Assessment of possible leakage effects of imple-menting EU COM proposals for the EU Biodiversity Strategy on forestry and forests in non-EU coun-tries

Overarching objective of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 is recovering biodiversity by strengthening the protection and restoration of nature. Key elements are the creation of protected areas on at least 30% of Europe's land and sea area, including stronger protective measures for forests. However, any implementation of dedicated measures will reduce roundwood production in EU member states. It is to be expected that parts of this reduced roundwood production will be compensated by increasing roundwood production in non-EU countries. There is a fundamental risk of biodiversity losses in non-EU countries accompanying such leakage of roundwood produc-tion. From a global perspective, such biodiversity losses must be opposed to biodiversity gains in EU countries. The presented study provides a first assessment of possible leakage effects and rep-resents the state of work as of September 2020. At first, the presented study provides an estimate of the decline in roundwood production in EU member states as a result of implementing partial or full production restrictions in forests. In a second step, implications of reduced roundwood production within EU-27 on global wood markets are assessed. Finally, leakage of roundwood production to non-EU countries is evaluated using in-dicators related to governance, sustainable forest management, biodiversity, forest condition, de-forestation pressure and socio-economic aspects. In order to estimate the reduction in roundwood production in EU countries firstly three single implementation measures are assessed and then consolidated for Germany: (i) 10 % share of forest area set-aside, (ii) non-utilization of “old-growth forests” and (iii) 30 % share of protected forest areas under Habitats Directive management requirements. As a result, the potential roundwood production in Germany declines on average within the period examined (2018 – 2052) by 23.96 million m³/a to 52.77 million m³/a or to 69 %. In the following calculations, this reduction share is assigned to all EU-27 countries. Modelling international roundwood production leakage using the Global Forests Products Model GFPM projects an overall roundwood production decrease of 42 % in the EU-27 for the year 2050. Increased roundwood production in non-EU countries would compensate for 73 % of the de-creased roundwood production in the EU. The remaining 27 % can be understood as price-induced reduction of wood products consumption. Until 2050 EU-27’s decreased roundwood production would mainly be offset by increased production in the USA. According to the modelling results, 26 % of decreased roundwood production are leaked to the USA. Further leakage occurs to Russia (12 %), Canada (9 %) und Brazil (8 %). Differentiating non-consumption into soft- and hardwood, non-consumption of hardwood is more pronounced (39 %) than non-consumption of softwood (11 %). Consumption of fuelwood declines by 67 % but its production does not shift to non-EU countries. Basically, fuelwood is consumed to a much smaller share, due to increasing prices and the following assumed transition to other energy sources. Only small leakages are calculated for pulp and paper products. Leakages for sawn wood and wood-based panels show comparable rela-tive changes to those modelled for roundwood production. Implementation of the EU biodiversity strategy causes decreasing roundwood production in EU member states and increasing roundwood production in non-EU countries. The expected addi-tional production would be shifted to countries that have a significantly higher proportion of intact forest areas compared to the EU, but already have lost significant amounts of these areas in recent years. The described leakage poses a threat to the remaining intact forest areas in non-EU-countries. Non-EU countries with a modelled roundwood production increase often show smaller biomass stocks and higher shares of already degraded area than EU-27 member states. Either this could indicate a further threat or a potential for promoting afforestation measures to buffer pres-sure on natural forests. Further protection measures in the EU would further increase the discrepancy to protection measures of other countries. In non-EU countries, net deforestation is higher, significantly lower proportions of forest areas are placed under protection and less money is spent on the conserva-tion of biodiversity than in EU countries. The average Red List Index indicates an increased threat of extinction of species for non-EU countries. Also, income disparities are higher in non-EU coun-tries than in EU member states. For particularly poor countries, the shift of roundwood production could mean an opportunity to benefit from potential job creation, but on the other hand there is also the risk of displacement effects for often subsistence-based income groups. Countries with high additional roundwood production and high vulnerability should be primarily focused on in the risk assessment. Immediate risks are further endangerment of already endan-gered species, reduction of intact forest area, increase of degraded land area and increased net deforestation. At a global scale it is expected that positive biodiversity effects in the EU due to additional protection are counteracted by negative effects in non-EU countries. Thus, European policy measures should focus particularly on these countries in order to buffer potential leakage effects by strengthening sustainable forest management and respective governance. The presented report constitutes a pre-study on leakage effect of the EU biodiversity strategy. It uses information and data that is available at this point. However, for a more detailed analysis further data from EU member states and further development of the applied methods are neces-sary.