Reporting practices of State Forest Enterprises in Europe

Forests provide a wide range of public services to communities and, for this reason, public authorities in many countries have a relevant role both as land owners and as providers of raw material and public services. This article focuses attention on State Forest Enterprises (SFEs) based in Europe. They manage state-owned forest areas, which amount to more than 40% of all forest cover in the EU and hence their performance influences the development of the whole sector, maintaining forest resources stability and productive potentials. This should be done through stakeholders' inclusiveness etc., so it is necessary to monitor their activities and further impacts. The common way to do this is through reporting practices. Information disclosed in reports can provide insights into the level of transparency, accountability and openness. Thus, this article aims to analyse the reporting systems of SFEs in terms of sustainable forest management and corporate responsibility. We used content analysis, sustainability metrics and a set of indicators to assess and analyse patterns and structure of disclosed information in the reports of selected SFEs. Results revealed much diversity in approaches towards the implementation of sustainability standards. It is suggested that the adoption of a common scheme for periodic reporting will allow communication to a wider public and comparative analysis of SFEs on a large scale. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.