User:Roderickmilne

Confederation of Forest Industries

Shortend to ConFor is the trade association for the forestry industry in the United Kingdom. It was established to represent forestry and wood-using businesses from nurseries and growers to wood-processing end-users. It has the largest membership of any representative body within the UK sector and is headquartered in Edinburgh. It was created to represent the views of the industry to the Forestry Commission and the policy makers within the relevant legislatures and executives.

History

ConFor was created in 2004 and is the first organisation of its kind that has the entire supply chain within its membership, from nurseries, woodland owners, and processors and sawmills. This makes it different from other nations as the trade associations of the forest and wood-using industries are split within the different competing constituents of the supply chain. It is a membership organisation that is funded and accountable to businesses within the industry.

Policy

The organisation lobbys on behalf of members to the governments, parliaments and assemblies of the United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. As a member of the Confederation of European Forest Owners it also lobbys for its members at the European Parliament. Since devolution, rural policy making has been passed to the devloved adminstrations of the UK meaning that strategy can vary over the different parts of the country.

Context

Forestry in the UK is split between the Forestry Commission, which is a government agency and the private sector. It breaks down between the private and public sector as:

	Conifer FC	Conifer Private	Broadleaf FC	Broadleaf Private	Total Woodland
England	147,000 ha	215,000 ha	706,000 ha	55,000 ha	1127,000 ha
Scotland	424,000 ha	621,000 ha	28,000 ha	269,000 ha	1342,000 ha
Wales	92,000 ha	64,000 ha	14,000 ha	114,000 ha	285,000 ha
Northern Ireland	56,000 ha	10,000 ha	5,000 ha	16,000 ha	87,000 ha

Britain has seen one of the fastest growing forests programmes since the establishment of the Forestry Commission in 1919 and the general need to restock the nations forests after the first world war with a total 2.8 million hectares of wood land that, some of which is some of the most productive in Europe. There was no forestry poicy within the United Kingdom until after the First World War, one of the few exceptions in Europe, Despiste this it still lags behind nearly all other European countries.