Information note - No. 65

The Forestry Research Co-ordination Committee met on 9 November 2006 at Defra, 1a Page Street, London.

Expenditure on forestry and tree-related research

Total expenditure on forestry and tree-related research in the UK, collated by FRCC, amounted to c. £26.4 Million in the year ending March 2006 (Table 1). This represents a decrease of c. £1.2M on the previous year (2004/05) but a slightly larger decrease in real terms (c. £1.7M). The number or organisations who contributed to the database and also the number of projects on the database are slightly down for 2005/06 compared with recent years. The data show year to year variation for a number of reasons, including differences in the annual spend of the various funding organisations (Table 2) reflecting changes of research priorities.

However total expenditure in the last ten years (Table 1) also show medium term trends, particularly when expressed in real terms – expenditure converted to £s 05/06 to remove the effects of general inflation. These data show an increased expenditure on forestry research in the UK from 1997 to 2002, followed by an ongoing and clear trend of less expenditure. The recent trend for less expenditure on forestry research is accounted for by lower expenditure by the EU and UK conservation bodies in 04/05 relative to 03/04 (for EU expenditure this reflected a lower priority of forestry in Framework Programme 6). This has been followed by a significantly decreased expenditure on forestry by DFID in 05/06 compared with 04/05 (Table 2). This reflects the closure of the DFID Forestry Research Programme (FRP) in March 2006. The new DFID strategy for research in sustainable agriculture (SRSA) does not have thematically-based programmes (like forestry) but a geo-political structure with four regional programmes (3 in Africa and 1 in Asia). DFID support for forestry research is likely to continue outside the FRP with significant funding of relevant CGIAR centres (e.g CIFOR and the World Agroforestry Centre). In contrast the 2005/06 expenditure by NERC, the EU and EPSRC are greater than they were in 04/05. The spend by other agencies is similar to that in recent years.

All projects entered into the database are allocated to one of eleven subject areas and the spend by these subject areas can be analysed back to the year ending March 2001. The last four years of expenditure analysed by subject area are shown in Table 3. Changes of research spend result from new strategic directions of the funding agencies and result in changes in spend by subject area. 2006 has seen a decline in the expenditure on Tropical forestry projects and a very low expenditure on Arboriculture. The smaller spend on tropical forestry projects results from the changes in DFID’s research priorities as summarised above.

The drop in arboricultural projects may result from a reclassification of this type of work into the subject area Recreation and Community Participation for which expenditure has doubled in 2006 relative to 2005. This reclassification probably reflects a genuine change of emphasis with the Department for Communities and Local Government contributing to the collation for the first time in 05/06.

Changes in the priorities for forestry research may be better reflected in the keyword analysis of the data. Table 4 shows an analysis of the database by project keyword (unlike in the analysis by subject area, projects may have more than one keyword allocated to them). The ten keywords with the greatest monetary value of research associated with them in the last three years are shown. This year (05/06) Socio-Economics, Marketing, Economics, Agroforestry and Tree Breeding have fallen out, being replaced by Water quality/quantity, Molecular Genetics, Sustainability/Soils, Landscape Ecology and Ecology. These keywords have all featured highly in previous years, and since keywords are selected by those who submit data, the high positioning of Dissemination reflects a genuine current emphasis on knowledge transfer. Dissemination, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Habitats and Entomology have stayed in the ‘top ten’. In recent years there has been a trend for greater integration of forestry with other rural, social and environmental objectives resulting in a broader definition of the projects in the FRCC Collation.

FRCC are now engaged in the 2006/07 Collation of UK forestry research and the next meeting of the Committee will be in November 2007.

Table 1
Total expenditure on forestry research by FRCC organisation over the last 10 years. Annual costs are shown as actual expenditure in the year and also converted to £000s 05/06 to remove the effects of general inflation. The numbers of organisations who submitted data in each year are also shown.

Year ending March	No. of contributors to database	Total Expenditure
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006	18 21 24 19 21 22 22 18 19 18	£000s current year 19548 21050 21864 22234 27097 28484 26525 27791 27670 26429	£000s 05/06 24277 25277 25731 25647 30827 31650 28589 29091 28186 26429

Table 2
Estimated expenditure on forestry research by FRCC member organisations in the last four years
(£000s, actual expenditure in the year).

	Year ending March
FRCC Member	2003	2004	2005	2006
SEERAD/Welsh Ass. & DARDNI	998	1607	1693	1551
Defra & EA	1428	1188	1278	1345
DFID	4773	5494	7258	3968
FC	10645	11018	11562	10991
CON	288	1769	149	250
NERC	2329	2898	3035	3728
BBSRC	818	531	451	570
SFT	65	46	118	108
SFIC	335	380	104	128
EU	2340	1882	1009	1865
DTI & AEA	2070	250	339	367
EPSRC		35	58	674
Others	409	430	612	851

AEA: AEA Engergy and Environment (formerly ETSU).

BBSRC: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

CON: Nature conservation bodies: CCW, Natural England (formerly English Nature) & Scottish Natural Heritage.

DARDNI: Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Northern Ireland.

DCLG: Department for Communities and Local Government.

Defra: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

DFID: Department for International Development.

DTI: Department of Trade and Industry.

EA: The Environment Agency.

EPSRC: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

EU: European Union.

FC: Forestry Commission.

NERC: Natural Environment Research Council.

SEERAD: Scottish Executive Environment & Rural Affairs Department.

SFIC: Scottish Forestry Industries Cluster.

SFT: Scottish Forestry Trust.

OTHERS: Many other sponsoring organisations inc. universities, Commercial, DCLG, etc.

Table 3
Estimates of costs by subject area for 02/03, 03/04, 04/05 and 05/06
(£000s in £s 02/03, 03/04, 04/05 and 05/06)

	Year ending March
Subject Area	2003	2004	2005	2006
Tree Biology	723	1053	607	874
Tropical	2400	6562	7712	5221
Tree Improvement & Genetics	1608	1692	1916	2492
Expansion (New planting)	604	295	210	176
Protection	3216	3229	3143	3226
Forest Resources & Silviculture	5846	5873	5322	5540
Arboricultural	60	158	309	4
Wood Utilisation & Processing	2784	1518	1006	1477
Environmental Interactions	3614	4145	4012	4195
Recreation & Community Participation	457	384	309	762
Conservation & Biodiversity	2108	5208	1715	2266

Table 4
Costs by main keyword (£000s in £s, 03/04, 04/05 and 05/06).
Note – projects have a number of keywords so that project costs may be shown more than once.

Keyword2003/04	Keyword2004/05	Keyword2005/06
Habitats3310	Dissemination3575	Dissemination3370
Socio-economics2863	Socio-economics3366	Water quality/quantity3019
Biodiversity2306	Biodiversity2132	Biodiversity2245
Landscape ecology2243	Marketing1830	Climate Change2032
Water Quality/Quantity1508	Economics1531	Molecular Genetics1908
Agroforestry1472	Climate change1516	Habitats1646
Soils1351	Tree breeding1469	Entomology1457
Dissemination1397	Agroforestry1326	Sustainability/soils1436
Climate Change1262	Habitats1296	Landscape Ecology1335
Timber Prop/Pulp1189	Entomology1276	Ecology1227