Valsaïn-declaratie over bescherming bosgebieden in Europa (en) - Montesquieu Instituut

EFE

Spain's Secretary of State for Rural Affairs and Water, Josep Puxeu, speaking during the closing session of the Conference on the Protection of Forests, being held in Valsaín (Segovia) as one of the events during the Spanish Presidency of the EU, said Spain has the second largest total forested area (which includes scrubland, brush and undergrowth) in Europe, after Sweden, with 27.5 million hectares, and is third in terms of actual tree cover, with 18.3 million hectares.

Josep Puxeu said he was confident that the “Valsaín Declaration”, which brings together the conclusions of this conference and will be submitted to the Council of Ministers of the Environment in June, will help to preserve the forests and wooded areas of Europe, ensuring they are sustainably developed.

In Spain, Puxeu said that around 22 million trees had already been planted this year, and that work is being carried out in every planned line of action of reforestation.

Puxeu said woodland is of vital importance to social and economic development throughout Europe as a whole, generating both tangible and intangible benefits.

However, he admitted that European forest systems are facing both natural and human threats, which might become even more destructive as a result of climate change.

"Valsaín Declaration"

Josep Puxeu said he was confident that the conclusions of the conference, contained in the “Valsaín Declaration”, which will be submitted to the Council of Ministers of the Environment in June, will help to preserve the forests and wooded areas of Europe, ensuring they are sustainably developed.

These priorities including gaining a better understanding of the condition that forests are in, developing instruments to gather more information about forests, and for EUROSTAT and the JRC to centralise this knowledge so it can be passed on to other Pan-European bodies and international organisations.

The "Valsaín Declaration" also calls for additional work to be done in terms of coordination at EU level, and specific steps to be taken to enable the problems of forest, soil and water resource degradation to be tackled successfully and to promote information-sharing about different models for managing and protecting forest areas.

The conclusions also state the need to ensure that management is compatible with the many uses and services of wooded areas, to take the direct and indirect services of forest ecosystems into account in forestry management and planning, and to guarantee financial and institutional support for the most appropriate kind of sustainable forestry activities for the forested areas of each European country.

Lastly, the "Valsaín Declaration" stresses the crucial need to establish an EU-level mechanism for cooperation between the various institutions and Member States as part of the European Forestry Strategy, as well as to assess the ways in which society should help to protect forests, through associations of producers, non-governmental organisations and other social stakeholders.

Priorities of the EU

Finding “new ways” to ensure that Europe's forests are protected against a backdrop of global change must be a priority for the European Union, according to Spain's Minister of the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs, Elena Espinosa, speaking on Tuesday during the opening of the conference.

The Spanish minister underscored the importance of understanding and calculating the impact of climate change on different kinds of European woods and forests, as well as understanding the role that these ecosystems play in mitigating global warming.

Espinosa also presented the EU Green Paper on Forest Protection and Information, which was adopted on 1 March by the European Commission and which aims to spark debate in order to update the Union's Forestry Strategy, so that forests can continue to perform their productive, socio-economic and environmental functions.

According to the Green Paper, 5% of the world's forests are found in the European Union, and European forest mass has grown constantly for more than 60 years. This means most European forests have experienced an increase in timber-yielding volume and carbon storage capacity.