Co-designing Holistic Forest-based Policy Pathways for Climate Change Mitigation

ForestPaths aims to co-design, quantify and evaluate holistic forest-based policy pathways to optimize the contribution of forests and the forest-based sector to climate change mitigation, and which consider the need to adapt forests to climate change, conserve biodiversity and sustain the provisioning of forest ecosystem services. ForestPaths’ specific objectives are to:

1. Improve the understanding of factors that shape decision-making behaviour by forest practitioners across Europe on adopting and locally adapting climate and biodiversity-smart forest management to inform policy pathways.

2. Develop advanced high-resolution monitoring methods of climate change related risks from forest disturbances to advance the modelling of future impacts on forest composition, structure, and carbon pools in Europe.

3. Assemble a next generation integrated assessment framework incorporating improved methods, models, tools and data to assess holistically the contribution of European forests, forest management and the forest-based sector in achieving climate, energy and biodiversity targets under future climate conditions.

4. Co-design, quantify and evaluate holistic forest-based policy pathways for climate change mitigation that consider climate change related risks, impacts and feedbacks of the forest socio-ecological system, as well as adaptive management practices, biodiversity goals, and the provision of ecosystem services.

5. Maximise ForestPaths’ impacts by fostering collaboration with universities, research institutes and intergovernmental bodies, and liaising with relevant networks and initiatives to promote synergies, integration and cooperation and facilitate knowledge exchange with targeted stakeholders.