Collaboration between Sweden and IUFRO

4 dec 2012

The 7th IUFRO World Congress was held in 1929 in Stockholm

Sweden has a long relationship with IUFRO and is well represented and active within the vast network of researchers and IUFRO administration.

18 Swedish organizations members

Today IUFRO has 18 Swedish research or other organizations as members, eight of which are units of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU. However, also SkogForsk, Holmen Skog, Skogsstyrelsen, KSLA, Forskningsrådet för miljö, areella näringar och samhällsbyggande (Formas), Luleå Tekniska Universitet and Linnéuniversitetet are IUFRO members. In addition, several individuals from Sweden have joined IUFRO as Associate Members. However, there are possibly still forest related organizations outside IUFRO that could benefit from joining as members.

The IUFRO board includes members from Sweden

Active Swedish contribution to the work of IUFRO is given by the 27 Swedish forest researchers who presently have a task as IUFRO Coordinators or Deputy Coordinators, covering a wide array of issues including core forest disciplines such as silviculture, and transdisciplinary issues such as forest bioenergy. Additionally, the IUFRO Enlarged Board includes four Members from Sweden.

The 7th IUFRO World Congress was held in 1929 in Stockholm

As to the history, Sweden had an important role to play when bringing IUFRO work back to normal after the World War I. The Director of the Swedish experiment station, H. Hesselmann, was entrusted with the organization of the 7th IUFRO World Congress that was held in 1929 in Sweden. A main agenda item at the Stockholm Congress was the preparation of statutes, which was successfully accomplished. If there is another congress in the future remains to be seen.

Several IUFRO events every year

Recently one or several IUFRO events have been arranged every year in Sweden. Topics have varied from challenges for the boreal forests and tree-stumps for bioenergy to novel materials from wood or cellulose, forest policy integration and wood machining. A very well attended, timely and important international conference was jointly organized by SLU, IUFRO, and FAO in August 2008 in Umeå on adaptation of forests and forest management to climate change, see www.sifi.se.

Text: Jan Heino, IUFRO Development Officer, International Fellow at KSLA

Photo: Geoff Roberts