Economic impacts of increased forest conservation in Europe: a forest sector model analysis

Abstract

Scenarios with either 3% or 5% of the productive forest stock in Western Europe set-aside for conservation are compared to a baseline case. The latter case is further compared to cases where the whole of Europe and North America join the 5% conservation program. The scenarios are created by employing a global forest sector model, EFI-GTM. The aggregate conservation impacts seem relatively low, mainly because international trade counterbalances regional shortages and because roundwood harvests are well below the annual forest growth in many European countries. Conservation increases the forest owners’ wood sales income. The 5% set-aside raises roundwood prices in Western Europe by 4% and decreases harvests by 3% from the base case levels during 2010–2020. The production of pulp and mechanical forest products then decrease by 1.4 and 1.7%, respectively. The paper market is affected least. The leakage impact of forest protection is most pronounced in Russian roundwood harvests. Simultaneous conservation in the whole of Europe raises the roundwood costs of the Western European forest industry, but it does not prevent the leakage of roundwood harvests to Russia. Conservation in North America has a low impact on the European roundwood market.