Data improvement for European Forest Accounts

Sander Teeuwen, Jasper Velthuis, augustus 2024

The European Forest Accounts (EFA) will become a mandatory survey for Eurostat member states from 2025 onwards. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) is primarily responsible for this survey. The EFA addresses various economic aspects of forest (products), such as the value and use of wood, from standing volume to the processing by the wood industry. Making the survey mandatory incentivises an improvement in the quality of the data. Statistics Netherlands has asked the Probos foundation to provide support in this. To this end, 8 activities have been identified, 6 of which have been selected to be carried out by Probos in collaboration with Statistics Netherlands:

1) Dividing the forest area into Forest Available and Forest Not Available for Wood Supply;
2) Estimating the supply and use of fuelwood;
3) Improving the Net increment estimate;
4) Mapping the value of forest land;
5) Calculating the value of the standing volume;
6) Balancing the supply and use tables of wood in the rough.

These 6 activities will be discussed in this report with a short description of the proposed methodology and associated results.