Forest Policies and their impacts on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in a changing world

The European and global biodiversity policies have recently emphasised the necessity of a transformative change that requires a reinforced attention to interconnections, synergies and trade-offs between diverse societal needs towards and ecological functions of nature (1,2). Forests are one of the key environments to advance this change and they cover over one-third of the land in Europe. However, the status of conservation of forest habitats in Europe remains poor or bad (3). In the last decades, there has been an increase in demands from forests (e.g., timber, energy production, climate mitigation, recreation), some of them in strong conflict with biodiversity targets (4,5). To address such demands, forest issues are dealt with by a growing plethora of disparate sector policies, with often competing objectives and instruments, the implementation of which is often not coordinated, nor are compliant or impacts monitored across the policies (6). Having tools to evaluate forest policies across sectors and scales is essential to advance towards biodiversity conservation targets. This symposium will discuss state-of-the-art methods to evaluate the coherence of forest-related policy targets within single policies, between sectoral policies (e.g. biodiversity strategy vs. forest strategy vs. bioeconomy strategy) and across administrative scales (e.g. national vs EU policies). Policy evaluation will contemplate different climate change scenarios. The symposium will show concluding results from the ongoing MultiForest research consortium as well as from other research evaluating forest policy in Europe with consequences for biodiversity. The symposium is solution-oriented and aims to deliberate on pathways towards more effective policy mixtures for forest ecosystem services and biodiversity, for instance for the national implementation of the new EU Forest strategy.

List of references:
1. IPBES. IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. 2019.

2. European Commission. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. COM/2020/380 final. 2020;

3. European Environment Agency. State of nature in the EU - Results from reporting under the nature directives 2013-2018. Publications Office of the European Union. Copenhagen; 2020. 142.

4. Pohjanmies T, Triviño M, le Tortorec E, Salminen H, Mönkkönen M. Conflicting objectives in production forests pose a challenge for forest management. Vol. 28, Ecosystem Services. Elsevier B.V.; 2017. p. 298–310.

5. Mönkkönen M, Burgas D, Eyvindson K, le Tortorec E, Peura M, Pohjanmies T, et al. Solving Conflicts among Conservation, Economic, and Social Objectives in Boreal Production Forest Landscapes: Fennoscandian Perspectives. In: Ecosystem Services from Forest Landscapes. Springer; 2018. p. 169–219.

6. Sotirov M, Arts B. Integrated Forest Governance in Europe: An introduction to the special issue on forest policy integration and integrated forest management. Land Use Policy. 2018 Dec 1;79:960–7.

Presentations:

EU Forest and Biodiversity Governance
- Helga Puelzl (European Forest Institute, Finland)

(In)Coherences of national forest policies in Europe; examples from Norway, Finland and Germany
- Marta Vergarechea (NIBIO, Norway)

EU climate change mitigation targets compromise forest ecosystem services and biodiversity
- Clemens Blattert (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

Policies impact on forest multifunctionality across Europe
- Astor Toraño Caicoya (Technical University of Munich, Germany)

Nordic forest governance shifts towards multi-functionality and non-regulatory approaches
- Nils Droste (Lund University, Sweden)

National timber harvest projections under the EU Green Deal and 2030 biodiversity strategy
- Fulvio Di Fulvio (IIASA, Austria)

Lessons to leverage policy coherence for forest multifunctionality and biodiversity
- Jani Lukkarinen (Finnish Environment Institute, Finland)