Never before has so much forest been cut down as now, at least not according to the Forestry Agency’s measurements that go back to 1956. At the same time, the forestry industry is making record profits.
Södra skogsägarna increased its operating profit by over two billion kroner compared to the previous year and landed at 7.8 billion kroner for 2022. SCA landed at 8.6 billion kroner.
“A big frustration”
Per Angelstam, professor of forest and natural resource management, has worked for a long time at the Swedish University of Agriculture but now works in Norway and is also a visiting professor in Holland. He is critical of what he considers to be too much felling and too one-sided focus on the forest industry among Swedish politicians:
– From the bottom of my heart, I feel a great frustration that evidence, i.e. knowledge about how we should manage the forest to preserve species, is not applied. What many of us find frustrating is that the politicians ignore it – while claiming that everything is peace and joy. It is dishonest.
Decaying forest has no value
But Rural Affairs Minister Peter Kullgren (KD) believes that Sweden today protects enough forests and that the 2,500 square kilometers of forest that are felled per year sounds reasonable.
Is Sweden’s forestry sustainable?
– Yes, I think it is, says Kullgren.
Professor Per Angelstam believes, on the contrary, that Swedish forestry is not sustainable.
– So sustainable has to do with the standard, and with the standard we have set for Swedish forest and environmental policy and in international agreements – so the answer to that question is no.
Watch when SVT’s team accompanies Per Angelstam into the 100-year-old forest, in the clip above.