Integrated environmental and economic accounting for forests IEEAF – September 2011 Marilise Wolf-Crowther, Eurostat E.3

What is IEEAF ? Set of 13 tables created by a task force in the late 1990s Only Table 3c, the economic accounts for forestry and logging, requested Voluntary yearly exercise Some countries fill in all tables

Table 3c: Economic accounts for forestry and logging Re-started in 2008 23 countries: 21 EU, 2 EFTA; one EU country preparing data More countries are joining in. Reasons for renewal of interest may be Economic viability and rural development in view of next CAP financial period? Environmental functions of forests as sinks of CO2 and habitats of high biodiversity? Multi-functionality of forests means economic viability is no longer the main focus, but the costs are of interest?

Table 3c: examples of how we use the data Economic viability of forestry Main indicators for DG Agriculture Gross value added Gross fixed capital formation Employment With growing stock (m3) in forests available for wood supply and share harvested (FRA, MCPFE) With data on production from our second questionnaire

The other twelve IEEAF tables 23 countries reporting economic data on forestry and logging Only 7 countries reporting on forest area, volume and value of increment and removals (Tab. 1a, 2a, 2b) The best: BG, DE, FR, SK We need annual running estimates of area & volume for Resource efficiency (Europe 2020) Energy and climate topics Indicators of economic viability of forestry Forest Resources Assessment (FAO) often repeats for 15 years

Tables 1a, 2a, 2b: Forest assets Try to encourage countries to provide yearly estimates Based on national forest inventory data, repeated every 10-15 years Harmonisation of inventory data has failed Such data should be available as running estimates in countries where forestry is important

Other IEEAF tables of interest 3a: Output related to wooded land by industry and type of output – incl. recreational services, non-wood products F1: Carbon balance for woody biomass F2: Carbon balance for the forest ecosystem ..... Whole suite of more complicated tables that follow national accounts concepts

IEEAF is the template for SEEA forest assets UN System of environmental-economic accounts 2003 Under revision, final in Feb 2012 Eurostat involved in drafting All documents: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/envaccounting/londongroup/ Ecosystems to be dealt with in Part II

...and may get a legal base New Regulation on environmental accounting, Regulation (EU) 691/2011 ... mentions forestry accounts as a possible future module

Links See our website Our wiki article in Statistics explained Our latest book, Forestry in the EU and the world, 2011

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