Latvia harvests slightly less wood annually than it grows / Article

March 20th is the International Day of Forests and to mark the occasion, Eurostat published some suitable statistics on how much wood is taken out of Europe’s forests each year and how much is replaced.

For forests to grow healthily, the amount of wood harvested or removed in a given year should be lower than the forest’s natural growth rate (net annual increment). The difference between these 2 variables can serve as a proxy for sustainably harvested wood.  

In 2023, 23 of the EU countries with available data recorded a net annual increment higher than wood removals. Forest growth after harvest was the highest in Romania (39.9 million cubic metres), followed by Sweden (26.4 million) and Poland (26.3 million). Only in Estonia did removals exceed the increments (11.6 million vs 9.1 million cubic meters), resulting in a decrease of available timber of 2.5 million cubic metres.  

Latvia is famously one of the most heavily forested countries in the EU with trees covering about 52% of the country’s surface area, but even so, it removed almost as much wood from its forests as grew again, with a difference of just 1 million cubic metres.

Forestry accounts for about 1.5% of Latvia’s annual GDP and employs thousands of people both directly and indirectly.

Sustainable harvesting is crucial in forestry management, as it focuses on intentionally harvested wood while excluding unforeseen catastrophic losses. This approach provides a clearer picture of the forestry industry’s ecological footprint.

 

Tell us about a mistake