Issue editor: Renaud Abord de Châtillon

 
Editorial

Pierre Couveinhes

 
Foreword: A new challenge for French forests
Michel Barnier, minister of Agriculture and Fishing

 
Introduction: French forests, an inventory
Renaud Abord de Châtillon

 
The legal and regulatory framework: Tapping available resources

 
The history of a forest torn between Colbertism and liberalism
Jean-Louis Guérin

The governance of forests dates from years ago, but it has swung back and forth between “liberalism” and government control…

 
Private forests, a misappraised potential
Michel de Galbert

Private forests cover nearly 20% of France’s surface area, and account for 74% of all woodlands, in all: eleven million hectares. As a captor of CO₂, they are crucial to sustainable development. The major snag is that these private holdings are carved up into small parcels. However solutions exist that are starting to be applied.

 
Communal woodlands at the service of sustainable forestry and local development
Jean-Claude Monin

There are 11.000 “wooded” communes — nearly one out of three communes! — in France. Their 2.600.000 hectares of woodlands represent a sixth of the country’s forests. With strong government support, elected local officials want to turn their communal woodlands into an asset for a territorial development that addresses the major issues of this third millennium.

 
Do property rights still exist in woodlands?
Vincent Ott

The owners of woodlands play an indispensable part in sustainable local management. Will proliferating environmental regulations prove effective?

 
Using the resources of French forests
Jean-Marie Ballu

For thirty years now, many reports have been written about how to develop the yield of wood from French forests; but they have had little effect. What measures should be implemented to tap this resource and reduce our balance-of-trade deficit?

 
Forests in the world

French forests and Europe’s forestry policy
Ségolène Halley des Fontaines

Two major meetings (the “Grenelle of the Environment” and the “Assizes of the Forest”) have drawn up a plan for producing timber and wood products. A broad consensus among both foresters and environmental organizations supports this plan, which is grounded on clear principles for working forests in compliance with a sustainable management that preserves biodiversity. France is defending these principles in European and international meetings.

 
The forest and wood industry in Europe and the world
Daniel Guinard

Woodlands tend to be expanding in temperate zones, but are still vanishing in the tropics. In the future, plantations with varieties of fast-growing trees should significantly change the timber supply. The demand for energy from wood will flare up; and wood will be increasingly used in reconstituted forms that significantly improve its performance.

 
Silviculture out to conquer the planet: “Imitate nature, hasten its workings”
Marie-Jeanne Lionnet

Although texts from a faraway past were devoted to the forest, the art of forestry became a science in the 19th century — a science now diffused all over the planet.

Forests: An asset in sustainable development

 
Certification, a major strategic tool for implementing a policy of sustainable forestry
Renaud Abord de Châtillon and Matthieu Lesne

The purpose of certification is to guarantee consumers that they are purchasing products using wood that comes from forests managed in conformity with the principles of sustainable development. Almost a third of woodlands in France have been certified.

 
The Morvan Forest Charter
Anne-Catherine Loisier

The purpose of the Morvan Forest Charter is to satisfy environmental and social demands while improving the competitive edge of local producers and of the chain of production from logs to timber to wood products.

 
French forests, a rich but menaced biodiversity
Daniel Vallauri and Emmanuelle Neyroumande

Forests represent a sanctuary and a reservoir of biodiversity, even more so since farming leaves little room for this diversity owing to its intense treatment of the soil, the cutting of hedges and the draining of wetlands.

 
The damage done to forests by the increasing number of storms or droughts
Philippe Riou-Nivert

What measures should be taken to reduce the impact of storms on woodlands? What consequences will global warming have? What are the remedies?

 
To produce more and better preserve resources: Forestry firms
Jacques Ducerf

The production chain from forest to wood includes firms with quite varied activities having as much to do with farming as with industry or the crafts. In France, it represents about 450.000 jobs (direct and indirect) and 60 billion euros in sales — as many jobs as the automobile industry but for sales amounting to three times less.

 
From wood to energy
Jean-François Bontoux

Owint to the stiff increase in petroleum prices, wood is becoming very competitive as a source of energy under condition that it is used by efficient installations. This source of energy might, some day soon, satisfy a large part of the country’s heating needs.

 
A look at the sustainable management of forests in France
Bernard Roman Amat

The owners of woodlands used to be under the jurisdiction of government officials. They have become more active as a result of “ecocertification”. In association with companies in the sector, they are playing a concrete role in sustainably managing the country’s forests.

 
An experience as “forest delegate”
Henri Prévot

One characteristic of silviculture is the considerable time gap between the outlays to be made and the income to be derived from them. Adapting finances in this sector could spur investment and increase the volume of wood placed on the market — to the profit of all parties in forestry.