Technical and scientific support to Eurostat (AA LAFOWA)

This report focuses on the second task of the Administrative Arrangement ESTAT-2021-0372, named LAFOWA, and signed between DG ESTAT and DG JRC. Task 2 aims to update and extend the time series reported on EFA table A2a for the period of 2016 – 2020, and to provide a structured and comprehensive comparison of publicly available data on the area of forest land and other wooded land as reported from different data sources.

The first subtask follows the completion of the activities carried out within the previous AA ESTAT-2019-0300 (AA LAFO). At this purpose, updating to 2020 the estimates provided from the forest growth model applied within the AA LAFO, we estimated, for each country, all the main components of the growing stock balance as reported within the table A2a.

Within the second subtask we provided a systematic comparison between the definition of forest considered from FAO and other international institutions, and the one provided from National Forest Inventories.

While the definition of forest land is generally consistent between EU Member States, various studies highlighted that the concept of forest area available for wood supply is based on different legal, environmental and/or economic parameters varying at country level. For this reason, the data reported from various countries are not fully comparable.

Similar issues can be also highlighted for the definition of Other Wooded Land applied at country level. In some cases, this definition may considerably diverge from the international definition.