Economic impacts of accelerating forest growth in Europe

Abstract

The global forest sector model EFI-GTM was applied to assess regional impacts in Europe of increased timber supply caused by potential acceleration of forest growth in Europe. The EFI-GTM is a multi-periodic partial equilibrium model, which contains 31 European regions and 30 regions for the rest of the world, and trade between the regions. The endogenous sectors include 26 forest industry products and six wood categories. Three alternative forest growth scenarios were analysed: a base line assuming the present annual rate of growth in the European countries, and two accelerating growth scenarios corresponding to a 20 and 40% increase after 20 years in the forest growth relative to the baseline growth. In the accelerated growth scenarios equilibrium prices for logs and sawnwood decreased significantly from the baseline levels, whereas the other forest product prices were not affected much. Depending on region and timber category, the log prices in 2020 were 7–9 and 13–17% lower than the base line prices in the medium and high forest growth scenarios, respectively. For sawnwood, the corresponding price decreases were 2 and 3.5–4.5%. In Western Europe, log harvest and sawnwood production increased because accelerated forest growth substituted for imports of these commodities from Russia and Eastern European countries. This decreased the harvests in Russia and Eastern Europe relative to the base case. In all the three forest growth scenarios the forest owners income as well as the forest industry profit increase over time.