Wood is increasingly perceived as a renewable, sustainable building material. The carbon it contains, biogenic carbon, comes from biological processes; it is characterized by a rapid turnover in the global carbon cycle. Increasing the use of harvested wood products (HWP) from sustainable forest management could provide highly needed mitigation efforts and carbon removals. However, the combined climate change benefits of sequestering biogenic carbon, storing it in harvested wood products and substituting more emission-intensive materials are hard to quantify. Although different methodological choices and assumptions can lead to opposite conclusions, there is no consensus on the assessment of biogenic carbon in life cycle assessment (LCA). Since LCA is increasingly relied upon for decision and policy making, incorrect biogenic carbon assessment could lead to inefficient or counterproductive strategies, as well as missed opportunities. This article presents a critical review of biogenic carbon impact assessment methods, it compares two main approaches to include time considerations in LCA, and suggests one that seems better suited to assess the impacts of biogenic carbon in buildings.

The building sector has seen recent growth in the number of published environmental product declarations (EPDs). EPDs share environmental data of construction materials, which can help building practitioners prioritize products with lower environmental impacts. However, EPDs rely on varying assumptions within their life cycle assessment (LCA). This study aimed to evaluate the use of EPDs as a data source instead of a generic data source and its effect on the life cycle impacts of a multi-residential building. This study focused on 19 North American EPDs of structural wood products. The impact assessment results found in the EPDs were compared to the Ecoinvent V3.8 database. The findings of the present study suggest that EPDs can generally be used without distinction compared to the data in the Ecoinvent V3.8 database. However, a few data were found to be outliers. In addition, EPDs of structural wood products only disclosed its manufacturing stage. Other life cycle stages, such as transport of the construction product, can have a significant impact on the building’s LCA. Therefore, using EPDs to assess building impacts is recommended over their direct comparison for practitioners to make more comprehensive decisions towards embodied impacts of buildings.

Most self-proclaimed sustainable neighborhoods cover various concepts pertaining to the economic, social, environmental, and institutional pillars of sustainability. Depending on the developers' motivations, these concepts can be integrated unevenly. This study develops a framework to characterise the gap between what is advocated as necessary for sustainable neighborhoods and what is marketed as sustainable neighborhoods. A framework based on a sustainable neighborhood typology is developed using the Canadian province of Quebec as a case study. This is based on the main concepts underlying the four pillars of sustainability, but from a practical perspective. An analysis of sustainable initiatives (n = 29) shows a clear prioritisation of urban morphology on individual livability at the expense of participatory governance and sustainability awareness, especially for large projects promoted by private developers. A co-occurrence analysis suggests that smaller projects manage to integrate more sustainability aspects. The framework can be used to identify similarities and differences between development types for developing practical policy measures. This research highlights the importance involving public and private stakeholders at the early planning stage, in order to design more integrated projects. Policy relevance A gap is revealed between what is defined as urban sustainability and what is actually delivered by developers. Citizen participation is generally beneficial, but often lacking. There is scope for policymakers to provide compelling encouragement to build citizen involvement into the planning processes, particularly for larger neighborhood developments. From the example of the province of Quebec, this can take several forms. In some cases, more incentives from the public sector to involve citizens at the early stage of planning is favorable. This can allow stakeholders to outline the development strategy in neighborhoods. In other cases, municipalities can involve residents through a charter or regular local meetings. This requires more systemic municipal approaches to urban sustainability. Evidence suggests that local relocation of food and/or energy production can lead to successful cases of citizen participation and social solidarity.

The forest sector plays a key role in meeting the climate change challenge. Forest products and renewable materials are masterpieces in achieving this role. This editorial destails the benefits of these forest prodcuts and celebrates the contributions of the authors who submitted their work to this special edition of Forests journal. This edition presents 11 papers, which include the characterization of a new fiber supply, the description of advanced materials and their environmental impact, and an examination of structural products, wood protection, and modifications.