Euroforest

A public consultation exercise on the indirect land use change and biofuels, related to the RES directive (Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources), has been launched (30 July 2010) by the European Commission. There will be a stakeholder meeting on 17 September and the consultation will close on 31 October 2010.Indirect land use change is a subject of great complexity. The Commission is therefore consulting on a wide basis; seeking advice on both the scale and characteristics of the problem, as well as, if the scale of the problem is significant enough, how it...

The Environment Policy Review details EU policy developments under the four priorities of the 6th Environment Action Programme, namely Climate change, Nature and biodiversity, Environment and health and Natural resources and waste. It also indicates key issues for 2010 and the coming years. As a cross-cutting issue, the Review shows that Member States included many green initiatives in their economic recovery plans, seeking to move towards a low-carbon and resource-efficient economy. The Europe 2020 strategy, which was proposed by the Commission in 2009 and formally adopted by the European Council in June 2010, supports this shift to a resource...

The UNECE/FAO Forest Products Annual Market Review, 2009-2010 has been published, along with forest products data for 2009. The Review covers forest products market and policy developments in the UNECE region of Europe, North America and the CIS. The theme of the Review theme is Innovation for structural change recovery. The publication illustrates how a structural change has occurred in the forest sector, and how the sector is adapting and innovating for short-term survival and long-term growth.The consumption of wood and paper products fell by 11.6% in the UNECE region in 2009, the largest year-on-year drop since the oil crisis...

ITTO's Annual Review and Assessment of the World Timber Situation has been published. The report reviews developments in the global timber sector and wood markets, with a focus on tropical timber, in 2009. It contains data series on production and trade for 2005-2009, with a focus on the past three years. The year 2008 is used as the base for all global comparisons and ITTO summary totals as this is the latest year for which reasonably reliable data for most countries were available at the time of preparation.ITTO Annual Review (http://www.itto.int/en/annual_review/)ITTO Annual Review 2009 (http://www.itto.int/direct/topics/topics_pdf_download/topics_id=3770700 no=1)

The report Illegal Logging and Related Trade: Indicators of the Global Response by Chatham House examines and analyses efforts in the past decade to control illegal logging in nations that consume, produce and process wood and wood products, thereby revealing the significant impacts that tackling illegal logging and improving forest governance can have on the development of poor countries, as well as on climate change. The report assesses the response and progress in 12 countries – five producer countries (Brazil, Cameroon, Ghana, Indonesia and Malaysia), two processing countries (China and Vietnam) and five consumer countries (Japan, the USA, the UK,...

The European Parliament has voted in favour of legislation banning illegally logged timber imports into the European Union. The new legislation bans illegally-harvested timber or timber products from being placed on the EU market. This will prevent such wood from effectively being laundered once it reaches the EU. Currently, at least 20% of timber and timber products reaching the EU market is estimated to come from illegal sources.Member States will be responsible for applying sanctions to operators who break the rules. The legislation sets out guidelines for imposing fines: the environmental damage caused, the value of the timber and lost...

Two new independent scientific studies commissioned by BirdLife International, the European Environmental Bureau, and Transport Environment cast further doubt on the EU policy of promoting biomass as fuel for heat and power generation, and biofuels for transport.The first study, carried out by Joanneum Research, identifies a major flaw in the way carbon savings from forest-derived biomass are calculated in EU law as well as under UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. It concludes that harvesting trees for energy creates a carbon debt: the carbon contained in the trees is emitted upfront while trees grow back over many years. The...

A new synthesis published in the journal Global Change Biology. The synthesis is based on a suite of complementary approaches, of the primary production and carbon sink in forests of the 25 member states of the European Union (EU-25) during 1990–2005. Upscaled terrestrial observations and model-based approaches agree within 25% on the mean net primary production (NPP) of forests, i.e. 520±75 g C m-2 yr-1 over a forest area of 1.32 × 106 km2 to 1.55 × 106 km2 (EU-25). New estimates of the mean long-term carbon forest sink (net biome production, NBP) of EU-25 forests amounts 75±20...

The United Nations is setting up a body to monitor global ecology modelled on its influential climate panel. Last week, representatives from 85 countries gathered in Busan, South Korea, to approve the formation of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which will operate much like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to the document hammered out on 11 June 2010, the IPBES will conduct periodic assessments of Earth biodiversity and ecosystem services — ecosystems outputs, such as fresh water, fish, game, timber and a stable climate, that benefit humankind. These assessments, based on reviews of...

FOREST EUROPE made a press release the FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Conference in 2011. In exactly 365 days, ministers and high level representatives responsible for the forests of all 46 European countries and the EU will meet in Oslo for the 6th FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Conference to take decisions that affect the well-being of people and the environment both within and beyond their borders. The conference is being held in the Norwegian capital from 14-16 June 2011. The health and sustainability of European forests play an important role in solving challenges like climate change, biodiversity protection and fresh water. Their vitality...

Experts at the UK Forestry Commission are working to contain the spread of Phytophthora ramorum infection to Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi) trees in South Wales. P. ramorum is a fungus-like pathogen that kills many of the trees and plants that it infects. Japanese larch trees infected by P. ramorum were first found in South-West England in 2009, the only place in the world where it has attacked large numbers of a commercially grown species of conifer tree. This development was a step change in the behaviour of the pathogen. Since first being identified in Britain in 2002, on a viburnum...

The third edition of Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3), produced by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was published on 10 May 2010. The report confirms that the world has failed to meet its target to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. The report is based on scientific assessments, national reports submitted by governments and a study on future scenarios for biodiversity. Subject to an extensive independent scientific review process, publication of GBO-3 is one of the principal milestones of the UN International Year of Biodiversity. The Outlook warns that massive further loss of biodiversity...

Between 20-40% of the world wood production comes from illegally logged tropical forests. In April 2009 the European Parliament voted to ban trade in illegally logged timber following the example of the US. Now the text is back at Parliament and Environment Committee MEPs are not satisfied with what the EU governments in the Council have made of it - EU Council rejects ban on illegal timber imports (content/view/171/15/). On 4 May 2010 the Environment Committee of the European Parliament voted again.The Council position officially adopted in March was considerably weaker than the 1st reading position of the EU Parliament....

The 3014th Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting of European ministers took place in Brussels on 17th May 2010. The presidency informed the Council about the follow-up to the conference which took place on 6 and 7 April 2010 in Valsaín (Spain) and on the draft Council conclusions (9305/10). In a declaration, the Austrian, German, Latvia and Swedish delegations referred to the fact that forest protection is an integral part of sustainable forest management lying and which must remain within the competence of the member states (9785/10). Several other ministers took the floor and supported this declaration. Others, however, asked for...