Red, Green, and Blue

There’s a claim being made by at least one wood pulp processing company that the Swedish Forestry Management system could not only supply the world’s need for wood, but also counteract rising CO2 levels.

The claim is part of a growing trend towards a foresty focus on dealing with climage change – in the UK, the Eliasch review on International Deforestation suggests the aim of making the global forest sector ‘carbon neutral’ by 2030, but certainly doesn’t suggest that changes in forestry management could actually address many of the problems associated with global warming. So what is the Swedish system and why might it help?

Many Swedes make wood work

The owner ship of Swedish woodland may be instrumental in the way that it’s managed. Private families actually own about 50% of the forests, with 25% being held by privately owned forestry companies and the final 25% being state-owned. In Britain, 80% of woodland is privately owned but by large landowners and consortiums, not by families.

The biggest difference between Swedish forestry and that of most of the rest of the world doesn’t lie in who owns it though. It lies in extent. 70% of Sweden is covered with forest.  That equates to 3 hectares of forest to every Swede, compared to .04 hectares in the UK. Another way of putting it is to look at livelihood and stakeholder interest: there are 9,045,389 Swedes, and 55,000 of them are members of the Forestry and Woodworkers Union. That’s a lot of people paying dues to acknowledge their interest in woodlands.

Swedes love wood but don’t treat it gently

90% of Swedish forestry is clear-felled. I’ll say that again, because it probably didn’t register the first time: 90% of Swedish forestry is clear-felled. Clear-felling means cutting down most or all of all trees in a harvesting area and it’s bitterly debated. While logging companies say the practice is right for safety and economic reasons, many environmentalists see it as a habitat destroyer and a net contributor to global warming. So how does this system work so well in Sweden and so badly elsewhere?

Swedish Planet-saver?

Back in the 1920s, national legislation said that Swedish forestry could not be exploited purely by its owners, and outlawed slash and burn agriculture. Sustainable forestry practices became mandatory, so replanting, good forest management and long-term planning have massively increased timber supplies in Sweden which has 50% more woodland now than it did when the legislation was introduced.  In 1994, Sweden’s definition of sustainable forestry was revised. Now every forestry activity must ensure a reliable yield of timber and allow multiple use of forests for recreation, pastoral activity and as a biological diversity preserve.

And that’s why the Swedes can clear-fell so much, so often – the vast amount of forestry cover and intensive management of woodland systems on a micro scale through family ownership, and on a macro scale through national legislation means that forestry has high value to the community and keeps wood processing as a community activity. The multiple use of all forests means that nobody complains when a particular area is cut down, they just find another place to frolic. So the Swedes can treat their woodland like an industry and a playground at the same time, and make a profit from it too. But it doesn’t seem likely that any other nation can achieve 70% forest cover unless they start at something very close to that figure already – as some parts of Russia do – so while the Swedish Forestry Management system might save the planet, it does seem that it would only work if we’d started a hundred years ago, had tiny populations and learned to love our woods …

Swedish trees courtesy of Per Ola Wiberg at Flickr, under a creative commons licence

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