FORESTS : EU NEEDS TO RETHINK GOVERNANCE.

Sustainable forest management goes well beyond the purely environmental perspective: forestry activities are multiple, multisectoral and sources of conflicts of interest. Although the EU has no competences in this area, its different communications, action plans and a handful of regulations (forest supervision, trade in wood products and other environmental and agricultural regulations) have resulted in a corpus of legislation that all stakeholders, including the European Commission, now consider obsolete and certainly over-fragmented. So an overhaul is needed and the Commission is actively preparing for it: in spring 2013 it will present a new forest strategy. But while all players agree on the need for better rules on forest management at European level, they set limits, warning against over-regulation and infringement of subsidiarity, at a seminar in Brussels on European forest governance - Issues at stake and the way forward'. The 9 January event was co-sponsored by ThinkForest and the European Parliament's Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development Intergroup.

Forests cover nearly 37.8% of European territory and provide a livelihood for 3.4 million people. Their importance goes far beyond the environmental role of conserving landscapes and protecting biodiversity and ecosystems. In addition to wood-related industries (construction, furniture, paper pulp) and in a context of climate change, forests also play an important role as carbon sinks, and through biomass production as a source of renewable energy. Forests are important socially and culturally (recreational activities).

FRAGMENTED POLICY

Forest policy is basically a national competence but has given rise to various EU initiatives. It is highly fragmented, which creates problems of competition between different sectors of activity and brings to the fore the need to develop European governance to provide consistency between forest policies, explained Gaston Franco (EPP, France), chair of...