Skogens sociala värden : hållbarhet, hyggesmetoder och tunn reglering

The Swedish forest policies have earlier mainly been focused on two goals: production and environment. The production goal aims to benefit the economical gains from forestry while the environmental goal primarily aims to shield the ecological values of the forest. With the introduction of the Swedish environmental code and the environmental objectives it was made clear that the overall objective for Swedish community development, including the forestry sector, is sustainable development. Sustainable development includes supporting economic, ecologic as well as social values of which the latter seems to have been forgotten in the forestry sector. This was recently brought to attention to the sector and the debate how to handle the social values is now ongoing. The legislator has not been unaware of the social values since they have since long been at least somewhat included in the preliminary works. With the impending introduction of a Swedish national forest programme the platform to integrate the social values of the forest into Swedish forestry seems to appear. Also reviewing the legal structure concerning forest is necessary, among other things the forestry act should be repealed and the environmentally concerned codes should be in the environmental act. Codes regarding the forest sector should be in a separate act.