Is It Possible for Poland to Achieve the Policy Goal of 33% Forest Cover by Mid-Century?

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to discuss the problems with attempts to increase forest area in Poland (with a focusing on afforestation in the last 30 years), to analyse the discrepancy between the afforested area and the recorded increase in forest area, and to identify solutions that could enable Poland to achieve the policy goal of 33% forest cover by 2050. The study is based on available official documents, statistical data, and the existing literature. It presents the results of a postal survey of key institutional actors involved in afforestation in Poland on the factors hindering the implementation of afforestation on private land. The study shows that the main factors influencing the collapse of afforestation are long-term, and it is unlikely that this trend will be reversed in the coming years. However, it appears possible to take steps to convert forested agricultural lands that meet national criteria for recognition as forest to forest. The urgent need to protect biodiversity and improve environmental quality in the face of climate change makes it necessary to develop and implement a new program to increase forest area and to provide coherent tools to support the conversion of forested agricultural land to forest.

1. Introduction

One of the most important land use changes in Europe over the past 200 years has been the expansion of forest cover, largely due to large-scale afforestation programs in many European countries [1]. While the global forest area has decreased by 178 million hectares over the last thirty years, the area of European forests has increased by 19.3 million hectares [2,3]. The average net increase of forest area in Europe in the period 1990–2020 was 643 thousand hectares per year (0.30%), of which 100 thousand hectares (0.23%) were in Central and Eastern European countries. Despite the continuous increase of forest area in Europe, a slight slowdown of the process has been observed in recent years. In the decade 2010–2020, the average net increase in forest area was 0.20% per year, both in the whole of Europe and in Central and Eastern Europe. The above net changes are the result of afforestation, natural forest succession, and deforestation [3].

Forest ecosystems play an important role in carbon sequestration and storage, and thus in reducing greenhouse effects and mitigating climate change [4,5,6,7]. Land-use change affects greenhouse gas emissions and their uptake by ecosystems in soil and vegetation [8,9,10]. Large-scale afforestation is considered a cost-effective way to absorb anthropogenic CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere [11,12,13,14,15]. For this reason, afforestation is an important tool to reduce atmospheric CO₂ at global and regional scales [16,17,18], which has been highlighted in international agreements to mitigate climate change such as the Kyoto Protocol [19] and the Paris Agreement [20]. The latter document aims to achieve a balance between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks in the second half of this century.

The European Union’s climate policy has set more far-reaching goals. In 2020, EU leaders adopted a binding target to reduce the EU’s net greenhouse gas emissions to at least 50% below 1990 levels by 2030 and to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. These targets are reflected in the European Green Deal [21], which launches a new growth strategy for the EU, and the “Fit for 55” climate package, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% below 1990 levels by 2030. One of the issues is the effort to increase natural carbon removals, which is critical to offsetting emissions and achieving climate neutrality [22].

One of the measures the EU is taking to achieve climate neutrality is improving the quality of forests and increasing forested area. This can be achieved through sustainable re- and afforestation and the restoration of degraded forests, which can increase CO₂ absorption while improving forest resilience and promoting the circular bioeconomy [21]. The role of afforestation, reforestation, and tree planting in supporting biodiversity and ecosystem restoration and in enhancing carbon sinks and stocks is highlighted in the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 [23] and the new EU Forestry Strategy 2030 adopted in 2021 [24]. Increasing forest area can be achieved through both natural succession and active and sustainable re- and afforestation. The strategy includes a commitment to plant at least three billion additional trees in the EU by 2030, in full compliance with ecological principles.

Among European countries, Poland has relatively large forest resources. Polish forests cover an area of 9260 thousand hectares, which is 29.6% of the total area of the country, or 30.9% of the total land area [25]. Agricultural lands cover 18,719 thousand hectares (59.9% of the total land area), including 3128 thousand hectares of permanent meadows and pastures and 157 thousand hectares of fallow land [26].

