Conifer regime constrains market for broadleaves

Increasing forest damages and declining forest biodiversity in Sweden have led to policy changes that seek to diversify practices beyond coniferous forest management.

A larger proportion in the forest of fast-growing species, such as birch and aspen, can be a key alternative to address the challenges faced by the conifer-based system and to produce more biomass to support the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy.

New markets needed

Important ways of promoting broadleaf use are to develop new products and markets for these trees. In a recently published paper the researchers have identified six economic pathways. These range from small scale rural businesses creating birch beverages to industrial-scale production of hardwood textile pulp.

But their wider uptake is constrained by a conifer-centred regime, intermittent and dispersed hardwood supply, logistics and processing systems optimised for softwoods. 

”The industry has a tendency to treat broadleaves as by-products rather than distinct value sources”, says the corresponding author Derek Garfield at SLU and the centre Trees for Me.

Boosting measures 

To develop the market for broadleaf products the researches argue that both demand driving and niche protective measures are needed:

• Create demand-pull 
• Build processing capacity
• Stabilise supply
• Use active niche protections
• Support innovators

Derek Garfield believes that these measures can reduce first-mover risk, improve logistics, and create the market incentives needed to make more planting of broadleaves economically rational.

”The industry has a good history of collaborating and pooling resources to co-finance and support such development initiatives. Trees for Me itself is an example of that”, he says.

Baltic examples

There are examples in the region that it is possible to boost fast growing broadleaves in reality, especially the plywood industries in the Baltics and Finland. 

”It shows that cross-sector demand and investment can scale up use of fast growing broadleaves. However, national differences matter and buisinesses are not easily replicated”, says Derek Garfield.

Click here to read the article: Fast-Growing Broadleaf Trees in Niche Configurations: A Business Model Approach to Economization and Socio-Technical Transitions.