The new eu forest strategy for 2030
| Autor | Marco Onida |
| Cargo del Autor | Dirección General de Medio Ambiente, Comisión Europea |
| Páginas | 45-65 |
CAPÍTULO 2
THE NEW EU FOREST STRATEGY FOR 2030
Marco O
Dirección General de Medio Ambiente, Comisión
Europea
SUMMARY: I. THE NEED FOR A NEW PARADIGM FOR FORESTS IN THE EUROPEAN GREEN
DEAL.—II. THE CONTENT OF THE NEW EU FOREST STRATEGY FOR 2030: 1.Supporting
the socio-economic functions of forests. 2. Supporting the environmental and climate functions of
forests: 2.1. Sustainable (?) forest management (SFM). 2.2. From SFM to closer-to-nature forestry.
2.3. Financial incentives for forest owners and managers. 3. Strategic forest monitoring, reporting
and data collection. 4. A new Governance for EU forests.—III. THE REACTION OF THE OTHER
EU INSTITUTIONS TO THE NEW EUFS.—IV. FORESTS IN EU LEGISLATION: RECENT
DEVELOPMENTS.—V. FINAL REMARKS.
I. THE NEED FOR A NEW PARADIGM FOR FORESTS
IN THE EUROPEAN GREEN DEAL
The European Green Deal Communication 1 and the EU Biodiversity
Strategy for 2030 2 have put EU forest at the heart of the political attention,
given their essential role in the context of the two major crisis we are living
in, climate change and biodiversity loss. European citizens increasingly look
at forest no longer just as something to be dealt with in relation to global
deforestation caused by land grabbing and the expansion of agriculture and
* The information and views set out in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the official opinion of the European Commission.
1 COM (2019) 640.
2 COM (2020) 380.
46 MARCO ONIDA
infrastructures in third countries. There is a widespread and genuine quest
for better protecting EU forests. Contrary to what one might think, the state
of EU forests, seen it from the perspective of biodiversity conservation, is a
serious a reason for concern.
Forestry, meaning «managing woodlands», is centuries old and has been
vital for building houses and ships and for a long time as the only source of
heating. This has led to the almost entire disappearance of European primary
forests, replaced by «secondary» forests, where trees are regularly cut and
replanted. A concept of «quantitative sustainability» of forestry has been de-
veloped referring to the need to ensure the possibility to continue using forest
resources in the future, therefore limiting the cutting to part of the growing
stock. A concept forcefully disconnected from long-term carbon storage and
from biodiversity conservation. The need to maximise growth over short peri-
ods of time and to standardize wood resources to the benet of the processing
industry has led to widespread monoculture plantations, often of non-native
species, and to the industrialisation of cutting trees, exac tly like it is done in
agriculture: modern forestry, developed since the industrial revolution, has
turned into a «farming» activity, including in the terminology (as the term
«harvesting» wood suggests). As the famous French botanist Francis Hallé
states 3, these should no longer be called forests. A forest is a very complex
ecosystem, with thousands of interlinked species in the overstory and under-
story. Something a monoculture, even-aged plantation could never be. Trees
can be planted, a forest cannot, and it takes centuries to recreate a pristine for-
est ecosystem. The mainstream science of managing forests (silviculture) has
been developed with the primary goal of maximising wood production 4. One
can say that trees have been «simplied» and «standardised» to maximise
economic prot. Cutting trees of the same age and shape allows minimising
costs and putting on the market standardised wood products.
This might not seem an issue, but it is. The problem arises when one
looks at forest resources from the perspective of nature and its ecosystems,
and therefore with the goal of conserving habitats and species. This goal is
not compatible with an industrial management approach of forests that aims
only at maximising prots by selling timber. At the same time, it would be
unthinkable to stop any commercial use of forests and only focus on conser-
vation. Strategies for combining traditional silviculture with conservation of
ecosystems were developed in time and range from segregation approaches,
whereby given portions of forests are set aside from production (this is what
generally happens in natural parks and reserves) to integrative approaches,
where the productive and the conservation functions co-exists. We talk in
this cased of «multi-functionality of forests». Today it is generally recog-
3 Pour une forêt primaire en Europe de l’ouest, Actes Sud, 2021.
4 However, several authors have, in time, proposed a different paradigm, whereby forestry should
be based on natural cycles. See footnote 22 below.
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