Biofore-Magazine-2021

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FEATURE

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“There are already many companies and forest owners who are planting millions of trees every year, but no one is emphasising that.”

motes a “science-based contribution of EU forests to the European Green Deal ambitions of climate neutrality and resilience, biodiversity and sustain able growth”. To achieve this, more encouragement is needed to replace fossil products with renewable materials. “If you look at the renewable options to replace fossil-based products, wood is the major alternative – the most versatile, at least,” says Palahí. “There is no other renewable material that you can use to replace steel, con crete and textile fibres or use for packaging, biochemicals and pharmaceuticals. We must make the necessary investments in innovation, so the forest sector can help other sectors to become circular and renewable. “The secret will be to diversify in alternatives and take ad vantage of the fact that we need to decarbonise our economy. We need investments, R&D, specific funds and to stimulate the start-ups. We can build around public-private partner ships and use really innovative schemes to accelerate all these possibilities,” says Palahí. The proposed research and innovation would support the strategy’s bold aim of making Europe the first carbon-neu tral continent by 2050, a target that Loonela views as achiev able: “With this important package, we are on track to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 55% compared to 1990 levels by 2030 because we’ve really worked through all the different policy areas.” The areas are vast, ranging from the production of energy, increasing the role of renewables and reducing the carbon footprint in agriculture and land use to energy taxation and cross-border elements. “From the Commission’s side, we’ve really thought this through and put on the table many pro posals. You have to go to the smallest details to ensure that it’s achievable,” she adds. Building a resilient and adaptable system The forest sector can provide a lot of solutions if it is stimu lated in the right direction. However, many people still see it as a problem. More awareness is needed to communicate why forestmanagement is important and howawood-based econ omy is the best way to protect Europe’s forests. As evidenced by the divisive reaction to the strategy, there is increasing polarisation around forest-related issues. How ever, the focus should be on the root causes of the problem: the fossil-based sectors. Forestry and the forest-based sector should be seen, and incentivised in the right way, to become part of the solution to the climate and biodiversity crisis, states Palahí. “Without biodiversity, the forests won’t be resilient in the long term, won’t be able to face climate change and therefore the resource for the sector will not be there. It’s so important to integrate biodiversity considerations, keeping the system resilient to change and adaptable to potential new condi tions,” he emphasises. For Loonela, the next challenging step is the negotiations with the EUmember states and the EuropeanParliament and attempting to keep the whole package together because, as she says, “all the different parts are like a puzzle and must fit together”.

In the coming months, we will create a civic proposal for a Europe-wide integrated forest monitoring framework that will also improve the availability of official statistics.” Creating resource effectiveness One of the positives of the strategy for Palahí is its empha sis on using more wood products and replacing fossil-based counterparts in building construction. According to a study published in the Environmental Science&Policy journal, every tonne of wood used in construction represents avoided car bon emissions equivalent to 3.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is the first step of the strategy’s cascading principle that puts the use of wood-based raw materials into an order of value to create resource effectiveness. “The priority when cutting wood is to use it for long-lived purposes that last dec ades, like construction and furniture. We want to ensure that short-lived wood products are used only where is necessary. The last level of this cascade is to avoid using wood for energy production whenever possible,” says Loonela. However, Palahí says many types of short-lived wood products could have an equally important impact on climate change mitigation. “For example, wood-based textiles can re duce carbon emissions by five to seven times compared topol yester. Over the coming decades, the textile sectorwill need to reinvent itself because it relies heavily on synthetic fibres, so there is a chance for the forest sector to play a fundamental role,” he forecasts, adding that packaging and biochemicals should also be prioritised. As a forester, Palahí is happy to see an emphasis on the three billion trees planting initiative but suggests prioritising the existing forests and providing the tools to adapt them, es pecially considering the increasing impacts of climate change and the natural disturbances in many European forests we have seen over the summer. “There are already many companies and forest owners who are planting millions of trees every year, but no one is empha sising that. In Europe, the forests have increased in terms of surface, growing stock and productivity over the last decades. As a result,wehavean important carbonsink,which is a conse quence of having a sector behind, investing in them,” he adds. Loonela agrees, saying that tree planting is not an alterna tive to preserving existing trees and that there is a very am bitious agenda when it comes to protecting all the remaining primary and old-growth forests: “We have announced specific guidelines on how to get there. We havemeasures in the strat egy that relate to the close-to-nature forest management and so on.” R&D drives forestry’s ambitious goals Research and innovation are listed as key drivers in achieving the ambitious goals of the strategy, which adds that it also pro