Sweden, Finland Call for EU Forestry Climate Targets to Be Revised Amid Economic Concerns

Sweden and Finland have jointly urged the European Union to revise its forestry-related climate targets, arguing that the current framework under its Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) regulation could have “dire” economic consequences. The Nordic countries say they are unlikely to meet the CO₂ absorption increases required for 2021-25 and 2026-30, citing climate change slowing tree growth and the war in Ukraine driving up the demand for wood.

In their joint letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the two nations described their specific CO₂ uptake targets-roughly 4 million tonnes annually for Sweden and 3 million for Finland by 2030-as unrealistic under current conditions. They noted that reduced logging to meet those goals would not only affect domestic forestry industries but could also have broader labour-market and export repercussions.

Forests cover around 70% of both countries’ land areas, and their wood sectors are significant contributors to employment and exports-over 10% of Sweden’s exports and nearly 20% of Finland’s. While acknowledging the role of sustainable forestry in climate mitigation and in replacing fossil fuels, Sweden and Finland argue that the EU framework must better account for natural growth constraints and external shocks to enable realistic policy pathways.

Sweden and Finland's LULUCF targets (roughly 4 million tonnes CO2 uptake for Sweden, 3 million for Finland by 2030) reflect the biological absorption capacity of well-managed forest systems - assumptions that climate-change-driven forest stress and increased wood demand have made harder to meet. Both economies' export-dependence on forestry (>10 percent for Sweden, ~20 percent for Finland) makes any binding-target adjustment economically significant.

The wider LULUCF debate reflects a persistent challenge in national climate accounting: land-based carbon sinks are physically variable and shrinking under climate stress, but many national targets rely on their sustained or expanded absorption capacity. Recalibrating targets to biological reality may reduce ambition perception while improving practical achievability.

For forestry companies, wood-processing industries, financial institutions and their supply-chain partners in Nordic markets, Cognitud's nature-based solutions, sustainability due diligence and market intelligence teams help clients evaluate LULUCF-target-linked business exposure, structure sustainable-forest-management strategies aligned with certification frameworks (FSC, PEFC), and prepare disclosures aligned with CSRD, ISSB and jurisdictional forestry-sustainability frameworks that increasingly determine access to markets and sustainable-finance.