ThinkForest - Navigating through the EU forest-related objectives

Forests stand at the intersection of many of the European Union’s key ambitions — from achieving climate neutrality and conserving biodiversity to ensuring energy security and fostering economic competitiveness. Forest governance within the EU is therefore complex, as numerous policy domains intersect with forests. Over the past three decades, a diverse array of policy instruments — both legally binding and non-binding — has emerged to address these interlinkages.

A new study forming the basis of this ThinkForest event maps forest-related objectives across 90 EU policy documents, taking the 2021 EU Forest Strategy as its starting point. The analysis identifies 15 key policy objectives and reveals how forests are increasingly portrayed as multifunctional allies in tackling Europe’s major challenges. While the European Green Deal has strengthened environmental and climate ambitions, economic productivity remains firmly embedded within EU forest policy.

However, forests, their management practices, and ownership structures vary widely across Europe. In the light of increasing forest disturbances, the need to adapt forests to the future and increase their resilience while maintaining and enhancing biodiversity and their carbon sink, it will be instrumental to understand how all of these EU objectives can be achieved simultaneously.

Our ThinkForest event will:

• present key insights from the study on EU forest policy objectives
• discuss opportunities for better policy coherence and governance integration
• foster dialogue on challenges and opportunities for addressing trade-offs in implementation

Please note that this is only an in-person event and there will be no online streaming.

Programm

• 17:00 - 17:05 Opening Words
  Helga Pülzl, Assistant Director, European Forest Institute
• 17:05 - 17:25 Green Ambition & Economic Competitiveness: Mapping EU Forest Objectives
  Dr. Doris Wydra, Senior Scientist, University of Salzburg, Austria
• 17:25 - 18:25 Panel discussion: EU forest policy governance: challenges and opportunities
  Moderator: Sarah Adams, European Forest Institute
  4 panelists to be announced at a later stage

• 18:25 - 18:30 Closing remarks
  Helga Pülzl, Assistant Director, European Forest Institute
• 18:30 - 19:30 Networking with cocktails and canapes