Abstract
The forestry supply chain in the southeast of England is characterized by a diverse set of independent businesses and a sector strongly driven by personal connections and trust. Yet, the opportunity exists to increase the amount of wood product through bringing currently unmanaged woodlands to the market, a result that should have environmental as well as economic benefits. Previous research has indicated that agents play a key linking role between woodland owners and contractors, offering services ranging from consultancy support, grant aid access, and the writing of management plans to the scheduling and delivery of thinning and felling activity, with a unique and important position in the sector in terms of facilitating change. This study, through interviews with 18 woodland agents, was designed to explore collaboration across the sector. The results suggest that current levels of collaboration are low and use predominantly horizontal mechanisms, focusing on information sharing rather than joint operation. This is despite a positive market opportunity and a growth aspiration, as well as an enthusiasm for increased collaboration that is particularly prevalent in smaller businesses. Four main features of the sector are limiting the amount of collaboration: a traditional handshake culture strongly embedded within rural life; the construct, mechanisms, and frameworks of the sector; the value set of those operating at this critical juncture of supply and demand; and the lack of positive examples of collaboration. Higher levels of collaboration were seen by woodland agents to be positive for increasing the sustainable and productive management of woodlands but achieving this will be challenging to established practice.
Highlights
Woodland makes up 17% of the ground cover in the southeast of England [1], the most wooded region of the country, with twice the coverage of the UK average [2]
The results are presented under the five key focus areas, which were identified in the introduction: current levels of collaboration in the forestry sector, perceived benefits and disadvantages of collaboration, perceived barriers and enablers for collaboration, impact of size of business, and wider perspectives on the culture and ways of working of the sector from the perspective of woodland agents
When current activity was considered, every agent was able to identify instances of collaboration. These ranged from informal collaborations occurring in parallel to attendance at industry events, such as those organized by industry associations and bodies including CONFOR and the Royal Forestry Society (RFS), to more formal collaborations around sharing work for contractors or shared haulage (Table 3)
Summary
Woodland makes up 17% of the ground cover in the southeast of England [1], the most wooded region of the country, with twice the coverage of the UK average [2]. A steeply increasing percentage of this is broadleaved trees, largely within private ownership, which will reach maturity over the 20–30 years, yet indicators suggest that only a relatively small percentage is currently under active management, defined as clearance or felling in the woodland in the last 3 years [3]. The high levels of unmanaged woodland represent both an economic and environmental missed opportunity, for woodland owners and the wider forestry sector Whilst this problem may appear to be a regionally localized challenge, it has much wider global ramifications for sustainability, with the lack of utilization of local. 2.3 What is stopping more collaboration/what would be the biggest thing that could happen which would increase the level of collaboration?
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