Impacts of bio-economy policies on forest ecosystem services: a boreal perspective

2018

One of the most pressing challenges for governments is how to move from a fossil- to a bio-based economy to achieve a sustainable growth. Bio-economy encompasses the production of renewable biological resources and the conversion of these resources into value-added products, such as biofuels. The use of bioenergy is regarded as an important climate change mitigation strategy and its annual demand is rapidly increasing. In particular, there is immense pressure to use boreal forest resources as bioenergy for meeting the challenging new bio-economy policy goals (EC 2012). For example, Finland will need to largely intensify timber production because policy aims at increasing the levels of energ…