Authors: Lukkarinen, Jani; Pitzén, Samuli;Primmer, Eeva;

Ambitious and transformative policy goals to address both direct and indirect causes of biodiversity loss have been set in the EU Green Deal and EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. These goals are entering a fragmented and misaligned landscape of existing strategies embedded in diverse and contradictory interests, especially visible in the contexts of European forests. We utilize and develop a semi-quantitative policy coherence evaluation methodology for analyzing the policy (in)coherence both vertically (across governance levels) and horizontally (between policy sectors) (e.g., Nilsson et al., 2012). More specifically, we analyze how biodiversity, bioeconomy, and forest strategies on the EU scale and in four national contexts (Finland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden) set targets for multiple forest ecosystem services (FES). Our findings explicate national differences in addressing the FES. Further, climate change mitigation is identified as a policy area, where most conflicting goals as well as greatest potential to increase coherence. Finally, the pressure to align the fragmented goals is pushed down to policy implementation on land-use level, where new information and coordination tools are needed. Our conclusions point towards approaching policy coherence as a process rather than end-goal, which would enable bundling e.g., the more ambitious biodiversity goals into ongoing policy processes.