Authors: Kreft, Stefan; Benndorf, Anke ;Hennenberg, Klaus ;Reise, Judith;Welle, Torsten;Eberl, Justus ;Endres, Ewald;Günther-Dieng, Klaus ;Unseld, Rüdiger;Böttcher, Hannes;

Humanity needs to find quick mitigation solutions against rampant climate change. In important parts of the public discourse, biodiversity loss may look less urgent, and indeed a ‘carbonisation’ of environmental policies can be observed. In an attempt to conciliate these potentially competing societal goals, the new German government, in power since December 2021, announced an ambitious payment for ecosystem services programme for forest owners. The Ministry for Environment has asked our team of biologists and forestry experts to formulate and evaluate options for a payment scheme. This scheme shall give monetary incentives only to those forest owners who consent to increase forest naturalness, thus also improving the capacity to adapt to climate change. Targets range from improving deadwood reservoirs and free-willed forest regeneration to exemption of old trees or even contiguous areas from harvest. At the same time the scheme shall pay these forest owners for reducing forest management intensity and thus supporting forests in their capacity as carbon sinks. This talk will report on the results of this research project that is currently ongoing.