The EU Forest Strategy is about to undergo a progress review, and right on schedule, the forest industries are ramping up attacks on any effort to prioritize nature recovery. A letter co-signed by EUSTAFOR, the lobby group representing managers of publicly owned forests, argues that forests need a lot more of the same “sustainable” forest management that’s degraded the forest carbon sink and bled out biodiversity internationally. In a nutshell: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Typically for such industry documents, the letter is long on vague statements and short on substantiation, for example blaming recent forest fires on the Forest Strategy (which has only existed a couple of years) rather than on decades of forest industry mismanagement that’s carpeted large parts of the EU with hyper-flammable plantations.
PFPI submitted recommendations to the Commission for future-proofing the Forest Strategy – including the need to tackle the pernicious influence of vested interest groups, and establish a genuinely science-led policymaking process.