The vast majority of Polish forests are state forests (79.6%), which is unusual among EU member states. The largest portion of Polish state forests (7115 thousand hectares or 76.9% of all forests) are managed by the State Forests National Forest Holding (hereinafter also referred to as the State Forests). The remaining public forests are mainly located in national parks (2.0%) or are communal (0.9%). The large area of public forests is a historical legacy from the communist era; after World War II, large forest estates as well as communal and church forests were nationalized. In the following decades, the share of private forests increased due to organisational changes and afforestation of unproductive and barren land [27]; currently, 18.2% of forests belong to private owners and 1.1% to other legal entities (e.g., land cooperatives) [25]. According to the National Forest Inventory (NFI) 2015–2019, coniferous forests occupy 68.2% of the forest area, of which 58% is pine, while deciduous forests account for 31.8%. The growing stock amounts to 2645 million m³ overbark, of which 2065 million m³ are located in the State Forests [28].

After the World War II (1946) the forest area of Poland was estimated at only 20.8% of the total area of the country [29]. Therefore, increasing the country’s forest area was an important economic and environmental goal in the post-war period [30]. In the period 1946–2020, almost 1.5 million hectares of arable and wasteland were afforested in Poland, although the rate of afforestation varied greatly in individual years, ranging from 62 thousand hectares in 1960 to only 0.9 thousand hectares in 2020. Within the last fifteen years a particular downward trend in afforestation has been observed, which has aroused interest and research into the causes of this situation [31,32]. It should be emphasized that the forest area in Poland has increased by 2790 thousand hectares in the discussed period, which is significantly higher than the implemented afforestation [25]. This is the result of the organization of the Land and Property Register to recognise areas with natural succession as forests as well as afforestation carried out by private individuals and not included in the official register [33,34,35].

The forest cover of Poland, calculated according to the international standards of UNECE/FAO (including land related to forest management and in relation to the land area), is 30.9%, which is lower than the overall forest cover in Europe (excluding Russia), which reaches 34.8%. The country’s forest area is lower than in several neighbouring countries (Belarus, 43.2%; Slovakia, 40.1%; Czech Republic, 34.7%), and is comparable to the forest area of two other large countries in the Central European Plain, France (31.5%) and Germany (32.7%) [3].

The aim of this paper is to discuss the issue of increasing the forest area in Poland, focusing on the afforestation in the last 30 years, i.e., the period after the end of the communist era and the centrally controlled economy, the transition to democracy and the free market economy, and then Poland’s accession to the European Union. In the article, we discuss the goals, assumptions, and problems in implementing the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover (1995–2020) and analyse the discrepancy between the afforested area and the recorded increase in forest area, as well as the changes in forest area over the past 30 years (1991–2020). The article also contains forecasts of the increase in forest area in Poland in the coming decades. Finally, we try to point out solutions that will allow Poland to reach the policy goal of 33% forest cover by the middle of the century.

2. Materials and Methods

For the characteristics, objectives, and conditions of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover (hereafter referred to as KPZL), we refer to the official text of the program [36] and its amendment [37]. The extent of afforestation during the discussed period under the program, as well as other official statistical data, were taken from the statistical yearbooks of forestry and agriculture, which are available on the Statistics Poland website [38].

In the present study, we used the unpublished results of the periodic evaluation of the implementation of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover, carried out in 2014 [32], in particular the results of a mail survey conducted to assess the importance of various factors hindering the implementation of afforestation on mainly private land in Poland under the Rural Development Program (RDP). As part of the aforementioned assessment, a group of experts in the field identified the main issues that may have influenced the slowdown of afforestation. These obstacles include the low supply of land to be afforested, the competitiveness of direct payments for agricultural production and relatively low attractiveness of support for afforestation, the limitation of the minimum area of an afforested parcel, the complicated procedures for applying for afforestation subsidies, the insufficient education and promotion of afforestation among farmers, the restrictions on afforestation in Natura 2000 areas, and the exclusion of permanent grassland from afforestation.

The listed constraints were used to develop a questionnaire with statements about the implementation of afforestation under the RDP. The statements were examined using a 5-point Likert scale rating system that explored the direction and intensity of respondents’ attitudes based on the nature of their answers. A Likert scale describes previously developed statements according to their level of agreement, and has five levels: 1–strongly disagree, 2–disagree, 3–neither agree nor disagree, 4–agree, and 5–strongly agree. The respondents, who were officials involved in afforestation issues, chose their answers based on their own knowledge, experience, and beliefs [39,40]. The questionnaire was sent to the three main groups of institutional actors involved in the decision-making process and implementation of afforestation in Poland.

