Alexander Moiseyev

Economic impacts of accelerating forest growth in Europe

Abstract The global forest sector model EFI-GTM was applied to assess regional impacts in Europe of increased timber supply caused by potential acceleration of forest growth in Europe. The EFI-GTM is a multi-periodic partial equilibrium model, which contains 31 European regions and 30 regions for the rest of the world, and trade between the regions. The endogenous sectors include 26 forest industry products and six wood categories. Three alternative forest growth scenarios were analysed: a base line assuming the present annual rate of growth in the European countries, and two accelerating growth scenarios corresponding to a 20 and 40% increase after 20 years in the forest growth relative to the baseline growth. In the accelerated growth scenarios equilibrium prices for logs and sawnwood decreased significantly from the baseline levels, whereas the other forest product prices were not affected much. Depending on region and timber category, the log prices in 2020 were 7–9 and 13–17% lower than the base line prices in the medium and high forest growth scenarios, respectively. For sawnwood, the corresponding price decreases were 2 and 3.5–4.5%. In Western Europe, log harvest and sawnwood production increased because accelerated forest growth substituted for imports of these commodities from Russia and Eastern European countries. This decreased the harvests in Russia and Eastern Europe relative to the base case. In all the three forest growth scenarios the forest owners income as well as the forest industry profit increase over time.

Identifying pathways to visions of future land use in Europe

Plausible scenarios of future land use derived from model projections may differ substantially from what is actually desired by society, and identifying such mismatches is important for identifying policies to resolve them. This paper presents an approach to link explorative projections of future land use for the European Union to normative visions of desired land-use futures. We used the results of 24 scenario projections obtained from seven linked simulation models to explore uncertainty in future land-use developments. Land-use projections were linked to statements made by stakeholders for three normative visions of desired, future land use. The visions differed in the scale of multifunctionality of land use: at European (Best Land in Europe), regional (Regional Connected) or local (Local Multifunctional) level. To identify pathways to these visions, we analysed in which cases projected land-use changes matched with the land-use changes desired in the visions. We identified five pathways to the vision Regional Connected, two pathways to the vision Best Land in Europe, but no pathway to the vision Local Multifunctional. Our results suggest that policies have the ability to change the development of land use such that it is more in line with land-use futures desired by society. We believe our approach represents an interesting avenue for foresight studies on land use, as it combines the credibility from explorative scenarios with legitimacy and saliency of normative visions.

A cross-scale impact assessment of European nature protection policies under contrasting future socio-economic pathways.

Protection of natural or semi-natural ecosystems is an important part of societal strategies for maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem services, and achieving overall sustainable development. The assessment of multiple emerging land use trade-offs is complicated by the fact that land use changes occur and have consequences at local, regional, and even global scale. Outcomes also depend on the underlying socio-economic trends. We apply a coupled, multi-scale modelling system to assess an increase in nature protection areas as a key policy option in the European Union (EU). The main goal of the analysis is to understand the interactions between policy-induced land use changes across different scales and sectors under two contrasting future socio-economic pathways. We demonstrate how complementary insights into land system change can be gained by coupling land use models for agriculture, forestry, and urban areas for Europe, in connection with other world regions. The simulated policy case of nature protection shows how the allocation of a certain share of total available land to newly protected areas, with specific management restrictions imposed, may have a range of impacts on different land-based sectors until the year 2040. Agricultural land in Europe is slightly reduced, which is partly compensated for by higher management intensity. As a consequence of higher costs, total calorie supply per capita is reduced within the EU. While wood harvest is projected to decrease, carbon sequestration rates increase in European forests. At the same time, imports of industrial roundwood from other world regions are expected to increase. Some of the aggregate effects of nature protection have very different implications at the local to regional scale in different parts of Europe. Due to nature protection measures, agricultural production is shifted from more productive land in Europe to on average less productive land in other parts of the world. This increases, at the global level, the allocation of land resources for agriculture, leading to a decrease in tropical forest areas, reduced carbon stocks, and higher greenhouse gas emissions outside of Europe. The integrated modelling framework provides a method to assess the land use effects of a single policy option while accounting for the trade-offs between locations, and between regional, European, and global scales.