New data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory indicate that if Sweden applied the international definition of the concept "forest", the country's protected forest area would double.
According to the Swedish National Forest Inventory the aggregate forest area in Sweden is 23.8 million hectares of which 3.2 % are protected as national parks, nature reserves and nature conservation areas. That percentage figure represents about 760 000 hectares of forest. This is the result obtained when applying the Swedish definition of forest.
If the definition used by FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, were applied instead, Sweden's forest area would increase to 28 million hectares, of which 5.3 % are protected. The increase would be somewhat less than 1.5 million hectares, which in practice means that the protected area would double. That area would probably be even greater, if non-productive land, such as marshes and hills is included, as is often done internationally.
The result is interesting, because on international level Sweden is often criticized for protecting too little forest.
According to The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO), a forest does not stop being a forest just because the trees are gone. While that may be so, it is important to understand how the disappearing green cover and the resultant threat to habitats and to human life fits into the bigger picture of life on the planet.
The forest is a complex ecosystem - a biological system with distinct, myriad interrelationships of the living part of the environment (plants, animals and micro-organisms) to each other and to the non-living, inorganic or abiotic parts (soil, climate, water, organic debris, rocks). Picture it as an intricate web - fragile but at the same time holding the ecosystem together.