• District authority offices (a total of 380 units across the country), which are public administrative bodies responsible for supervising forests that do not belong to the state (i.e., private and communal forests).
• State Forests district offices (430 units in total), which are responsible for the management of state forests, including afforestation on state-owned land, and are required to provide advice to private forest owners on afforestation and forest management and to prepare afforestation plans for private lands supported under the Rural Development Program.
• District offices of the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (ARiMR) (314 units in total), which are local branches of the state agency that supports structural change in agriculture and rural areas and implements payments under the EU Common Agricultural Policy.

Due to the protection of personal data and the difficulty of reaching individual beneficiaries of afforestation grants, it was not possible to conduct a survey of farmers who afforest their land.

Each administrative structure (district authorities, State Forest districts, and ARiMR district offices) covers the entire territory of the country. The questionnaire was sent to all units (offices) in each group of institutional actors, for a total of 1124 units in the country. A total of 822 responses (completed forms) were received, representing 73.6% of the number of units to which the questionnaire was sent. Completed questionnaires were received from 309 ARiMR district offices (98.4%), 310 forest district offices (72.1%), and 203 district authority offices (53.4%). The partial results of the surveys conducted in the district authority offices (responses to six statements) can be found in Kaliszewski et al. [41]. The declining trend in annual afforestation indicates that the limiting factors identified in 2014 were valid until the end of the implementation of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover in 2020.

The analysis of the discrepancy between the afforestation area and the recorded increase in forest area in the period 1991–2020 was carried out on the basis of Statistics Poland data collected as part of the annual program of public statistical surveys and published in the statistical yearbooks on forestry. In addition, we addressed the main forecasts of forest area growth in Poland, including forecasts from the early period of KPZL implementation [42], based on forest area in 1995 and at the end of program implementation [43]. In addition, the forecast from 2012 [44] was considered, where the authors used the forest area in 2010 as a starting point. It should be emphasized that the forecast of Zajączkowski and Neroj [43] is a continuation of the assumptions based on the development of wood resources included in the National Forestry Accounting Plan [45].

3. Results

3.1. Afforestation in Poland in the Period 1995–2020

With the collapse of the communist system in Poland in the early 1990s, significant changes in ownership and land tenure in rural areas began [46]. At that time, Polish agriculture had a three-part ownership structure, with state, cooperative, and private farms. The most significant changes took place in the state farms sector, which occupied about 18% of the country’s agricultural land and had been privatized since 1992. Private farms were established on the basis of former state farms through sale or lease. Only a small part of the agricultural land, 933.5 thousand hectares, or 5.5%, was managed by the public sector [47].

The collapse of the current model of agricultural production led to the abandonment of cultivation of land with the lowest production potential. Therefore, an important task was to improve the unfavourable agricultural structure [48]. The area of the poorest, hard-to-reach agricultural land and land contaminated with toxic substances was estimated at 3.3 million hectares, which represented 17.5% of the total agricultural land and 10.5% of the total area of the country. At that time, it was estimated that up to 1.5 million hectares of this land could be afforested in an undetermined period of time, which would allow the country to reach 33% forest cover by the middle of the 21st century [49].

The above conditions triggered the development of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover (KPZL), which was officially adopted by the Council of Ministers in 1995 [36]. The objective of the KPZL, planned for the period 1995–2020, was to create the conditions for increasing the country’s forest area to 30% and to distribute afforestation in an optimal way by establishing environmental and economic priorities and instruments for implementation. The spatial distribution of future afforestation was determined on the basis of a set of criteria, taking into account, among other things, the need to develop marginal lands for agriculture, improve the water balance, counteract soil erosion and steppe landscapes, develop a system of protected landscape areas and recreational areas, mitigate the effects of population migration and unemployment, and improve living conditions in urban and industrial regions. It was expected that the implementation of the program would increase the forest area at the national level by about 700 thousand hectares. In general, the program assumed a further increase in the country’s forest area to 33% by 2050.

In 2003, the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover was amended [37]. The document retained the previous regulations regarding afforestation preferences as well as a special emphasis on improving environmental functions such as water and soil protection and nature conservation. Taking into account the positive experience gained in the implementation of this program (over 111 thousand hectares of land were afforested in 1995–2000, compared to 100 thousand hectares planned for this period), the financing possibilities for afforestation, the process of gradual transfer of agricultural land to forestry, and Poland’s expected accession to the European Union, the planned afforestation area was increased by 80,000 ha. The amended program assumed that a total of 680 thousand hectares would be afforested in the period 2001–2020, 130 thousand hectares of which would on state land and 550 thousand hectares on private land (

Table 1. Planned afforestation area in the period 2001–2020, according to the KPZL amendment of 2003 (in thousands of hectares).

