As various political initiatives have set goals to reach net-zero emissions bythe mid-21st century, forests will play an important role as a carbon sink for sequesteringunavoidable emissions. Forest management can take two approachesby either decreasing harvest and enlarging the forest carbon stock or increasingharvest to increase carbon uptake of the remaining forest stock and create harvestedwood products (HWPs). Currently, these two management options seemat odds with seemingly conflicting policy directives being written. We used theBEKLIFUH model to assess six management scenarios based on carbon offsetpotential taking into consideration forest carbon, HWPs and the material andenergetic substitution effects. The results show that while conservation leadsto a higher above-ground carbon pool, including HWPs, material and energeticsubstitution leads to more overall carbon offsets for management scenarios withmore timber harvesting. With compromise being possible by selectively conservingold growth forests with a high biodiversity value. In conclusion, if theforest sector decouples GHG reporting from forest management and includesall the secondary effects of timber harvest, this new approach can lead to adifferent cost–benefit analysis for the choice between harvest vs. conservation.This could result in a paradigm shift to a future where biodiversity and carbonneutrality can coexist.