Why do we allow so much clear-cutting in Sweden?
Sweden has one of the world’s most intensive forestry, where we harvest almost all growth of trees. We are also increasing the areas of use for forest raw materials – everything from biofuel to building materials to paper pulp. At the same time, alarms are increasing about the loss of biodiversity, the felling of forests worthy of protection and that Sweden is violating both national and international laws and commitments. In Sweden, we have been managing forests for a long time and should therefore have a robust regulatory framework by now. So how is it actually decided which forest can be felled?
The conflict of interest
It starts with a forest owner, such as Europe’s largest private forest owner SCA, wanting to harvest forest and make money. They must then submit a felling notification to the Swedish Forest Agency – the authority responsible for the supervision of forestry. The Swedish Forest Agency is therefore responsible for ensuring that forestry shows consideration for nature values and that species protection is complied with. How does the Swedish Forest Agency know which forests have protection value? They do not know – the authority only visits about two percent of all forests that are notified for final felling. Instead, it is the forest owner himself who must notify in the documentation it submits with the felling notification.
The Swedish Forest Agency
The Swedish Forest Agency is a government agency that must ensure that the forest is managed sustainably and that production goals and environmental goals are equal. How does this work in practice? The authority has a total of about 800 employees, and only a small part of these work with the supervision of logging matters. At the same time, they receive about 6000 felling notifications a month all year round. The head of the Swedish Forest Agency, Staffan Norin, says that “It is a known problem that we do not have time for all the supervisory matters that we would like”
2021 was the year when the Swedish Forest Agency made the highly criticized decision to completely cease the registration of key habitats, which meant that the agency basically phased out its only tool for identifying forests with high conservation values.
That same year, the Swedish Forest Agency introduced an automatic processing system that would ring if a felling notification was received where they believe that an inspection will need to be carried out. This is based on the documentation that the forest owner himself has submitted in his felling notification.
If the system does not ping, the felling notification is automatically approved after six weeks. The outcome was as expected – between 2023-2024, the Swedish Forest Agency approved 98% of submitted felling notifications without any requirements for consideration. The forest companies that have a turnover of billions and make money from felling forests must therefore assess for themselves whether they want to make a thorough inventory of the forest they want to cut down.
The courts
Will the Swedish Forest Agency then succeed in fulfilling its mission to uphold the laws and regulations that apply and take environmental objectives into account? The courts give a resounding no in answer to the question. Protect the Forest, together with four other environmental organizations, has reviewed a selection of 247 appeals against the Swedish Forest Agency’s decision in the Land & Environment Court and found that over 60% of the judgments differ from the Swedish Forest Agency’s decision.
We can thus conclude that the Swedish Forest Agency gives incorrect decisions in more than half of all cases they decide on. Since 98% of felling notifications are approved and that between 60,000 – 70,000 felling notifications are received a year, there can be tens of thousands of illegal fellings that take place in Sweden – every year. Perhaps that is why Nestlé terminated its business with SCA. Perhaps that is why the EU criticizes Sweden’s forestry.
The question should be asked again – why do we allow so much clear-cutting in Sweden and why do we allow so much illegal logging?