Implementing the EU's sink targets for land use and forestry and the biodiversity strategy would cause a massive leakage of logging from the EU to other countries, says Maarit Kallio, professor of forest economics and policy at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).<\/p>\n
\u201cIn practice, it would mean a huge transfer of income from EU countries to other countries, but almost no climate benefit compared to the costs,\u201d Kallio says in an interview with Audiomedia , which follows the forest sector .<\/p>\n
The European Union's Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry Regulation (LULUCF) sets strict carbon sink targets for member states for the years 2026\u20132030. In practice, it requires an immediate and drastic reduction in the amount of wood harvested in the EU. According to Kallio, this is a historic cut in forestry terms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the policy results in logging and revenues shifting outside Europe without significant global climate benefits, it is justified to question whether the direction is right. The responsibility for achieving the targets and any consequences lies with the member states.\u201d<\/p>\n
Logging leakage is a real problem<\/strong><\/p>\n When the demand for wood does not disappear but the supply is limited, the market reacts.<\/p>\n \"If less logging is done in the EU, but the demand for wood products remains almost unchanged, production will shift elsewhere. According to the modelling results, about two-thirds of the EU's logging reductions would be compensated for by increased logging elsewhere in the world,\" Kallio states.<\/p>\n A significant portion of the logging that was not done in Europe would be done in North America, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Chile and other significant forest areas.<\/p>\n \"From a climate policy perspective, this is a key problem. If logging is simply shifted geographically, global emissions will not decrease much.\"<\/p>\n Logging leakage is not just a climate issue, but also has major economic consequences, according to Kallio. When the production of wood raw materials decreases in the EU, processing, export revenues, investments and jobs also decrease.<\/p>\n \"For Finland, whose forest industry forms a central part of exports and the regional economy, the impacts would be significant. The value chain of the forest sector extends from forest owners to transport, machinery contractors, industry and ports. A sharp cut in logging volumes would be reflected throughout the entire chain.\"<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n