National Members

National members (or "National Governing Bodies") are independent, national organizations established to develop and implement a PEFC system within their country.

PEFC Italy

Italy hosts a wide variety of vegetation types, due to a long latitudinal extension and high mountain ranges. According to the most recent National Forest Inventory, Italian forests cover an area of over 8.68 million hectares (or 29% of Italy’s total area).  Coppice makes up 53%, high forests - 43%, and the remaining 4% is covered by Mediterranean bush.  

95% of Italian woodland is concentrated in hilly and mountainous areas and the most productive are located in the north-eastern regions. There has been a gradual expansion of woodland (7% over the past 20 years) as agricultural land has been abandoned and natural conversion of pasture and cultivatable land to forest has taken place.

Protected natural areas cover 3.01 million hectares (10% of the total surface area of the country); and more than 40% of this is within National parks.

Besides natural woodland, there is a remarkably large area of plantation forests with a timber-production objective. This has had a massive influence on the Italian forest-wood chain system for several decades now.  A distinction can be made between fast growing plantations of timber or wood-pulp production, like Poplar trees in the Po valley which have a short rotation period, and plantations aimed at the production of more valuable timber (walnut, cherry, ash, maple etc.), which have a longer rotation period.

Who do Italian forests belonging to?

• private ownership accounts for 60%
• public ownership accounts for 40% - 68% of which is owned by local municipalities.

The average size of privately owned forest properties is 7.51 ha.  These woods are usually scattered and are generally not subjected to a Forest Management Plan. This presents the main problems for active management of the forest resource, as well as the implementation of forest certification on a national and regional scale.

The high costs in such fragmented woodland, difficulty in harvesting a sufficient volume of timber per surface unit, low density of forest roads, and the general poor quality of timber limit private and public bodies in harvesting the forests.

In Italy, forestry practices are carefully governed by specific rules, aimed at sustainable planning and management of forest land. Silvicultural systems are based on “close to nature” principles that simultaneously respect social & economical development and the enforcement of soil protection and water conservation, in other words the multi-functionality of the forest ecosystems.

The felling of high forests is therefore forbidden, and operations leading to natural regeneration, such as selection systems are strongly encouraged. Coppices are most commonly managed on a rotational basis, when stumps are clear-cut, but several trunks are left.

Despite the large wooded surface area, the Italian internal supply of timber is limited and not evenly distributed.  According to ISTAT (Statistical Institute), in 2000, the total amount of timber used was 9.24 million m3, of which 59% was for fuel (5.46 million m3), and industrial roundwood accounted for the remaining 41% (or 3.78 million m3). The latter is mainly represented by broadleaves and used as panels and pulp, agricultural poles and other semi-finished products.

The significant amount of industrial roundwood that originates from poplar plantations illustrates the low utilisation rate of natural forests. This situation can be due to strict forest policies and particularly to the extremely low technological level of local forest enterprises. This leads directly to high harvesting costs, thus making the timber non-competitive with neighbouring countries.

The Italian wood industry has a worldwide leading position in wood-working machinery and gives as much added value as possible to the raw material. In 2002, the Italian furniture industry had a 16.5% share of world export.

Sawmills are on average small, and predominantly family-run enterprises with 18,000 employees and 4,000 businesses (ISTAT, 1996).  As a result of the insufficient supply of timber from the local forests 60 – 65% of roundwood is imported from foreign countries, 65% of which is broadleaved, in 2002. In that year there were 430 enterprises involved in the production of panels, plywood and pulp.  These businesses depend more and more on timber provided from abroad, as sawmills do, due to a non-reliable supply of timber from Italian woodland.

There are also industries providing wood-packaging, paper and carpentry products.  Together with the furniture industry these sectors give an added value of up to 40% and this is why, in spite of its structural deficit, the balance of trade in the wood industry has a positive net result. 

Certification and Chain of Custody

As of 21^st December 2011 PEFC forest certification in Italy covers 742,341 hectares (with 3,000 poplar plantation hectares) mostly in north-east Italy (the Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trentino Alto Adige, and Veneto regions): this represents 8.6% of Italy's forests. There are 579 enterprises with PEFC Chain of Custody certification from the wood and paper sectors and this number is growing fast (the annual percentage increment is around 50%).