Forestry Strategy, Forest Action Plan and the Green Paper on Forests

Editor's note 23Apr13: Source D341.

Status quo and objectives

Although forest policy competence in the EU remains with Member States, concerns about the lack of coherence and coordination between various EU forest-related policies gave rise to the EU Forestry Strategy (1998). The Strategy is complemented by a Forest Action Plan (FAP) for the 2007-2011 period, providing a framework for active coordination of forest-related policies, such as the Habitats Directive, the Rural Development Schemes of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Biomass Action Plan. The FAP has been submitted to a mid-term review in 2009 and was further evaluated in 2011. In 2010, the Commission issued a Green paper on "Forest protection and information in the EU: Preparing forests for climate change" launching a debate on an EU approach to forest protection, potentially leading to amendments to the Forestry Strategy or new legislative measures. The Green Paper addresses the question of how policies and forest management should evolve to address challenges posed by climate change.

The EU Forestry Strategy stresses the multifunctional role of forests, offering a framework for the coordination of Member States on issues such as sustainable forest management, the implementation of international commitments, and cooperation and communication on policy areas relevant to the forest sector in the EU.

The FAP is organised around four general objectives and 18 concrete actions:

• improving long-term competitiveness
• improving and protecting the environment
• contributing to the quality of life; and
• fostering coordination and communication.

Key actions directly or indirectly related to forest degradation and deterioration are the following:

• facilitate EU compliance with the obligations on climate change mitigation and encourage climate adaptation;
• contribute towards achieving the Community biodiversity objectives;
• enhance the protection of EU forests;
• maintain and enhance the protective functions of forests;
• encourage the use of wood and other forest products from sustainably managed forests.

The Standing Forestry Committee (SFC), the Advisory Group on Forestry and Cork (AGFC) and the Commission Inter-Service Group on Forestry play a major role in organising and undertaking those tasks.

Structure and components

As the treaties establishing the European Union do not explicitly provide the basis for a common EU forest policy, the formulation and implementation of forest policy is first and foremost a competence of the Member States under the subsidiarity principle. Coordination, between Member States and the Commission but also between forest sectors on the national, subnational and EU scales, is therefore at the core of the Forestry Strategy. Voluntary National Forest Programmes, a country-specific process providing a framework for sustainable forest management, constitute the main tool supported by the Forestry Strategy as a means to insure the participation and integration of all relevant sectors in the formulation and application of forest policy.

The 2005 report on the implementation of the Forestry Strategy concludes that changes in the policy context have generated the need for a more coherent and pro-active Community approach to the management of forest resources.

The 2006 Forest Action Plan adheres to this process by proposing more concrete, although still voluntary, measures of coordination and research leading to:

• MS reporting on their activities to raise awareness on the impacts of climate change on forestry, address the impacts of climate change on forestry and promote climate change mitigation and adaptation,
• Consideration of monitoring the fragmentation of forests and of the effects of forest expansion on biodiversity,
• Further development of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS),
• Carrying out a study analysing the main factors influencing the evolution of forest condition in Europe (including forest fires) abd the efficiency of current Community instruments and measures for forest protection,
• Forming groupings of MS to study particular regional problems with the condition of forests,
• Supporting research on the protection of forests and phytosanitary issues,
• Carrying out studies on: flood prevention, combating desertification, avalanche control, aoil erosion prevention and control, water resources preservation.

The 2010 Green paper provides insights into potential future policy development for the protection of EU forests from overexploitation and degradation in the context of increased vulnerability related to climate change.

Implementation

The EU Forestry Strategy is based on a non-legally binding Council Resolution. No additional guidelines, budget or resources are foreseen for the implementation besides means available in other policies. The same applies to the FAP.

Table. Examples of activities at the national level for implementation of the Forest Action Plan in Italy, Greece and Spain (FAP Midterm evaluation, 2009)

The EU Forestry Strategy and the Forest Action Plan directly address core issues for preventing further LEDD in forests (e.g. forest fragmentation, fires, flood prevention, desertification and soil erosion). However, they only do this through voluntary actions, including primarily coordination and research activities.

Despite its voluntary nature, the FAP can be regarded as a means for streamlining forest policies of Member States to the highest degree possible, given the persisting opposition against further policy integration by various Member States (e.g. Finland and Sweden). The Green Paper depicts another attempt to achieve stronger commitment from Member States to achieve EU wide objectives of forest protection, and to concretise the concept of sustainable forest management. In theory, one of the most promising approaches to tackling LEDD in EU forests would be EU wide standards in the form of measures incorporated into the concept of sustainable forest management that have to be applied in all EU forests.

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