Sweden

“World Summit on Sustainable Forest (-destruction)”, a satirical blog on the summit that will be held on March 5th-6th 2013 in Stockholm (Sweden). You are invited to attend or follow this World Forgery Summit on sustainable forest destruction. Some of the key questions in the agenda: *Can we find a way to rebrand monoculture plantations as being sustainable? *Is there a way to make the bankrupt carbon trading system look like a part of the solution to the climate crisis?

 WRM information sheets on GE tree research First posted: 1 August 2008 Last update: 2014 Forest tree species being manipulated:  poplar, eucalyptus and spruce (1) Aim of genetic manipulation

Veracel Celulose – a joint venture between the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso and the Norwegian-Brazilian company Aracruz Celulose - has launched a process to obtain FSC certification for its eucalyptus plantations in the extreme south of the State of Bahia. For this purpose, it has hired the consulting firm SGS.

Professor Ove Nilsson is the star of genetically engineered tree research in Sweden. Nilsson and his research team at the Umeå Plant Science Centre won the race to identify the gene that controls plants' flowering allowing them to produce genetically engineered trees which flower in weeks, instead of years. In 2005, the journal Science declared it one of the most important discoveries of the year.

Over the past decade, tens of millions of dollars have been invested by funding agencies to improve forest management in Laos with the stated aim of aiding rural development and livelihood security. Despite these investments – including multi-million dollar projects backed by the World Bank, the Government of Finland and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), among others – mismanagement of Laos’ production forests remains the norm.

On April 26, the Swedish Royal Academy of Agriculture and Forestry organized in Stockholm the seminar “Tilting forest industries from North to South”, aimed at discussing the growing tendency of the Swedish tree plantations and pulp industry to invest in Southern Countries such as Brazil, Uruguay and Indonesia.

Until recently, relatively little was know about the Nordic countries in the South. At the best, Finland, Norway and Sweden were known because of their progressive social legislation, their solidarity against the Southern dictatorships, their composers, such as Sibelius, the Nobel Prize or more popular facts such as famous tennis players and racing car drivers, the Helsinki Olympics or the World Football Cup in Sweden.

The Forest Stewardship Council's Plantations Review is finally under way. The 12 member committee elected to implement the first part of this process (the “policy phase”) held its first meeting from 9-11 March in Stockholm, Sweden. Four members –two northern and two southern- from each of the three chambers (social, environmental and economic), will have the task of leading this process and elaborating clear guidelines for future certification of plantations. A possible second “technical phase” is now being discussed by the committee members.

Sweden, Finland and Norway rarely appear in the media. At least not in relation with the North's footprint in the South and even less so in deforestation-related matters. The US, Canada, Japan and many West European countries usually dominate the headlines. And they certainly deserve it, since corporations based in those countries are actively extracting ever increasing resources from the South and destroying the local and global environment in the process.