European Forests

The Fourth Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Legally-Binding Agreement on Forests in Europe (INC-Forests4) made substantial progress in revising the draft negotiating text of a forest convention, but decided to suspend work until autumn because it had run out of time to conclude a few key issues in the text, reach consensus on institutional issues and prepare the interim arrangements for the convention. INC-Forests4 was held 10-14 June 2013 in Warsaw, Poland. The five-day session was attended by 140 participants, including delegates from 33 governments and the European Union (EU), and observers from the government of Japan...

Jointly with the FOREST EUROPE Liaison Unit Madrid and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), CEPF organized a stakeholder meeting on the implementation of the Legally Binding Agreement (LBA) on Forests in Europe. The meeting took place in Brussels on 23 May 2013.The meeting was attended by 30 people, representing various stakeholders, and it addressed the importance of stakeholder involvement, not only in the currently on-going LBA negotiation process, but in particular later implementation. The primary objective of the meeting was to open the doors and provide stakeholders with the opportunity to express their opinion and discuss the opportunities...

Lefèvre et al. have published in the journal Biological Conservation an assessment of the state of the conservation of forest genetic resources in 33 European countries on the basis of information in the EUFGIS portal. Abstract: Dynamic conservation of forest genetic resources (FGR) means maintaining the genetic diversity of trees within an evolutionary process and allowing generation turnover in the forest. We assessed the network of forests areas managed for the dynamic conservation of FGR (conservation units) across Europe (33 countries). On the basis of information available in the European Information System on FGR (EUFGIS Portal), species distribution maps, and...

A high-level science-policy seminar brought together a full house of leading forest policy scientists and decision makers last week at the European Parliament to discuss the Opportunities and challenges in meeting renewable energy targets from forest biomass: an EU perspective as well as the need for EU sustainability criteria for solid biomass.Three presentations by invited speakers were followed by a panel discussion. Can European forests supply the woody biomass needed to meet the renewable energy action plans of EU member states? (Dr. Lauri Hetemäki, EFI)What are the regional long term effects of intensive forest biomass harvesting on soil fertility? (Dr....

An article in The Economist puts the focus on the European aim to meet 20% of its energy demands from renewable resources by 2020. The article questions whether the subsidies for biomass energy will achieve their aim to reduce carbon emissions, and discusses the effects the policy is having on other parts of the forest sector - e.g. pushing up timber prices. The article highlights a 2011 statement from Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency - It is widely assumed that biomass combustion would be inherently carbon neutral because it only releases carbon taken from the atmosphere during plant...