Niezalezna(.)pl: EU officialsc ontinue their efforts to take control of forests in member states, including Poland.
After an unsuccessful attempt to include forestry in the EU's common competences, this time Eurocrats went a step further by proposing the creation of two new exclusive EU competences - in the field of environmental protection and biodiversity.
The Polish model of forest management has been successfully operating for almost a hundred years and is a model for other European countries. The forest provides an ecological raw material - wood is a place for active recreation and a source of forest fruits. It is also the driving force of the Polish economy, generating 2%. GDP. There is something to fight for.
Forests cover 1/3 of Poland, which is three times the area of Belgium. You can be sure that there are people and interest groups who see this as an investment area. They look not at beautiful nature but at what is hidden deep in the earth. Even if they do not want to benefit from mineral extraction themselves, they may want to block Poles from doing so to make them dependent on imported raw materials.
New solutions may have negative effects on biodiversity, the ability of forests to adapt to climate change, and, above all, they will significantly reduce the supply of wood and increase its price. This, in turn, will result in a dynamic increase in imports - also from countries where sustainable forest management is not carried out, which means acceleration of deforestation and degradation outside the European Union. Wood will be replaced by other raw materials whose production is energy-intensive and based on non-renewable raw material sources, e.g., plastic, rubber, concrete, or ceramics. The consequence will, therefore, not be to stop climate change but to accelerate it.
Polish forests are among the top European forests in terms of abundance (i.e., the amount of wood per unit area or, more simply, the number and size of trees). Wood resources are over 2 billion cubic meters! This condition is due to the location in the temperate climate zone, but also to the consistently pursued forest policy. The wood that is harvested per year is only about 2%. what grows in forests, which constantly increases the abundance of Polish forests. It is increasing despite economic activity carried out in the forests and millions of cubic meters of wood that reach Polish homes in various forms every year. Today, it is three times higher than after the end of the war!
The specificity of forests in each country is different. Just like the model for managing them. The method of forest management developed in Poland is effective and works perfectly well, and its effectiveness is determined by nothing other than the condition of Polish forests.
As they say, "Don't fix something that is not broken."
