Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget : Continued focus on protecting ancient and cultural remains

A new action plan is now in place for the cultural heritage sustainability target, which concerns SCA's work to protect ancient remains and cultural relicts in the forest. The follow-up for 2020 indicates that we are moving in the right direction, but that more still needs to be done.

The overall environmental target for cultural heritage is, as previously, that no known or registered cultural or ancient remains are to be damaged by SCA's forest operations.

'Our follow-ups show that the level of damage in the past five years has fallen from very high levels, as much as 50% damage, to about 10%. This is an extremely positive development but the level of damage must continue to decline. We had set a vision of zero damage by 2020, but we failed to achieve this target,' says Anna Cabrajic, forest ecologist at Forest and forest management, and continues:

'Remains are still damaged during harvesting, and in particular during the subsequent site preparation. This damage often means the remains are lost forever. By preserving cultural and ancient remains, we are playing our part in helping to achieve the national environmental target of Living forests (Sw. Levande skogar). It is important to remember that forest cultural heritage is the cultural heritage of ordinary people.'

Vision zero and more activities

SCA Forest has now established a new action plan for 2021.

'Vision zero damages lives on. It is a legislative requirement so our objective is to achieve zero damage,' Anna points out. 'If we are to achieve vision zero, all links of the cultural chain must be quality assured. Weaknesses in one link will result in faults throughout the chain, often leading to damage. This means everyone must take responsibility to comply with the correct procedure, learn how the system works and engage help when needed. Follow-up work is naturally very important if we are to understand how we are doing.'

The action plan is divided into activities for site plans, production, silviculture and system development.

'The focus for 2021 will be even more on site planning, so the quality of the entire cultural chain will be assured up to site preparation. We will follow-up at least one site with remains per site planner and we are training new planners in consideration for ancient and cultural heritage at the same time as we are ensuring that all planners have the requisite skills ahead of the snow-free season.'

Supplementary protection

It is important for production that poles continue to be placed out where no suitable culture stumps are available. This offers supplementary protection ahead of site preparation so remains are not damaged.

'Poles have been found to be an important measure to reduce the number of damage incidents,' says Anna. 'We will also consider whether we can create some form of warning using the new GIS in the machines displays, where the map could be shown on screen when machinery approaches ancient or cultural remains.'

In forest management, all equipment operators will be instructed about procedures for consideration for ancient and cultural remains.

'We also want consideration for ancient and cultural heritage to be included as an item in our quality dialogues with silviculture contractors.'

Moreover, it is important to pursue system development that simplifies information transfer, to help keep all parts of the cultural chain together.

'We hope to ensure that official decisions concerning, for example, ancient remains automatically appear in our various systems throughout the chain. We also want to develop the forest management portal and work more systematically in reporting when new remains are found,' says Anna.

Photo: Anna Marntell

Published 5/24/2021

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