Sweden’s forest industry and indirect climate impacts

Four processes have been identified that transfer climate impacts from one place to another:

• People (for example, migration caused by climate change)
• Biophysical processes (climate impacts on the upper reach of a river may affect the entire river basin)
• Trade (global trade flows with products for industries and consumers can be disrupted by e.g. flooding)
• Financial flows (Swedish pension funds invest globally which means exposure to global climate change).

If this framework is applied to the Swedish forestry sector, a number of interesting aspects can be seen. Sweden’s forestry sector is very much a part of an international market and a large proportion of its production is exported. Moreover, Sweden’s forest industry has increasingly established both production and sales operations in other parts of the world, which means increased exposure to climate impacts that are far removed from the industry’s traditional heartland in northern Europe.

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