Starting from the first sentence of the title, there is not much to say. What happens in the forest is life. It goes on. 24-7. How it's going on is determined in the second sentence. The fate of the forest rests in the hands of man and is influenced by the whims of man.
I follow the news flow about forests and yes, there are once again insightful reports in DN at 10-year intervals, where Lisa Röstlund has sharpened her pen and confronts the forest industry and politicians about the state of the Swedish forest. Read Lisa's articles!
Occasional victories are won for stopped logging and protection of forests and the odd urban irreplaceable old-growth forest, such as Månsberget in Karlstad, gets a lot of attention through commitment of nature lovers. Initiatives like #forestabuse gets coverage in the Swedish media and internationally in e.g. the New York Times with its images of a deforested Swedish forest landscape.
An exciting development is the support of the European Court of Justice for an appeal by Skydda skogen, Naturskyddsföreningen and GOF against a logging operation in Härryda municipality to the Land and Environmental Court. The EU criticises the authorities' handling of such cases for not taking sufficient account of the Habitats Directive.
Protect the Forest has also successfully appealed a number of logging notifications from three companies in Jämtland, where the Swedish Forest Agency failed to consult with the County Administrative Board on species included in the Habitats Directive.
Once upon a time, when we had children aged 5-14, we visited friends in Nyköping. They fired up the sauna and everyone gathered in the warmth except our youngest son and their boy of the same age. After a while they also entered the sauna. We could see that our son was not completely happy with the situation. The father of the friendly family asked: - Is it hot? The son looked up at us as if we were all idiots and exclaimed: "No, it's not hot, it's shiiit hot!" whereupon he promptly left the sauna while the laughter of us slightly more tall people warmed up the good mood even more inside.
So now that the economy is on pause, how is the transition to a sustainable society going? How is the Paris Agreement coming along? Has the industry switched or is the forestry industry hot again? No, it's not hot, it's dirty hot. The owners of the industry are laughing all the way to the bank but the only thing that is heating up is the average temperature of the earth. The good mood is conspicuous by its absence.
We take a look at some events that have made headlines in the trade press:
Norra skog has sold its property holdings of 40 000 ha to the new fund Silvestica. Norra skog has put the money in a basket - they will become part owners of the Metsä pulp mill in Husum. This is where a large proportion of Norra Forest members' trees from deforestation in Norrland will be transported to be converted into short-lived products that will be transformed in the short term, adding masses of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in addition to the catastrophic carbon emissions from deforestation and the long-term loss of carbon-binding natural forests.
Now, Norra Forest members will share in the profits of the forest industry. This move will of course stimulate forest owners to supply raw material from otherwise unprofitable forestry. The concept has long been embraced by Southern Forest Owners. And how much old-growth forest is left in southern Sweden? The impact of this industry is devastating for climate and biodiversity and an ever-present threat to the last old-growth forests.
Metsä Fibre is using its profits and influence capital to build a brand new biocombine in Kemi. The Finnish government is helping to build the infrastructure so that an assembly line of 7-8 million cubic metres of pulpwood from deforested areas can be transported to the monster industry every year. 1 million cubic metres will come from northern Sweden.
Large enso together with IKEA and H&M, plans to take over 10% of the world's production of raw materials for the textile industry with forest-based materials. Now they are building a demo plant in Nymölla, Skåne, for 350 million SEK with money from the Swedish Energy Agency. IKEA, which is already one of the world's biggest deforesters with 1 in every 100 felled trees on its conscience, is looking forward to replacing all its textiles with wood fibre textiles. The supply of forest raw material obviously needs to increase. Where should the raw material come from? The same raw material that will suffice for biofuels and wood products? IKEA doesn't mind getting 7% of its raw material from Europe's last dictatorship - Belarus.
Sveaskog invests 100 million in its only cash cow, the nurseries, to increase production of seedlings to replace the former forest in the deforested forest industry landscape. The seedlings are designed to grow quickly, i.e. to provide cheaper raw material for the carbon-intensive cellulose industry in a shorter time.
Sveaskog's unprofitable forestry division was nevertheless pushed by the former CEO to be able to clear more of the reindeer herding forests in Sápmi, which created conflicts. Sveaskog's board fired the CEO and the Sami and nature lovers are celebrating victories for the forest, but no one knows how Sveaskog will implement its new strategy to increase both management and biodiversity at the same time, not even the board. The investment in more forest plants is perhaps a signal that they are investing in the profitable part of the business and hopefully letting the unprofitable forestry part go to waste.
Silvestica is a new phenomenon in forestry in Sweden, created by SEB and others. With SEK 5 billion from Swedish and Norwegian pension funds in their wallets, their ambition is to buy up and "refine" properties in the Baltic States, Finland and Sweden. Their deals in Sweden have been spectacular. For example, they bought a property in Västerbotten for more than double the price it had sold for three years earlier. The prices paid by Silvestica are driving up prices in the property market. At the same time, Holmen, SCA, Billerud-Korsnäs and Sveaskog have all upgraded their forest holdings in their accounts over the past year. The forest assets have suddenly doubled in their books.
LRF led by their top property rights lawyer Carl von der Esch (who himself has speculatively bought mountainous forests in 2010) has successfully pushed through lawsuits on behalf of forest owners against the Forestry Commission for denying them harvesting of mountainous forests worthy of protection. In the judgements, the Forestry Commission is forced to pay compensation set according to the new price levels +25% and the Forestry Commission has no funds left for its normal nature protection work. All the money is spent on paying compensation to forest owners who have been refused the right to harvest mountain forests. Felling that would not have made them any money anyway. No wonder that the number of logging notifications for mountain forests increased by 400% last year.
Read more here about what's happening IN and WITH Natural Heritage forests right now. Welcome with any thoughts or questions you may have about forests in general and Natural Heritage forests in particular. Write to lo[at]naturarvet.se
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