Even under a moderate implementation of the EU’s biodiversity strategy, tens of millions of cubic metres of roundwood production would be moved to countries with lower governance quality and higher risk of species extinction, a study has warned.

The EU Biodiversity Strategy (EUBDS) commits the bloc to protecting 30% of its territory by the end of this decade – a third of the protected areas strictly – including all remaining EU primary and old-growth forests.

In the plan, the EU specifies that it needs to make sure its enhanced forest protection does not lead to the leakage of biodiversity risk to other regions of the world, but a study by researchers at Germany’s Thuenen Institute of Forestry published in the Conservation Biology journal found that this is inevitable under the bloc’s current strategy.

“Sustained roundwood production in the EU is needed to avoid placing more pressure on more vulnerable ecosystems elsewhere,” the researchers concluded.

Modelling the future of global production of roundwood – typically used for industrial processes or as raw material – they found that production and consumption levels are set to rise in the years ahead no matter which policies are put in place in Europe and elsewhere.

However, even a moderately stringent implementation of the EU’s biodiversity strategy would lead to a drop in production levels within the bloc of some 65 million cubic metres annually compared to a business-as-usual scenario, with Sweden taking the brunt of 16.6% of the total EU cut.

That would be offset by a 40.6-mln cubic metres increase in production elsewhere, the study found, with the remaining 25 mln unlikely to be replaced.

Of that volume, 36.8 mln cubic metres would likely shift to 16 countries that as a group are more vulnerable than the EU on 20 out of 26 applied biodiversity indicators, according to the study.

The US (17%) and Canada (15.5%) would be the biggest takers of former EU roundwood production, but Ukraine, Russia, South Africa, China, Brazil, and Indonesia would also take significant shares, according to the model.

Overall, much of the EU roundwood production would move to areas with, on average, lower governance quality, political awareness, forest coverage, and biomass, and with less sustainable forest management, the study said.

At the same time, the replacement countries have more natural habitats and intact forest landscapes, but with a higher risk of species extinction and less protected area.

SAFEGUARDS NEEDED

“Our results provide clear indications that environmental policies under EUBDS risk producing negative effects on biodiversity elsewhere, which would thus counteract the overall effectiveness of the intervention,” the researchers said.

“We conclude that before more forests are conserved and protected under the EUBDS, safeguards need to be in place to ensure that the shift of roundwood production to non-EU countries does not harm ecosystems elsewhere.”

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was a step in the right direction, but unlikely to be sufficient given the EU is expected to set stricter targets and implement them more effectively than most other countries, they said.

“Related to wood production, deforestation is not the main threat to forest biodiversity in most of the affected non-EU countries. Instead, the challenge there, in mostly high or upper middle-income countries, is mainly to ensure the sustainable management of existing and newly established forests,” the study said.

“Indonesia and Brazil are exceptions in that respect. The fact that they are on the list of countries for which higher roundwood production can be expected is alarming because they contain multiple biodiversity hotspots.”

That suggested the EU should strive to maintain its own roundwood production despite its conservation targets.

“From a global biodiversity perspective, one could argue that sustained roundwood production in the EU is needed to reduce pressure on more vulnerable ecosystems elsewhere, at least as long as forest management in non-EU countries is not as sustainable as in the EU,” the study concluded.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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