IKEA and Sweden: “It is clearcutting. That’s where the wood comes from”
IKEA and Sweden: “It is clearcutting. That’s where the wood comes from”
Part IV: The impact of Sweden’s forestry industry on the country’s forests.
More than two-thirds of Sweden is covered with trees. There is no doubt that the forestry industry has contributed to the country’s prosperity. In the 1950s, timber exports helped to fund the Swedish welfare state. Sawn timber, pulp, and paper remain important export products from the country.
The forestry industry remains one of the most important, and powerful, in the country. But the Swedish forest industry has a serious impact on the forests of the country. The recent Arte documentary about IKEA raises serious questions about the Swedish forestry model.
Viveka Beckeman is the director general of the Swedish Forest Industries Federation, which represents the country’s forest industry. Predictably enough, she is in favour of light regulation of what the forest industry can do in the forests. “We want to keep the right to keep harvesting,” she tells the Arte documentary team.
“To maintain a decent standard of living in Sweden, it’s necessary to use the forest to continue having access to raw materials, so that industry can invest. . . .
“I would say that Sweden has throughout the centuries developed a forest management method which is a very active forest management method. . . .
“I wouldn’t say that we exploit the forest. We develop it and manage it. It’s only 1% of the forest which is being harvested each year. And each year we replant two trees for every tree harvested.
“Since the 1990s, we have a very strong increase in biodiversity, for example. So I would say that we have very healthy forests in Sweden.”
The Swedish forestry industry has replaced mixed broadleaf forests in southern Sweden with monocultures, predominantly of Norway spruce. The trees are clearcut. Seedlings are planted at the same time, giving even aged stands of trees. And a few decades later, the trees are clearcut again.
The forestry industry claims that this method is sustainable. “Clearcutting is the most effective method to produce more wood,” the Swedish Forest Industries Federation states on its website.
But Lina Burnelius of the Swedish NGO Protect the Forest has a different perspective. She points out that,
“The Swedish forest industry is very, very good at PR. Sweden is not the leader on sustainable forestry. We are the leader though on greenwashing and unsustainable forestry. We log the last remaining precious forest that needs to be protected. We always carry out the most climate and environmentally harmful logging operations.
“They are only planting all these trees to be logged again and then the majority of the biomass will be turned into extremely climate damaging products again.”
A visit to Norrbottens län
The Arte documentary team travels to Norrbottens län, the northernmost county of the country, not far from the Arctic Circle. After years of intensive exploitation, the appearance of the forest has dramatically changed. Few trees have survived the loggers. Years after the trees were cut, the land remains barren. Almost nothing has grown back.
Jon Andersson is a forestry expert. He maps the forests of Sweden to alert the public about their degradation. He says that,
“I think many Swedes don’t now what the Swedish forest really looks like. The forests of the past, before we started exploiting them, were much more diverse than today. Overall, they were much older and the trees would have had a much wider age range. There were true Scandinavian coniferous forests, the taiga, as it’s called, but today it has almost entirely disappeared.”
10% of IKEA’s timber comes from Sweden. But IKEA refuses to make its supply chain public. Exactly where all its timber comes from is unknown outside the company.
Andersson sits in a clearcut and says,
“This is the logging method that IKEA uses to source wood for its furniture. There is no ‘IKEA method’ involving an old lumberjack cutting a few trees with a small axe. Instead, it is clearcutting. That’s where the wood comes from.
“Some forests have taken thousands of years to grow, and from those trees they make furniture that doesn’t last more than 15 or 20 years before ending up in a landfill and being burned. It’s crazy.
“A forest is not just made up of trees. There are also many other organisms, the species that were there before the logging, have disappeared and they won’t come back.
“It would take maybe 150 to 200 years before they return, but in Sweden we don’t let our forests reach that age. Typically, they don’t exceed 90 years. In the south of the country, some are even cut down after 50 or 60 years. The species that inhabited these forests have no chance of returning.”
Only 8% of Sweden’s forests have never been exploited by the forestry industry. The ecosystems of primary forests in Sweden sometimes date back more than 6,000 years.
Marie Karlsson from the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation walks through an old growth forest and describes it as follows:
“This area is a primary forest. It’s one of the few remaining in Sweden. Primary forest means an area that has hardly been affected by human activity. No timber has been harvested here. There’s a great diversity of species, old trees living and dying where they’ve grown. There’s also a wide variety of organisms, from fungi, to insects, birds, lichens, and mosses. The appearance of this forest is very different from that of a forest managed for timber production.
“That species is called Usnea, it’s a type of pendant lichen. It doesn’t feed from the tree, just hangs on it. All of its nutrients come from the air and sunlight. It’s particularly important for reindeer because it contains a high concentration of carbohydrates.”
The disappearance of ancient forests is causing a shortage of food for reindeer populations. The Swedish forestry industry is endangering reindeer herds.
The Sámi and the Swedish forestry industry
The Arte documentary team speaks to the Erikssons, members of the Indigenous Sámi people. The Sámi have been reindeer herders for thousands of years.
Guttorm Eriksson says,
“Our family has used this land to raise reindeer for as long as we can remember. It’s hard to trace back further in history. In Sweden, all reindeer belong to someone. They are never completely wild, but they are not domesticated, like a dog, cat, or horse either. They live freely in nature.”
Sweden colonised the Sámi’s territory and the forestry industry exploited - and continues to exploit - the Sámi’s forests.
Eriksson continues,
“As far back as I can remember, forestry has always existed, but it was different before because logging was done manually. In the 1980s, we saw an acceleration in logging. They started using machines to clear everything, creating huge clearcuts. Today, we have lost all our most beautiful forests. They no longer exist. About 50 to 60% of the pastures for reindeer have been destroyed by the forestry industry.”
Elle Eriksson, who is a forestry graduate, says that,
“The forestry industry causes a decline in the reindeer population because when forests are cleared, the pendant lichen that grows on the trees disappears with them. There simply isn’t enough food to sustain as many reindeer as before. For us it is unacceptable that forestry companies can crush us and force us to change our habits and traditions. The forestry companies are continue to colonise us by preventing us from using our lands as we traditionally have.
Lina Burnelius from Protect the Forest says,
“We’re not against the forestry industry. We want them to respect Indigenous people’s rights. The Swedish forestry industry has spread the lie that we have more forests than ever, but we have more trees than ever, and many trees does not form a forest. You cannot replant an old-growth forest. A palm plantation is not a rainforest. A tulip field is not a meadow. A pine plantation is not an old-growth forest. We are losing forests in favour of tree plantations. And we simply need to stop the expansion, the replanting and this model where the majority of the end products are burned. Right?”
Successive re-cutting of trees is not sustainable because you totally ignore the vast amount of the ecosystem's mineral content tied up in every "crop" of trees. A cut forest is no longer a forest. A tree-plantation cannot ever be a forest. Clear-cutting is the most PROFITABLE way to harvest wood - the most effective way to PRODUCE wood is KEEP OUT of the forests! "Forestry," like fishing is Theft disguised as employment. You CANNOT FIX a broken ecosystem. If it ain't broke, don't break it! Duh.