Towards the Politicisation of Nature? Forests and Biodiversity Issues in European Party Manifestos

Scholarship on environmental governance has extensively analysed how political parties respond to climate change-related issues, yet other domains of global environmental governance, most notably forests and biodiversity, remain comparatively understudied. This gap has become increasingly apparent in the context of the European Green Deal, under which forests and biodiversity have gained more attention in European Union (EU) policymaking through initiatives such as the Nature Restoration Regulation and the European Union Deforestation Regulation. Understanding these developments, however, requires tracing earlier discourses on forests and biodiversity as political issues in the EU. This article addresses this research gap by examining how forests and biodiversity are discursively constructed in European Party Federation (EPF) election manifestos between 2009 and 2024. Focusing on major party families represented at the European level (including Conservatives, Social Democrats, Liberals, Greens, the Left, and Nationalists), the study traces changes in issue salience and dominant storylines over time. Drawing on sociological institutionalism and argumentative discourse analysis, the article claims that international environmental governance can play a key role in shaping party discourse by normalising particular ways of talking about forests and biodiversity, such as sustainable forest management, restoration, and climate-related framings. Political parties selectively adopt these discourses to signal legitimacy and policy competence, not only in response to voter demand but also to evolving institutional expectations about what constitutes appropriate environmental policy language. By shifting attention beyond climate change issues, the study contributes to environmental governance and political party research by demonstrating to what extent growing politicisation of forest and biodiversity at the international level correlates with issue salience in EPF election manifestos. It also shows how institutionalised environmental norms shape political agenda-setting in the European Union and helps explain recent patterns of discursive convergence and polarisation within European party systems.