On Wednesday 22 November, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a regulation on forest monitoring, designed to fill existing gaps in information about Europe's forests.
The Commission wants to create a comprehensive forest knowledge base to enable Member States, forest owners and managers to improve their response to the increasing pressures on forests and to strengthen forest resilience.
Forests are an essential element in the fight against climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
Better monitoring will enable measures to be taken to make forests more resilient to cross-border threats such as pests, droughts and forest fires, which are exacerbated by climate change, to introduce new economic models such as carbon farming, and to promote compliance with adopted Community legislation. Finally, it will help to strengthen the capacity of forests to fulfil their multiple environmental and socio-economic functions, in particular their role as natural carbon sinks.
The monitoring framework will enable the collection and sharing of timely and comparable forestry data obtained through a combination of Earth observation technologies and ground-based measurements. Building on existing national efforts, the framework will provide better data and knowledge for decision-making and policy implementation, including more up-to-date information on natural disturbances and forest disasters in the Member States.
“The framework will comprise two main pillars”, explained Commissioner for Environment Virginijus Sinkevičius (https://aeur.eu/f/9ob ). The first will be forestry data, for which the Commission is taking the initiative, with standardised data based on Earth observation systems such as Copernicus. This service will be free of charge for Member States and other users. The second pillar will be made up of forestry data collected by the Member States (national forest inventories). “We will ensure comparability by requiring Member States to share their data in a harmonised way”, explained the Commissioner.
The proposal is based on existing national systems and does not replace them. It also strengthens the Forest Information System for Europe (FISE). It will complement, without duplicating, what already exists at national level, while fully respecting subsidiarity, the Commission assures us.
The Commission has also adopted a proposal (https://aeur.eu/f/9o7 ) to set up a ‘Standing Forestry Committee’, which clarifies the composition of this committee in order to ensure the participation of the competent authorities of the Member States in this group.
In addition, the Commission has published a report on forest fires in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in 2022, which shows that in that year almost 900,000 hectares of land were burnt in the EU.
Link to the proposal: https://aeur.eu/f/9o6 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)