Authors: Di Fulvio, Fulvio; Lauri, Pekka;Forsell, Nicklas;

The 2030 EU biodiversity strategy has the objective of protecting 30% of EU27 land and strictly protect 10% of it. Furthermore, the European Commission FitFor55 climate package has increased the mitigation demand from forests, for reaching the EU27 climate neutrality by 2050. Therefore, the objective our study has been to project future timber harvest levels for Europe (EU27+UK+Norway) and analyzing spatial allocation of harvest areas and leakages outside Europe, under scenarios integrating the 2030 biodiversity strategy and climate mitigation objectives. We applied the Global Biosphere Management (GLOBIOM) model for optimizing allocation of forest harvest across Europe. In addiction, we considered alternatives where the European protection targets may be reached as an overarching target or fulfilled by each country. Our results shows that the implementation of the biodiversity strategy at European level would lead only to a 3-5% reduction in overall harvest levels in 2050, compared to a baseline. At the same time, fulfillment of the targets will reduce European wood-based products net exports by 8-25%, depending on how the biodiversity strategy is implemented. Hence, it would be relevant for policy makers to consider our study for allocating future protection in a way that will not undermine EU forest sector competitiveness.