19 September 2025 | Article

Forestry at a Dead End

With Sweden approaching an election, clarity on forests matters. The Moderate Party’s latest letter—sent jointly with Finland to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen—repeats the sector’s talking points instead of facts, weakening Sweden’s credibility and clashing with its climate and biodiversity commitments.

Sweden is gearing up for another election. Yet the campaign signals now coming from the Moderate Party won’t win new voters. Environmental integrity matters to most Swedes, and repeating claims rooted in the forest sector’s narrow interests—some plainly inaccurate—does not help.

Let’s look at the record. According to Statistics Sweden (SCB), forestry employs about 29,000 people and the forest industry 53,000. Of roughly 310,000 forest owners, fewer than one percent rely on the forest for their primary income. Despite this, the sector is propped up by extensive subsidies: around SEK 15 billion in energy aid, hundreds of millions in transport support, no taxation on emissions, and exemptions from emissions trading. Even with this, the industry has struggled to deliver durable profitability while respecting other public interests.

Sustainability means not depleting the very resources an industry depends on. Today’s clearcut model can erase up to 90% of local biodiversity in harvested stands—flatly incompatible with EU environmental goals and Sweden’s own biodiversity commitments. The climate math is just as stark. More than 85% of harvested biomass becomes short-lived products that return to the atmosphere within a few years. Only about 2% becomes long-lived materials. That’s a losing proposition for the climate, for nature, and for the next generation.

We’ve seen this story before. Sweden’s steel sector hit a wall in the 1980s when it failed to adapt. The forest industry is approaching a similar reckoning—only this time the consequences would be broader: for the climate, for biodiversity, and for Sweden’s credibility as a leader in environmental policy.

It’s time to take responsibility. We must move beyond clearcut forestry, raise the value-added share of what we harvest, and treat forests as living ecosystems—not a raw-material bank to be emptied. That also means better conditions for vibrant rural communities, and a more constructive balance among land-use interests. Otherwise, today’s model risks becoming tomorrow’s industrial relic—leaving irreversible damage in its wake.

“Nature can save us, but first we must save nature.”

Photo: fightCOtwo

Reference: Joint letter from Sweden and Finland to President von der Leyen (2024).

This perspective is part of fightCOtwo’s ongoing work on long-term conservation of Swedish boreal forests, integrating verified carbon sequestration, biodiversity outcomes, and documented collaboration with the reindeer herding community and the Sámi Indigenous people.