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Forests, plantations, and land use
Opportunities and challenges
As a renewable natural resource, wood represents a favourable alternative to materials based on fossil fuels. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, and together with wood-based products act as carbon sinks. Global warming entails physical challenges and opportunities in relation to forests and plantations, due to changing patterns of temperature, wind, and rainfall, which can all be expected to impact Stora Enso’s operational environment. Well-managed forests can make entire ecosystems more resilient to negative impacts, and benefit from positive ones.
Global challenges such as population growth, increasing demand for agricultural land, and the widening gap between supply and demand for wood, all require Stora Enso to use natural resources even more efficiently, and to produce larger amounts of raw materials from less land.
Stora Enso’s policy on Wood and Fibre Sourcing, and Land Management covers the entire cycle of forest and plantation management. Key goals include ensuring that the group can trace the origin of all the wood it uses. The group also aims to maintain open dialogues with all stakeholders. Other Stora Enso policies that promote sustainable forestry include Stora Enso’s Code of Conduct and Supplier Code of Conduct.
How we work
Stora Enso’s approach to responsible forest and tree plantation management and related actions duly take into account the economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainability. All the roundwood, chips, sawdust, and externally purchased pulp supplied to Stora Enso’s mills come from sustainable sources. To guarantee this, Stora Enso has a regionally organised wood procurement process in place covering the entire forest management cycle.
In 2016 the total amount of wood (including roundwood, wood chips, and sawdust) delivered to Stora Enso mills was 37.6 million m3 (solid under bark) (36.2 million m3 in 2015).
In 2016, 90% (89%) of Stora Enso’s wood came from managed semi-natural forests in Europe where most forests are privately owned, while 10% (11%) originated from plantations. The group uses various tools to optimise wood procurement and land use efficiency without compromising sustainability. These tools include the definition of sustainable land use practices for each location, forest certification, third-party traceability systems, and different forms of monitoring. Stora Enso always makes sure that harvested trees will be replaced by new growth.
Progress on responsible forestry is followed with a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures the percentage of the lands owned and managed by Stora Enso covered by certification systems. The target is to reach 96% coverage by the end of 2017. In 2016 coverage amounted to 90% (90%). The share of certified wood in the group’s total wood supply was 83% (80%).
Until 2016, Stora Enso kept track of progress on land use efficiency through a group-level KPI measuring the increase in the average volume of fibre produced per hectare in certified tree plantations owned and managed by Stora Enso. Stora Enso plans instead to monitor the sustainable intensification of production separately at each plantation, taking into account different local operating conditions, as this enables the group to assess progress more accurately than a global average.
Managing land contracts in Guangxi, China
Stora Enso has been reviewing and correcting land lease contracts in Guangxi since 2009, when irregularities in the contract chains of social lands were first discovered. By the end of 2016, 66% of the contracts were found to be free from contractual defects (63% by the end of 2015).
In irreconcilable cases Stora Enso terminates leases in a responsible manner. In 2016 the company terminated identified irreconcilable contracts covering a total area of 1 719 hectares. The target for the end of 2016 was to terminate all remaining irreconcilable or economically unviable contracts. At the year-end irreconcilable or economically unviable contracts corresponding to 382 hectares remained in effect. These remaining contracts will be terminated by mid-2017.
As announced on 19 January 2017, Stora Enso is reconsidering its plans to build a chemical pulp mill in Beihai. As a consequence of the change in scope, Stora Enso would decrease the area of its leased forest lands in the Guangxi region. The scope and schedule for this reduction will be decided later. As a part of this process, all contracts will be evaluated, and Stora Enso aims to have only land leased that is free of contractual defects.
|Forests, plantations, and lands owned by Stora Enso1 as of 31 December 2016|
Montes del Plata plantations and lands, Uruguay
(joint operation with Arauco)
|190 279 ha, of which 102 312 ha planted||PEFC and FSC2 for 190 279 ha|
|Veracel plantations and lands, Bahia, Brazil (joint operation with Fibria)||214 963 ha, of which 73 082 ha planted||
CERFLOR (PEFC) for 179 411 ha;
FSC for 179 411 ha
|Plantations and lands, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil||43 412 ha, of which 20 810 ha planted|
|Wood Supply, Estonia||137 ha, of which 124 ha planted|
|1 Including operations where Stora Enso’s shareholding is at least 50% and size of the area exceeds 100 hectares. In addition to the forest and plantation areas listed above, Stora Enso owns: 49% of Bergvik Skog, which owns 2.3 million hectares of land in Sweden and 0.1 million hectares in Latvia; and 41% of Tornator, which owns 0.6 million hectares of forestland in Finland, 53 000 hectares in Estonia, and 12 000 hectares in Romania.|
|2 Stora Enso Communications’ FSC® trademark license number is FSC-N001919.|
|Forests and plantations leased and managed by Stora Enso1 as of 31 December 2016|
|Wood Supply, Russia||369 422 ha||FSC group certificate|
|Plantations and lands, Guangxi, China||83 560 ha, of which approximately 69 940 ha planted with eucalyptus and 13 620 ha with other species||Chinese Forest Certification Council certificate (PEFC) for 83 560 ha; FSC for 83 560 ha|
|Montes del Plata||54 939 ha, of which 43 857 ha planted||PEFC and FSC for 44 193 ha|
|Veracel||12 209 ha, of which 5 999 ha planted||
FSC for 10 965 ha;
PEFC for 10 965 ha
|Trial plantations, Laos||3 900 ha, of which 2 995 ha planted|
|1 Including operations where Stora Enso’s shareholding is at least 50% and size of the area exceeds 100 hectares.|