30 April 2015, HD FestForest news - Sustainable forest management needs to be at the forefront of the European Union's new strategy for the sector. This is according to a non-legislative resolution that was voted in by the European Parliament on Tuesday.

Elisabeth Kostinger, a member of the parliament and Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, stated: "The new EU forest strategy is a much-needed response to growing demands on forests and significant societal and political changes that have affected them over the last 15 years.

"Forestry has a huge potential to create jobs and spur growth. The new strategy must, therefore, promote sustainable use of timber and other forest materials without adding red tape for forest owners and the sector."

The parliament has called on the new strategy to tackle a range of challenges such as forest fires, natural disasters, climate change and invasive alien species. It also wants to strengthen forest-based industries and drive improvements in the use of raw materials like timber, cork and textile fibres. The parliament claimed this would help the EU's forestry industry become more competitive, self-sufficient and boost jobs.

State responsibility

According to the resolution, managing the new strategy will be the responsibility of member states, while the EU will take more of a coordinating role.

"The EU must strive to coordinate its forestry-related policies better, but should not make forestry a matter of EU policy," it stated.

Forests will also be expected to play a more important role in the future of EU energy, although the parliament wants further clarification on the greenhouse gas impact of using forest biomass in order to identify the best course of action.

Other recommendations for the new strategy include using EU research and development programmes to promote targeted research on cost-effective new timber products and improving knowledge with a focus on long-term data collection within the newly-created European forest information system. It has also called for new training programmes to be established for young foresters and to attract more people to the industry.

A final recommendation is for the European Commission to finalise its review of the effectiveness of EU Timber Regulation, which aims to tackle the problem of illegal logging and the sale of illegal timber on the continent.

In 2010, the EU contained 179 million hectares of forests and other wooded land, accounting for 41 per cent of total land.

Source: http://www.hdfestforest.com/News-archive.10028.aspx?recordid10028=801785874