Greenhouse gas emissions and removals in land and forests

The long-term trajectory of emission sinks in the land use, land use change and forestry sector is a decrease. In Slovakia, most of the sinks come from forests and forest land. While measures and policies such as the conservation of old natural forests and the application of close-to-nature forestry have been adopted, the general trend is not favourable. The main reason is the age structure of the forests, as the ageing forests need to be restructured and close-to-nature management needs to be applied on a substantially higher scale. Forests have been infested by bark beetles and suffered major storm damage, such as in 2004, when a considerable part of the forests in the High Tatras fell during a storm.

The policy target for 2030 is very unlikely to be achieved. , achieving the goal would require the large-scale application of different measures across all types of land in combination with an approximately 10.5 % reduction in overall planned harvesting volume. While these measures (other than the harvesting reduction) could be implemented, their effects would not be immediate and their application on a larger scale without proper adjustments could also lead to significant economic damage.