Land Ownership	Afforestation Area 1
	2001–2005	2006–2010	2011–2020	2001–2020
State	50	40	40	130
Private	70	120	360	550
Total	120	160	400	680

Note: ¹ Source: [36].

).

Increasing forest cover to 30% by 2020 and 33% by the middle of the 21st century was one of the major policy goals in the “National Forest Policy” of 1997 [50] and remains an important goal of the country’s forest, environmental, and economic policies, mentioned in the “Strategy for Responsible Development until 2020 (with a perspective until 2030)” [51] (a key document in the field of medium- and long-term economic policy) and reaffirmed in “The National Environmental Policy 2030” adopted in 2019 [52].

The need to increase forest cover as a measure to protect biodiversity and forests in the context of climate change was expressed in the “Strategic Adaptation Plan for Sectors and Areas Sensitive to Climate Change until 2020, with a perspective until 2030” [53]. This plan identifies increasing forest area, both through afforestation and natural succession, as a priority actions, along with rationalizing land use and reducing fragmentation of forest complexes. The “National Energy and Climate Plan for 2021–2030” [54] lists an increase in the country’s forest area from the current 29.6% to 31% as a target for reducing greenhouse gases; this target was included in the “2030 Strategy for Sustainable Rural Development, Agriculture and Fisheries” [55] and the “2030 National Spatial Development Concept” as well [56].

During the 26 years of implementation of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover (1995–2020), a total of 283.6 thousand hectares were afforested, of which 134.3 thousand hectares (47.3%) were on state land and 149.3 thousand hectares (52.7%) were on private land (Figure 1). The degree of implementation of the program in relation to the adopted target in the period 1995–2020 was 36.4%, and was much higher on state land (74.6%) than on non-state land (24.9%). The course of afforestation in this period was very diverse. In the period 1995–2003, the annual afforestation area increased gradually (except in 1998 and 2002) until it reached its peak in 2003 (26.5 thousand hectares). During this period, there was a large supply of land owned by the State Treasury and provided free of charge for afforestation by the specialized government agency (Agricultural Property Agency of the Treasury), thus, most of the afforestation took place on state land. Interest from private landowners was lower than expected in the KPZL due to less favourable forms of support in the early years of program implementation [57]. The situation improved briefly when a new system of financial support for afforestation from national funds, which was favourable to farmers, was introduced in 2002 [58].

In 2004–2005, there was a sudden slump in the implementation of KPZL due to the suspension of funding from national funds and delays and uncertainties regarding the principles of financing afforestation from EU funds [59]. After a one-year increase in 2006, a long-term period of gradual decline in annual afforestation began, from about 13.3 thousand hectares in 2007 to 858 hectares in 2020. Starting in 2005, afforestation was carried out mainly on private land.

Due to the 1999 administrative reforms in Poland and the reduction in the number of provinces from 49 to 16, it was only possible to track the degree of implementation of KPZL in individual regions (according to the current administrative division) for the period 2001–2020. The area of 680 thousand hectares earmarked for afforestation during this period should allow for a 2.2 percentage point increase in forest area in the country. The area earmarked for afforestation in individual provinces ranged from 11 thousand hectares in the Opolskie Province up to 111 thousand hectares in the Wielkopolskie Province (Figure 2). Full implementation of KPZL would mean an increase in forest cover from 0.7 percentage points in Kujawsko-Pomorskie Province to 4.8 percentage points in Świętokrzyskie Province.

In the considered 20-year period, the largest area was afforested in Warmińsko-Mazurskie Province (31.2 thousand hectares), while the smallest was in Śląskie Province (2.0 thousand hectares). Śląskie Province was characterized by the lowest level of plan implementation, at only 8%, while the plan was implemented the most in Warmińsko-Mazurskie Province (62%) and Kujawsko-Pomorskie Province (46%). The introduction of afforestation in regions with low forest cover and high afforestation needs, i.e., in Wielkopolskie, Łódzkie, Mazowieckie, Lubelskie and Świętokrzyskie Provinces, as postulated in the KPZL, was far from being achieved.

