Content coding of exemption approval decisions for forest clearances

The Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) is responsible for granting exemptions for forest clearances that in principle are prohibited in Switzerland. Initiators of infrastructure projects have to submit an examption approval request to the cantonal forest administration which has to inform the FOEN. The FOEN thus administers a dataset of forest clearance requests and approval decisions that can be requested there. This dataset contains information on a coding of the content of all the forest clearance requests between 2001 and 2017, that elicits whether the reason for the clearance can be attributed to "sustainable economy" objectives such as "green economy", "bioeconomy" and "circular economy".