European Citizens’ Initiative: Nature should be able to take legal action

Spain set an example in 2022: the court granted a lagoon in south-eastern Murcia the right to exist as an ecosystem and to develop naturally, and ordered a seven-year prison sentence and compensation of over 500,000 euros for a company that had contributed to the deterioration of the situation.

A European Citizens’ Initiative is now calling on the European Commission to enact legislation allowing deforested forests or polluted rivers to take offenders to court.

The petition is part of a broad, global movement and, amongst other things, a backlash against the EU’s policy of failing to implement some of the strictest environmental laws or even relaxing them.

The situation is no different in Switzerland, where even areas strictly protected under the Bern Convention are being cleared, with no consequences to follow. At least, climate-adaptive forest conversion is increasingly being exposed as unscientific and devastating for forests and biodiversity.

Deforestation and reforestation are possible because the logging industry and governments simply redefine what counts as a forest.

Forests are being transformed in many countries.

Also in Switzerland, hectares of intact forests are being clear-cut in order to create a newly defined, ‘climate-fit’ forest by planting supposedly climate-resilient saplings, without acknowledging the loss that precedes the planting.

A forest is a living system: soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals – complexity accumulated over decades, specific to its land and climate. A forest is a cooling system, a water system and a climate system. A forest cannot be designed. A forest cannot be harvested and replanted.

You don’t need to be a forestry engineer, a forester or a biologist to understand that it takes decades for planted saplings to become part of the forest ecosystem (if at all), yet we need the forest NOW.

Climate-resilient forest transformation changes the very definition of a forest, rather than protecting existing intact forests.

Photo: right: an intact forest that fulfils the functions mentioned above / left: a “forest” made ‘climate-fit’

Warning of the German Federal Centre for Health Education: Wood smoke increases the risk of dementia

Scientific evidence shows that we can influence up to 40 per cent of our risk of developing dementia.

The 12 modifiable risk factors also include wood-burning heating systems, as listed in a leaflet published by the German Federal Centre for Health Education (Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung)as part of the National Dementia Strategy. According to the leaflet, people should avoid using wood-burning heating systems and, where possible, avoid exposure to second-hand smoke, whether from tobacco or from burning wood.

This is no easy task in Switzerland. Wood-fired heating systems are promoted and subsidised. Yet even modern pellet heating systems, which are praised for being clean, are major polluters. According to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Achim Dittler (Head of the ‘Gas-Particle Systems’ research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), a single pellet heating system is enough to pollute the entire surrounding area.

Low-smoke heating systems, in particular, emit a significant amount of ultrafine dust particles that are harmful to health – not to mention soot and toxic gases.

The climate solution we’ve all been waiting for: mass tree burial

Just when you thought corporate greenwashing couldn’t get any more creative, the biomass sector hits a new milestone. We are no longer just incinerating trees under the guise of “green energy”—now, we are engineering industrial mausoleums for dead logs.

Welcome to Wood Vaults, the latest lucrative corporate carbon-credit scheme.

It works like this: pack timber into massive engineered trenches and mounds (or warehouses); cap them with clay to create an “anoxic” (oxygen-free) dead zone; stop decomposition and “bank” the carbon for 1,000 years.

Proponents cite a 2024 study about a 3,775-year-old log found perfectly preserved in Canadian clay as proof that this works.

To date however, this has only been tested in small demonstration projects. But ambitious prototypes are now being produced that defy common sense. 

A single subterranean site will swallow up 1 hectare (2.47 acres) of land and require collecting wood residuals from an area the size of 10 typical US counties or 25,000 km2.

Other options are available depending on how you prefer to store your dead trees. The industry is currently cooking up a whole menu of architectural styles including barrow vaults, warehouse vaults and “super vaults.”

Operators naturally insist they will only use biomass “sourced from wood residuals unfit for market.”

Sound familiar? It should. We’ve heard this exact tall tale from the woody biomass industry—right before they were caught clearcutting whole mature forests to feed their furnaces.

But here’s where the “scientific” logic hits a massive wall of biomass insanity, as highlighted by reporting from the Climate Communications Coalition (ClimateCC.org):

• Perverse incentives: because burying organic mass yields highly profitable offset credits, it triggers a dangerous financial motivation to clearcut healthy, living trees specifically to entomb them.
• The carbon maths failure: the industry completely ignores the massive fossil fuel emissions generated by heavy diesel machinery digging up hectares of land, sorting timber and trucking massive logs about. Processing wood products actually unleashes up to 13 tons of CO2 for every single ton it successfully sequesters, according to ClimateCC.org.
• Ecosystem destruction: Stripping these logs destroys complex networks of fauna, flora and fungi, sabotaging the forest’s biodiversity and carbon sink.

We are disrupting natural landscapes, risking local aquifers and building industrial logging lines all to recreate artificial coal-beds. 

The logging industry is already one of the most polluting sectors on Earth. Global timber harvesting dumps 3.5 to 4.2 billion tons of CO2 (10% of all global emissions) into the air annually. 

Instead of spending millions to engineer massive mausoleums, monster mounds and warehouses of dead biomass, perhaps we could try a truly radical, avant-garde climate solution:

Leaving the living trees in the ground.

Juli 2026

Study conceals the main cause of forest damage – we are calling for correction

On 5 March 2026, Science (one of the most prominent journals for scientific discoveries) published the study by environmental scientist Marc Grünig et al., entitled ‘Climate change will lead to increased forest damage in Europe over the course of the 21st century’, causing a media stir across Europe.