3.2. Factors Limiting the Implementation of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover

In the first years of KPZL implementation (1995–2001), afforestation of state land was fully financed from the state budget and the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, a public earmarked fund. According to the Forest Law [60], the costs of afforestation of private land could be fully or partially covered by public funds; however, due to limited funds for this purpose in practice, support was limited to providing seedlings free of charge to landowners (the costs were covered by the regional funds for environmental protection and water management) and covering the costs of planting by the State Forests from the state budget [57,59,61]. Landowners received no compensation for taking their land out of agricultural use and managing the forests. This may have influenced the low interest of private landowners in afforestation [59].

The turning point came in early 2002, when the Law on Allocation of Agricultural Land for Afforestation came into effect and introduced a new system for financing afforestation [58]. The law offered attractive financial compensation for taking land out of agricultural use and afforestation, thus, the new scheme attracted a great deal of interest from landowners [57]. However, this phase lasted only two years, as following 2004, i.e., Poland’s accession to the European Union, afforestation of agricultural land has been covered by support instruments under the Common Agricultural Policy.

A sharp decline in afforestation coincided with Poland’s accession to the EU. As mentioned above, the causes of the observed collapse in the implementation of KPZL and the assessment of their importance are the subject of this evaluation. In the following, we present the results of the conducted survey in relation to fifteen statements that are the most important from the perspective of KPZL implementation. The Likert scale results for each statement are shown in Figure 3.

The survey showed that the main factors hindering the implementation of afforestation on private land in Poland under the Rural Development Program (RDP) are the following:

• Exclusion of permanent grassland from afforestation (64% of respondents “strongly agree” and “agree”);
• Administrative restrictions on Natura 2000 sites (60%);
• Insufficient training for farmers in the field of afforestation (57%);
• High attractiveness of subsidies for agriculture compared to support for afforestation under the Rural Development Program (56%);
• Complicated procedures for applying for co-financing and the system of support for afforestation (53%).

Other identified factors seem to be important, although in certain cases (questions 2, 3, and 15) the group of respondents who “neither agree nor disagree” was 45% or more. It should be noted that in the case of question 6, the positive answer (63% “strongly agree” and “agree”) indicates that there is a positive response to covering forest land under the Rural Development Plan through a single area payment.

3.3. Forecasts of the Increase in Forest Area in Poland

Statistical data published by Statistics Poland [38] show that there are significant discrepancies between the areas of afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation and the recorded increase in forest area (Figure 4). In the thirty-year period studied, forest area in Poland increased by an average of 18.9 thousand hectares per year, with the largest increase in area in the decade 2001–2010 (25.7 thousand hectares per year). After 2010, a significant slowdown in the increase of forest area can be observed, a phenomenon that coincides with the decrease in afforestation area. The system used by Statistics Poland to collect information on forest area and the procedural issues related to the recognition of afforestation and its reporting (regardless of the reporting of forest area) meant that until 2003 there were situations when the area of afforestation reported in a particular year (1993, 1998, 2000, 2003) was greater than the increase in forest area.

In the period 1990–2020, 321.3 thousand hectares of former arable land and wasteland were afforested. In addition, natural succession of trees was established on 4.7 thousand hectares and 9.3 thousand hectares of post-industrial land was reclaimed. At the same time, an area of 16.9 thousand hectares was deforested. Comparing the above data with the increase in area (566 thousand hectares), it should be noted that 231 thousand hectares of forest were created by activities other than those mentioned above. This is primarily due to the organization of the Land and Property Register, i.e., the reclassification of areas that were afforested in previous years and were not listed in the official register, as well as areas that became covered with forest vegetation as a result of natural succession [33,62].

The results of the forecasts of the increase in forest area in Poland [42,43,44] as well as information on the creation of forest area after 1990 based solely on data on afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation, are presented in Figure 5. According to Czuba [42], the area of Polish forests in 2020 would be 9356 thousand hectares, about 96 thousand hectares more than in reality (9260 thousand hectares). The forecast made fifteen years later by Dawidziuk and Neroj [44] showed that the forest area in 2020 would be smaller than according to Czuba’s forecast, though 51 thousand hectares larger than the actual area. The course of the two above-mentioned forecasts in the coming years is similar. According to Dawidziuk and Neroj [44], the forest area in Poland could be 9621 thousand hectares in 2040, and according to Czuba [42], 9656 thousand hectares in 2045.

