EU forest monitoring should combine up-to-date science with best practice

Abstract

The European Commission is currently discussing a regulation to monitor European forests¹. The goal is to implement a monitoring framework that provides baseline information for assessing the effects of ongoing climate changes, including extreme weather events, on European forests. The monitoring programme is designed to inform policy developments to protect forests against the effects of such events. Although we welcome this legislation, the current draft shows major shortcomings. A previous analysis² has already identified key limitations that concern the choice of variables and indicators to measure, data quality and harmonization procedures, and integration with existing pan-European networks. Here we highlight an additional and, in our view, even more fundamental issue: the new European law not only prescribes what variables need to be measured, but also specifies the particular methods that must be used.

On a fundamental level, having governments prescribe scientific methods for monitoring might set a dangerous precedent against the independence of science. Regarding this European law, we are concerned that prescribing measurement methods instead of setting data-quality requirements will compromise its effectiveness. European legislators cannot be expected to be up to date with developments in the diverse scientific fields involved in forest monitoring, and therefore they are not well-placed to decide the appropriate methods for data collection. Novel monitoring approaches, as well as recalibrations and reassessments of existing methodologies, might be difficult to implement if they first need approval by the European Parliament. This monitoring system might quickly become obsolete if changes require approval from the EU’s parliamentary bureaucracy. Conversely, the choice of relevant and state-of-the-art methods might enable this monitoring system to assist with pressing management issues, such as wildfires.