The Horizon Europe project ForestPaths hosted its second Policy Lab, gathering stakeholders to share their key visions for the future of forests and the forest-based sector by 2050 while also identifying the policy actions necessary to achieve them.

ForestPaths held its second Policy Lab in Varese, Italy, from 23-25 September 2024, bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders. The event featured 18 handpicked participants representing a wide range of expertise, including policy, governance, civil society, value-chain and economic professionals, forestry practitioners and research. Discussions focused on forest-based policymaking and modelling, exploring how these approaches could contribute to addressing climate change and biodiversity goals by 2050.

Stakeholders were tasked with developing and exploring medium and long-term visions to help forests and the forest-based sector by quantifying these visions, linking the visions to policy targets and finally, identifying actions that could be taken to achieve these visions of a desired future.

Some noteworthy messages derived from the second Policy Lab consist of preserving ecosystem services, maintaining diversity (encompassing improving resilience, sustainability, adaptability and multifunctionality) and developing an EU network for connectivity. Furthermore, participants, divided into three groups, gave a varied perspective on the primary motivators for their visions including, an emphasis on the expansion and resilience of European forests; continuing to make forests economically viable; and focusing on the social and educational components required for sustainable forestry. ForestPaths modelling partners will use such visions and messages, alongside the integrated assessment framework, consisting of quantitative simulation models and data and tools, to create a pathway analysis.

These activities, within the second Policy Lab, will ultimately contribute to the third Policy Lab, whereby stakeholders will co-create policy pathways by engaging with the model results, defined and prepared by ForestPaths’ modelling teams. The third Policy Lab will occur in autumn 2025, after which, policy recommendations will be derived from the pathway analysis in the final fourth Policy Lab in 2026.

Until the next Policy Lab in 2025, you can find more policy-engaging activities, thereby allowing for a greater scope of involvement and contribution, through the Policy Engagement Forum here.

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ForestPaths (Co-designing Holistic Forest-based Policy Pathways for Climate Change Mitigation) receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme (ID No 101056755), as well as from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation Council (UKRI). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.