Zajączkowski and Neroj [43] estimated much lower values for projected forest area in 2040–2050, in part because they used more recent data (lower forest area growth rate) and used the 2017 forest area as a starting point. The authors forecast that forest area will be 9514 thousand hectares in 2040 and 9596 thousand hectares in 2050, assuming average annual growth in forest area of nearly 12.8 thousand hectares in 2018–2030, 10.3 thousand hectares in 2031–2040, and 8.2 thousand hectares in 2041–2050. The changes in forest area by 2020 were assumed according to the National Forestry Accounting Plan scenario [45].

It should be noted that both the National Forestry Accounting Plan [45] and the study by Zajączkowski and Neroj [43] predicted an increase in forest area by 38 thousand hectares in 2018–2020, which was not reflected in the actual data. During this period, the forest area increased by less than 18 thousand hectares, including 3.9 thousand hectares in 2019 and only 1.5 thousand hectares in 2020.

4. Discussion

Increasing forest area has been an important goal of forest, environmental, and economic policies in Poland in recent decades. The collapse of the communist system in Poland at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s brought about profound social and economic changes, leading to changes in ownership and land tenure in rural areas as well as the abandonment of cultivation of land with low production potential. In this situation, the afforestation program was considered one of the tools to improve the unfavourable agrarian structure and the state of the natural environment [46,48,49]. The National Program for Increasing Forest Cover (KPZL) [36] implemented in the period 1995–2020 was intended to create conditions for increasing the country’s forest cover to 30% by 2020 through the afforestation of 780 thousand hectares of land as a first step and in the longer term to 33% by 2050 [50].

During the entire period of KPZL (1995–2020) the implementation rate was 36.4%, and was much higher on state land (74.6% of 180 thousand hectares planned) than on private land (24.9% of 600 thousand hectares planned). The collapse of the implementation of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover coincided with the dynamic socio-economic changes in rural areas after Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004.

Our survey of key institutional actors involved in afforestation found that there are significant barriers, including insufficient provision of land for this purpose, the attractiveness of direct payments for agricultural production, complicated procedures for applying for afforestation subsidies, and the exclusion of permanent grassland from financial support for afforestation, as well as administrative constraints on Natura 2000 sites.

In the 1990s and the first decade of this century, state land for afforestation was transferred free of charge from the Treasury’s Stock of Agricultural Property to the State Forests. The situation changed in 2010 when the legal requirement to sell the land in the first place was introduced, limiting all forms of free distribution of land from the Treasury’s Stock of Agricultural Property [32]. By the end of 2020, only about 14.3 thousand hectares of state land suitable for afforestation remained in the Treasury’s Stock of Agricultural Property nationwide [63].

The reasons for the decline in the supply of private land for afforestation are more complex. The possibility for farmers to receive direct payments for agricultural production starting in 2004 led many of them to resume agricultural production on land that was considered unfavourable for effective agriculture during the development of KPZL, i.e., in the first half of the 1990s, and thus potentially remained for afforestation. From the point of view of rational land management this is not a positive circumstance [64], as it means an unfavourable impact of area payments under the Common Agricultural Policy on the improvement of the agricultural structure of farms in Poland, which in this case depends on the mere ownership of agricultural land. The economic benefits that farmers derive from formal ownership of agricultural land help to maintain a very large number of small farms [65,66]. However, in Poland there is a need to improve the unfavourable agricultural structure [48], because the area unsuitable for agricultural use (which does not provide an opportunity to generate income) is estimated at 1.5–1.8 million ha [65].

The attractiveness of direct payments for agricultural production led to an increase in demand for agricultural land and consequently to an increase in market prices, which reflected the general macroeconomic conditions in rural areas [67]. In the period 2005–2019, the average price of poor arable land in current values increased almost sixfold (from PLN 5843 to PLN 34,625 per hectare; EUR 1 = PLN 4.65, 2022) [38]. There is no doubt that the increase in the price of arable land has reduced the supply available for afforestation.

Compared to direct payments for agricultural production, support for afforestation seems to be unattractive. A prerequisite for afforestation support under the Rural Development Programme is the permanent and practically irreversible conversion of afforested agricultural land into forest [60,68]. Thus, landowners permanently lose the possibility to change the use of the land in the future (prohibition of deforestation), which is not taken into account in the current compensation system. Several authors have suggested [69] that an incentive for farmers could be a subsidy in an amount that takes into account the value of the land.