It is all the more devastating that the study fails to mention that it is not the climate, but primarily deforestation and land use that are responsible for forest damage – accounting for 82 per cent of the total.

We are calling for a published correction. Read our correspondence with the study’s authors here.

We are still awaiting a reply to our email of 27 May.

Study on forest disturbances ignores the main drivers of current forest change in Europe: deforestation and land use

Our email correspondence with the authors of the study “Climate change will lead to increased forest damage in Europe over the course of the 21st century”, in which we criticise the omission of facts and call for a correction.

In our email of 12 May, we ask why deforestation and forest exploitation – which account for 82 per cent of forest disturbances – are mentioned neither in the study nor in the media.

The reply email from Senior Author Seidl dated 12 May 2026

On 27 May 2026, we demand that the study be amended to include the fact that it is not the climate, but primarily deforestation and land use, that are responsible for forest disturbances.

International organisations call for a change in climate policy: wood burning should no longer be classified as a carbon-neutral and renewable energy source

Fern, an organisation dedicated to protecting forests and the rights of the people who depend on them, has called in an open letter to the European Commission for the correction of the greatest anomaly in EU energy and climate policy: wood burning should no longer be defined as a carbon-neutral and renewable energy source.

Together with many other organisations, we have signed the letter to the leadership of the European Commission.

«Taking the temperature» in the forest: timber stocks are falling dramatically – journalism or propaganda for the logging industry?

The SRF broadcast on 4 June 2026 is a masterclass in emotional manipulation: framing chainsaws as a rescue mission, playing sombre music for ‘thirsty’ beech trees, and ignoring the biomass subsidies rumbling in the background.

Read our article here for an unbiased, scientifically sound pushback to this narrative, free from PR filters.

Click on the photo to view full size

Timber, spin and TV: the greenwashing of Swiss forestry 

Welcome to Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), where intensive industrial logging gets a cozy, “slow-journalism” makeover.

In a touching, recent broadcast, SRF sends two forestry engineers into Basel’s woods to play “eco-detectives.” It is a masterclass in emotional manipulation: frame chainsaws as a rescue mission, cue sad music for thirsty beech trees and ignore the roaring biomass subsidies in the background. It isn’t journalism; it’s a public relations shield for the logging industry.

Here is the raw, scientifically backed pushback to that narrative, without the PR filter:

Volumetric gaslighting: The program blames a timber stock drop in the Hardwald (from 300m³/ha to 180m³/ha over 15 years) entirely on climate change. Trees do not evaporate. Machinery removed that missing 120m³/ha. Across the Jura region, official data now shows total wood drain (harvesting + mortality) surpassing natural regrowth by a whopping 124.2% (see page 61). Blaming the canopy shrinkage solely on weather shifts accountability from active logging to global warming.

Baking the microclimate: The “experts” enthusiastically suggest promoting “climate-resilient” oak and pine to replace 140-year-old beech trees. But to replace a mature forest, you must first cut it down. Old forests maintain cool, humid microclimates. Razing them destroys canopy shade and obliterates the mycorrhizal networks in the soil, introducing light, heat, and wind—accelerating localised aridity in a country warming at twice the global average rate.

The “carbon debt” greenwash: SRF omits where this timber goes: straight into biomass burners. In 2024, an astonishing 44% of harvested Swiss wood was burned directly for energy—including 75% of all logged deciduous trees. Burning wood releases more CO₂ per unit of energy than coal. Burning massive beech trees instantly dumps stored carbon into the atmosphere, creating a severe carbon debt taking 80-100+ years to repay.

Squandering the Swiss advantage: A landmark 2026 study reveals 94% of Europe’s forests are locked in rigid, uniform structures. Switzerland holds the continent’s most diverse baseline, with single-species regular classes limited to 35.8% (compared to 79.9% for Spain). Replacing old, diverse forests with uniform rows of “heat-resistant” crops simply adopts the failed European forestry model, stripping the country of its ecological edge.

Starving the ecosystem: The broadcast normalises the loss of old trees, completely ignoring the devastating ecological fallout. According to another study published this month, large, senescent trees are the absolute lifeblood of forest biodiversity, directly sustaining wood-dependent beetle communities and creating vital breeding territories for species like the white-backed woodpecker. By framing the removal of these dying giants as “forest maintenance,” SRF glosses over the fact that a managed, young timber crop breaks the food chain and collapses the entire ecosystem.

This is a commercially driven liquidation of mature forest capital masquerading as environmental adaptation. When we cut down these established beech forests, we aren’t just losing old trees—we are sacrificing ecosystem resilience, obliterating biodiversity and crippling our actual ability to fight climate change. 

Our public media must do better. Instead of broadcasting uncritical corporate PR, journalists have a duty to interrogate the data, challenge industry narratives and provide the objective truth that the Swiss public deserves.

June 2026

Bern taxpayers receive no information from the authorities despite the law on access to information

The Bernese law on access to information stipulates that every person has a right to information from cantonal and municipal authorities.

A law that appears to exist only on paper. Time and again, we receive reports from citizens (who finance the authorities’ activities with their tax money) that their questions have not been answered in writing or that correspondence has been declared closed despite unresolved issues.

Read more about the law on access to information and current examples in our article here.