ForestryBrief Special: The Forestry Communication Playbook, Part 3 🌲📖🌳

Hello,

This isn't a regular EFP or Professional issue. I know I have been short on the latter, but you will see what kept me busy. Today I'm launching Part 3 of the Playbook.

Part 1 was about the forester on the path. The family at the harvest site. The question nobody answered.

Part 2 was about the forester at the investor's table. Same forest. Three prices.

Part 3 is about the organisation behind them both.

It starts from one claim. Forestry communication fails for structural reasons. Not for lack of skill, and not for lack of care. A better press release will not fix that. Neither will a media training day. It comes down to how the organisation is built.

And one part of that has no number at all.

📖 Here's a piece of Chapter 3. This is the actual book.

Picture the head of communication at a forestry organisation. Any size. Any country. The budget round is open. She wants one more person. Her director asks a fair question. What do others spend? She looks. She looks in her own language and in English. She asks colleagues in other countries. She finds nothing. Not a budget. Not a headcount. Not a share of turnover. Nothing to point at.

So she guesses. Or she gives up. Either way, the decision is made without a number.

Now look at what the same sector does know. The EU Deforestation Regulation, the EUDR, asks companies to prove where their wood comes from. The European Commission estimated what compliance would cost across the EU. Between 170 million and 2.5 billion US dollars a year. A 2025 study of agricultural commodity companies measured it. On average, 0.10% of revenue. For small and medium companies, 0.17%. The highest observed figure was 0.32%. In 2025 the Commission set a target to cut those costs by 30%.

Those are agricultural figures, not forestry ones. The point is not the numbers. The point is the precision. Impose a cost on the sector, and it argues to a tenth of a percent. It has no figure at all for what it spends on its own voice. The sector counts its timber to the cubic metre. It counts regulation to two decimals. It does not count how it is heard.

Before writing this book, four independent research runs looked for the number. Around 15 organisations. Around ten countries. Searches in the national languages, not only English. State forest enterprises, forest agencies, owners' unions, federations. The answer comes in three layers.

The first layer is budget. No European forestry organisation publishes what its communication costs. None of the 15. The four runs agreed.

There is one exception. One agency published its communication line, for one year. Chapter 3 prints the figures, from the agency's own tables.

Then it hands you the tool to fill the blank.

That's one chapter. There are ten.

The survey is the real news.

The book does not stop at the blank. Chapter 10 ends by handing you an instrument.

It is called the European Forestry Communication Capacity Survey. It is anonymous. It takes about five minutes.

It asks what your organisation has, not what it should have. How many people work on communication. What it costs, in bands. Who signs off a public statement. How fast you respond to an event.

Your answer is protected. Results are published in bands only. A band appears only where at least five organisations sit in it. No organisation is ever named.

Every reader of the book gets the results free. The first wave runs to the end of October. Results follow in November.

The first wave will be small. That is by design. Fifteen honest answers beat a hundred guesses.

One book cannot close a continental blank. A few hundred organisations answering the same short set of questions can begin to.

The book prints its blanks.

Chapter 2 prints the four parts of what Finland built. It starts with a permanent institution, founded in 1877.

Then it prints the gap. The national campaign does not publish its total budget. Nor does any partner publish its share. Chapter 3 shows this is not a Finnish habit. It is a European one.

Hungary's forest education network publishes its numbers. The Hungarian Forestry Association set up its Forest School Section in 1996. It has run Forest Week every year since 1997. Its pages describe more than thirty certified forest schools.

Its in-school programme is funded from EU emissions trading quota revenue. The association reports it reached more than 63,000 pupils in 2024.

Then the book reads what that number does not say. It counts pupils reached. It does not measure what any of them learned.

One disclosure, as in the book. I work inside the Hungarian Forestry Association's professional world.

The book ends with an afterword called The Blanks. Where a figure could not be found, the book says so.

Here is what's inside.

The Forestry Communication Playbook, Part 3 — The Organization. 165 pages, across 10 chapters.

Plus 10 printable tools. Three pages each, each its own PDF. Where You Actually Stand. The Third Column. The Budget Case With No Benchmark. The Approval Chain Audit. The Coordination Layer Builder. The Post-Incident Communication Review. The Forest Education One-Pager. The Twelve-Month Capability Plan. The Board Objection Sheet. The One-Page Report.

Plus the survey sheet. One page, with the link.

Here's where it came from.

Part 1 taught foresters to talk to the public. Part 2 taught foresters and investors to talk to each other. Then the question moved up a level. What does the organisation behind them need?

I went looking for one number. What does a communication function cost? Almost nobody publishes it.

So this book does two things. It shows what it takes to be heard, and who does the work. And it gives the sector a safe way to start counting.

Habits change when somebody offers a safe way to go first. That is the whole design.

The Forestry Communication Playbook, Part 3 — The Organization.

165 pages. 10 chapters. 10 printable tools. 1 survey.

€149.

My guarantee: If this book doesn't change how you build your communication function, email me. I'll refund you. No questions. I'd rather have your trust than your money.

For everyone who has asked for one more person and been asked for a benchmark.

If you ever lost a budget round with no number — this is for you. If you ever waited days for a statement sign-off — this is for you.

I wrote this because I believe in European forestry. I want its organisations to be heard. That starts with counting what it takes.

See you tomorrow with the regular EFP.

Wish you all the best: Peter

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