly versatile and popular building material, and to reach this stage the country had undergone the same experiences that developing countries were undergoing today. In the light of Canadian experience, prejudices in developing countries against the use of wood in housing could be over come. He stressed the advantages of wood from an environmental point of view. Wood was not only a renewable natural resource, coming from forests which also provided recreational and other benefits; it was a material which returned to nature when its utility was finished.
The second speaker, Stephane Hessel, told his audience that the past 15 years of international endeavours to fight underdevelopment had taught a great deal and that the Second United Nations Development Decade would have to open up new ground and shape new methods on the basis of this experience. It was now acknowledged that the imposition on developing countries of the way of life of developed countries was not the goal. There was, he declared, " no more striking symbol of the ineffectualness of precisely that conception, and no more powerful incitement to transcend it than these appalling urban proliferations which can be encountered everywhere on the scene of the developing countries, this unruly penetration of cement and steel amidst the forests and the savannas, these costly and sterile attempts to solve the problems of housing, school building, community services, urbanization and rural settlement through the transplantation of models with which the peoples of the industrialized world, although they have to live with them, find more and more fault."
Furthermore, the developing world did not need dogmas or the imposition of rigid scientific rules elaborated in the research centres of industrialized countries, as if development could be the result of some sort of universal equation, where transfers of technologies and of capital would ipso facto engender economic growth, industrial productivity and well-being. The new strategy of the Second Development Decade was based on the concept of " country programming," which required that aid to each protagonist nation be tailored to suit its specific problems and its specific cultural and social characteristics. This concept was the underlying feature of the Consultation's deliberations.
The Consultation was divided into eight technical sections covering: housing needs, trends and prospects; supply of wood materials for housing; wood products and their use in housing; problems associated with the development of the use of wood in construction and possible solutions (divided into two subsections covering technical aspects and legislative and code aspects respectively); design, building techniques and costs of housing with wood components; wood in housing in developing countries; promotion of the use of wood in housing; coordination of research and future developments. On the basis of background and special papers which individual specialists were invited to write, papers were prepared for these technical sections and these, amended in some cases as the result of the Consultation's discussions, form the main part of this report. The conclusions and recommendations of the sections. as approved in Plenary Session. follow each paper.
