Forest Owners

Forests provide numerous public goods to society. They store and sequestrate carbon, improve air quality (notably by filtering dust particles), abate noise pollution and can create agreeable micro-climates. Their water retention capacity permits the infiltration of rain into the groundwater and helps to prevent floods. They reduce soil erosion and mitigate avalanche risks. They offer a habitat for wildlife. The aesthetic enjoyment and recreation opportunities of forests benefit visitors and the tourism industry. Visitors can also collect mushrooms and berries, flowers and medical plants.

Comparison of the respective non-markets benefits agricultural and forest land generate for society is difficult. However, there is strong ground to believe that, on average, an additional hectare of forest is preferable compared to an additional hectare of agricultural land. Forests are much more useful for fighting climate change, and they exert significantly fewer negative effects on society than agriculture with its fertilizers, pesticides, soil erosion problems etc.

Considering that agricultural and forest areas are roughly of equal size in the EU, the bias of the CAP in favor of agriculture is astonishing: the European Commission estimates that only € 8 billion will go to forestry during the 2007-2013 programming period. This corresponds to just 9% of the budget of the second pillar dedicated to rural development, and to less than 3% of the entire CAP budget.

Forest owners are even more disadvantaged than these numbers suggest. This is because a large share of the money spent on forestry is not directed at forest owners. In particular, € 2.4 billion are used for ‘First afforestation of agricultural land’ – that is, its goes primarily to farmers who convert their land into forests. Looking not on how much money is spent on forestry but how much of it actually benefits forest owners, one arrives at little more than 1% of the entire CAP budget.

With regard to the post-2013 CAP, forest owners have two options. Either they side with farmers and try to get some more crumbs of the CAP pie in exchange. If they are lucky, they may double their share and get 2% instead of the current 1%. Or they support fundamental reform that turns the CAP into a sustainable land management policy. Under such a scenario, agriculture and forestry would be treated on an equal basis according to the public goods they provide and the value for society that subsidies can create in the two sectors. It is hard to put a number on the share of the land management budget that should, unter such a logic, be spent on forestry, but it would certainly be above 10%.

The political difficulty is that many national forest owner organizations are very close to identical or with farmer federations. This limits their ability to promote forest owner interests in the member states and in Brussels. Forest owners who have no or little agricultural land should recognize that their interests conflict with those of farmers, and that they have been on the losing side of the stick in the past. They should speak out in favor of transforming the CAP into a sustainable land management policy that overcomes the anti-forest bias.