The Swedish forest is one of the largest in the European Union and it is a huge holder of carbon and it is also providing wooden products needed to replace fossil alternatives.
Our forest is mainly owned and managed by 300 000 small family based farmers who have been tending and taken care of their forest for generations. Thanks to their hard work many of our forests hold high biodiversity.
In the past years there's a very worrying trend that these small scale forest farms are prohibited to take care of their forests properly due to different Swedish authorities who are stopping them.
In quite many cases the landowners are prohibited by the authorities to cut down their trees in spite that there’s a Swedish law since long time that obligates landowners to replant. Sometimes the best is of course to make a reservation or a natural park of the forest but to force the landowner to do that without proper financial support is nothing less than a theft by the government.
Imagine the public outcry if the government would step into people’s gardens and stop the landowner from using the land and not offering any financial support!
So my urging to the Swedish government is to stop this madness and instead start to financially support our forest landowners so they will be able to use even more climate smart ways of taking care of our forest! 💚
If this doesn’t happen we risk having a huge part of the Swedish population, particularly in the countryside not supporting our government and authorities and in the long run we risk having dissatisfaction lead to parties like “Trumpism” rise even in Sweden.
Big thanks in advance Ulf Kristersson, Ebba Busch and Johan Persson for stopping this madness
