EU Versus Sweden – the Battle of Sustainability in Our Forests

Abstract: In 2021, the European Union (EU) released the New EU Forest Strategy for 2030 to improve the welfare of forests within the EU. This caused a conflict between the EU and some of its Member States. The Swedish Government criticised the strategy for being too intrusive to countries' national affairs and their right to autonomy over their forest resources. In addition, Sweden has been criticised by the EU for its clear-cutting forest management strategies to be unsustainable. At the same time, the deadline to align with national agreements like the Paris Agreement, the 2030 Agenda and the European Green Deal is approaching. By 2050, the EU should be a carbon-neutral continent. Forests play an important role in climate change mitigation and in the sustainability agenda of both the EU and Sweden, although both parties seem to disagree on the other’s forest politics. This thesis investigates how sustainability in forests is formulated by the European Union (EU) and Sweden. Through quantitative content analysis and qualitative content analysis, the forest policy and strategy documents of the EU and Sweden are analysed to identify the sustainability content, its differences, and its similarities. The analysed documents that are selected to illustrate the sustainability content in the EU are the New EU Forest Strategy for 2030, Staff Working Document on the 3 Billion Tree Planting Pledge for 2030 and Guidelines for Defining, Mapping, Monitoring and Strictly Protecting EU Primary and Old -Growth Forests. The analysed documents that are selected to illustrate Swedish Forest Policy are Skogsvårdslagstiftningen and Sveriges Nationella Skogsprogram. The findings showed that both the EU and Sweden strive to reach international commitments on climate change and sustainability in their forest politics. However, the sustainability content in the EU emphasises protecting, restoring, and increasing the forest areas within the EU to achieve the goals. The sustainability content in Sweden views forests as an economic resource that can contribute to the sustainability transition of Swedish society. The conclusion is that bo th approaches of the EU and Sweden align with previous research on forest and climate change but strive for sustainability from different perspectives.