Assessing socio-economic indicators of the Swedish forest sector

The Swedish forest sector contributes SEK 145 billion to the national economy creating revenues from the production and trade of wood products. Despite its large socio-economic importance, there is limited and inconsistent information available to measure trends and progress of the forest sector toward achieving the Swedish Environmental Goals. Here, we aim to develop indicators to assess the socio-economic contribution of the Swedish forest sector. We followed the
Montreal Protocol for Sustainable Forestry as a guiding framework. We applied a mixed method approach based on a literature review, analysis of local and global institutional databases, and consultation with the experts. We identified seven thematic areas relevant for the sector: property and ownership, economic value, employment, wood energy, access to greenery, per capita forest, and cultural values. For these thematic areas, we identified 27 indicators that can explain historical progress of the sector for the period of 2000-2020. We highlight the forest sector’s socio-economic contributions and its salient share of national employment and energy consumption. Among others, there is a lack of current information on the wind energy use of forest property and cultural aspects
such as heritage values and herding.