Valuable forests - Hearing

Naturarvet contributes to the national strategy for formal forest protection.

On 5 October, some 50 people from authorities, interest groups, companies and organisations gathered for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's hearing on the government's Valuable Forests - Evaluation and Revision of the National Strategy for Formal Protection of Forests in cooperation with the Swedish Forest Agency.

From Naturarvet Lo and Ywonne Jarl had registered their participation. We had a short presentation of who has been working on the revision, which is not going to a consultation but is taking comments through dialogue with stakeholders. In addition to our participation during the hearing, we also contributed a letter regarding the possibility of including Naturarvet in the ongoing work to formally protect valuable forests. In this context, we have put forward the possibility that voluntarily set-aside forests, which are not intended to be used, could be transferred to Naturarvet for formal protection free of charge, or that Naturarvet and other stakeholders could cooperate in different ways to formally protect forests.

The day offered short presentations on the current situation and strategic objectives, and each presentation gave us the opportunity to ask questions, answer poll questions and submit comments, a selection of which were included to provide further insight into the issue. We are pleased with our input on the day and some of our contribution can be found in the comments document which has been compiled and published at this link. We were group 06.

One point we made was that valuable forests in zoned areas should be given better protection by, for example, allowing the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency/Länderstyrelsen to give guidelines to municipalities for protection in such areas and to change the legislation so that old zoning plans must be revised before they are implemented. The current case is Våneviks old-growth forest, which Naturarvet hopes to acquire from Oskarshamn municipality.

Read more about the revision at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and download various documents about it at this link. The Swedish Forest Agency has also posted the same information at this link.

You can download our letter to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency at this link.