The results of our questionnaire survey show that the complicated procedures for applying for afforestation subsidies and, to a lesser extent, for preparing the afforestation plan, are a major burden for farmers who have decided to afforest their land. Several of the solutions adopted for the application process for afforestation subsidies are negatively evaluated, including the excessive duration and time required [41]. However, the problem of administrative burden related to the Common Agricultural Policy is broader [70] and is perceived in other countries [71,72] and the European Commission itself [73] as well. Difficulties related to the administrative burden of applying for afforestation subsidies could be partially mitigated by more comprehensive training for farmers and by measures to inform and promote afforestation of land.

The minimum area of an afforested parcel supported under the Rural Development Program, which was considered as constraint in the questionnaire, no longer seems to be an important issue. The possibility of afforestation of land with a minimum size of 0.1 hectares if the land in question is adjacent to a forest, introduced in 2011 [74], has not led to an increase in farmers’ interest in afforestation.

One of the most important factors limiting afforestation is the exclusion of permanent grassland from financial support for afforestation [75], as our survey revealed. However, grassland is considered very important for biodiversity conservation, soil protection, and carbon sequestration [76,77], and afforestation poses a threat to semi-natural habitats with characteristic and highly localised plant communities, such as grasslands [78]. In order to prevent massive conversion of permanent grassland to cropland, the current EU regulations include a requirement to maintain the proportion of permanent grassland in agricultural land across the country, which must not decrease by more than 5% compared to the 2015 reference year [79,80].

Potential lands for afforestation may be further limited by the designation of Natura 2000 sites. Currently, 845 Sites of Community Importance and 145 Special Protection Areas (bird sanctuaries) have been designated in Poland, covering 6 million hectares, or about 20% of the country’s land area. Half of the Natura 2000 area is covered by forests and about 30% by arable land [81]. The limitation of support for afforestation of land in these areas was introduced in 2007. At that time, only a few Natura 2000 management plans were implemented, and afforestation could have conflicted with protection objectives for the sites [41]. However, in a situation where the number of implemented management plans is increasing, this limitation is probably of less importance at present.

Experience from the implementation of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover shows that existing regional and local spatial development plans do not allow effective management of afforestation distribution in accordance with the priorities established in the KPZL [41,82]. Studies show a progressive spatial concentration of forests in rural areas of Poland. A particularly sharp increase in the proportion of forests is observed in municipalities located in areas with a high proportion of forests. This is related to environmental conditions unfavourable for agriculture and a large supply of land for afforestation [61]. Determining important factors that influence the distribution of afforestation seems to be crucial for planning further activities related to afforestation of land with low importance for agriculture [64].

The main factors influencing the collapse of KPZL implementation are long-term, and it is unlikely that this trend will be reversed in the coming years. The decline in forest area growth observed in Poland for several years means that both the older forecasts of forest area increase [42,44] as well as more recent and cautious forecast [43] are unlikely to be achieved without additional activities. However, it should be emphasized that the official increase in forest area is largely due to factors other than afforestation in a particular period; of the increase in forest area by 566 thousand hectares in 1990–2020, only 335 thousand hectares were the result of afforestation, reforestation, and registered natural succession.

The phenomenon of spontaneous occurrence of trees on abandoned agricultural land has been observed throughout Europe for many years [83,84,85,86,87]. Moreover, in Poland areas afforested by private landowners outside the official system are not designated and classified as forests in a Land and Property Register [62]. Relatively infrequent land use inventories [88] and the unwillingness of landowners to reclassify their forested agricultural land as forests limit the ability to make reliable projections of changes in forest area, and may be a reason for the slight increase in forest area in recent years.

Based on spatial datasets, Hościło et al. [89] estimated that almost 800 thousand hectares of forests in Poland are not recorded in official statistics. According to the results of the NFI 2016–2020 [90], the area that meets the criteria of a forest and is registered in the Land and Property Register as non-forest area is even higher, and amounts to 912 thousand hectares according to the criteria for forested land used in the State Forests National Forest Holding (simplified with a minimum tree cover of 30 to 50%, depending on the age of the stand) or 1064 thousand hectares with a canopy cover of more than 10% (according to the FAO forest definition).

Taking into account the progress made thus far in increasing the forest area, is it possible for Poland to reach 33% forest cover by 2050 under current conditions? To achieve this goal, forests in Poland would have to cover about 10,320 thousand hectares, i.e., about 1060 thousand hectares more than today. Achieving this goal only through afforestation is unrealistic, as it would mean annual afforestation on an area of almost 38 thousand hectares, and the difficulties in implementing the KPZL show that this task cannot be accomplished in the current socio-economic conditions in Poland.

