Some 300 proposals, and already first announcements and major orientations. The closing of the Assises du bois et de la forêt, Wednesday, March 16, allowed the participants to summarize their expectations and the government to begin to meet them. These consultations, in which 480 people took part, began in October 2021 under the aegis of several ministries (agriculture, biodiversity, industry and housing). Their goal was to provide answers “concrete and operational” to face the multiple challenges faced by the forest and the wood industry: their contribution to achieving carbon neutrality, adaptation to climate change, the preservation of biodiversity, but also industrial development to set up a competitive sector.
“These challenges are daunting, but achieving them is not out of reach”, said the Minister of Agriculture. To achieve this, Julien Denormandie and the Secretary of State for Biodiversity, Bérangère Abba, have announced several measures. Firstly, in terms of governance, the composition of the Higher Council for Forestry and Wood will be extended to research organisations, players in the sector and NGOs. To have solid knowledge on the state of forests and better anticipate future changes, additional resources must be granted to research and a National Forest Observatory, managed by the National Institute for Geographic and Forest Information ( IGN), will be implemented in early 2023.
Above all, the government has announced that it wants to sustain forest renewal efforts, which consist of financially supporting owners to encourage them to improve the quality of stands deemed to have low economic and environmental value, and to better prepare their forests for the consequences of global warming. The forestry component of the France Relance plan launched at the end of 2020 devoted 150 million euros to this renewal, to plant around 50 million trees in two years. From 2024, 100 to 150 million euros should be devoted to it each year, thanks to the mobilization of public and private funds. “This sustainability of resources is a major and structuring step forward”insisted Julien Denormandie.
A context of great uncertainty
In a report published on Wednesday, the NGO Canopée Forêts vivants, which participated in the meeting, however criticizes the lack of environmental ambition of the plan launched in 2020. It affirms in particular that public funding has been massively allocated to clear cut operations and planting softwoods, especially Douglas fir, even in healthy forests. “Our investigation reveals the gap between government communication and reality: presented as a plan for adapting forests to climate change, this plan is more of a plan for adapting forests to the needs of industry”, Judge Bruno Doucet, campaign manager who coordinated this document.
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