However, it should be considered that this “missing” million hectares of forested land actually exists. The above estimates suggest that there are 800–900 thousand hectares of forested agricultural land that meet the national criteria for recognition as forests, or even more than a million hectares if the FAO definition is used. The official recognition of all these areas as forests and their inclusion in the Land and Property Register would make it possible to formally achieve the increase of Poland’s forest cover to 32.1–32.5% by the middle of the century. While afforestation of an additional 160–260 thousand hectares, i.e., about 6–10 thousand hectares per year starting from 2023 would be challenging, it would not be completely impossible. Thus, forest cover of 33% could be achieved by 2050.

The reclassification of 800–900 thousand hectares of land would be a time-consuming and costly process. In addition, actions that result in the reclassification of non-forest land (that meets the criteria for recognition as forest) to forest land may not be welcomed by landowners, as they are often unwilling to permanently and irrevocably deprive themselves of the opportunity to resume agricultural production or undertake other types of land development on currently forested land in the future. For this reason, the process should take the form of a systematic program with targets, a timetable, and implementation measures, with a system of incentives and compensation for landowners to encourage the process and relieve landowners of the costs of reclassification itself. These measures would require a comprehensive information and publicity campaign.

However, considering that the conversion of land to forest is not possible everywhere, it is even more important to make further efforts to continue afforestation of low-quality agricultural land as a new follow-up program for afforestation and reforestation. The new program should take into account the changing conditions in rural areas of Poland, prioritising climate change mitigation [11,12,15], biodiversity protection and enhancement [91,92], and improvement of the quality of the natural environment and its impact on human health [93,94,95]. The above-mentioned conversion of non-forest land that meets the criteria for forest into forest land could be included in this program.

The need to further increase the country’s forest cover is supported by numerous activities undertaken by the European Union in recent years. The European Green Deal [21] projects that the EU will achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 [23] and the EU Forest Strategy 2030 [24] identify improving the condition of forests and increasing their area as one of the ways to achieve this goal. The need to further increase the country’s forest area stems from numerous national strategies and policies [51,52,53,54,55]. In this respect, they are in line with the current EU policy, which aims to achieve climate neutrality of the European Union, maintain the high quality of the natural environment, and protect biodiversity.

The new program’s measures could be harmonized with those under the new Common Agricultural Policy 2023–2027 and under subsequent programming periods [96]. The draft Strategic Plan for the Common Agricultural Policy for 2023–2027, which is currently being prepared in Poland, emphasizes the need for afforestation of low-productivity land, which is particularly vulnerable to erosion and water pollution. This will serve to increase the absorption and effective storage of carbon in the soil; in addition, afforestation will help to assemble fragmented forest complexes into compact and coherent landscape structures. At this stage, it is planned that about 2.5 thousand hectares of land will be afforested [97]. However, the activities carried out following the KPZL would need to go much further, and perhaps be supported by national funds on a larger scale.

5. Conclusions

The aim of this work was to discuss the issue of increasing forest area in Poland, focusing on afforestation in the last 30 years, the objectives, assumptions and problems in the implementation of the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover (1995–2020), and changes in forest area within the last 30 years (1991–2020). The study has been supplemented with forecasts of the increase in forest area in Poland in the coming decades. Based on the results, we can draw the following conclusions:

• The rate of afforestation to date is far from sufficient to achieve the goal of 33% forest cover in Poland by 2050, as set out in the National Program for Increasing Forest Cover and the “National Forest Policy”. It is appropriate to develop and implement a new program for increasing forest area with a view to 2050.
• The new program should provide coherent tools to support the conversion of forested agricultural land (much of it abandoned) to forest land and help organize the land registry.
• This program should take into account the new socio-economic conditions in rural areas and support the achievement of the objectives of the national and European policies and strategies currently being implemented.
• Conversion of these areas (800–900 thousand hectares) together with afforestation of another 6–10 thousand hectares per year would make it possible to achieve 33% forest cover by 2050.
• Special funds should be made available to encourage the provision of private land for afforestation, as the inadequate provision of land for this purpose was one of the main factors limiting the implementation of afforestation program during the period 1995–2020.