One of the major challenges relating to the management of Europe’s forests is to balance the provision of distinct forest ecosystem services with broad societal demands. If markets and existing governance arrangements fail, forest owners and managers struggle to meet societal needs. There is a necessity to explore new approaches to connect profitable forest management with changing societal demands. Against this background, innovative mechanisms (IM), including novel policies and business models, have the potential to align ecosystem services supply and demand. SINCERE will, first, systematically map the existing knowledge and practical experiences with IM at the European scale. Second, it will, in a joint effort of practice partners and researchers, design, implement and subsequently evaluate a complementary set of innovation actions that explore novel IM in different regional contexts. These actions encompass a broad spectrum of forest ecosystem services (e.g. biodiversity, climate change mitigation, water supply, recreation), governance mechanisms (e.g. new business models, ‘reverse auctions’ with forest owners, participatory governance) and regional settings (e.g. intensively managed commercial forests in Finland versus little-managed forest land in Spain). Third, a Learning Architecture will connect these innovation actions across countries to incentivize cross-case fertilization and learning between research and practice. Finally, practice partners, policy makers and researchers will jointly draw lessons learnt from the innovation actions, including the upscaling of successful IM to be replicated elsewhere. The project will also push for innovations at the interface between policies and on-the-ground IM, and will deliver concrete suggestions for a coordinated European policy framework that supports IM. Target group-specific communication and dissemination activities will ensure SINCERE’s impact throughout the entire project duration.

The objective of InnoForESt is to spark a transformation of the European forest sector by stimulating innovations for the sustainable supply and financing of forest ecosystem services. The project will support the governance of viable innovations and a multi-actor network by building on pioneer policy tools and business models, by establishing new alliances, and by involving key stakeholders from forest and forest-related policy, administration and business. InnoForESt will establish six real world pilots that represent a range of successful coordination approaches and business models. The project will facilitate the transfer and up-scaling of existing niche models identified and the development of new innovations, to demonstrate the feasibility of alternative income streams from a diverse set forest ecosystem services. The case study regions represent a variety of biophysical conditions and institutional settings across Europe. The core elements of InnoForESt are: (i) multi-actor networks, (ii) digital and physical innovation platforms, (iii) facilitated innovation processes for business and policy making, (iv) information generation and support for future national and EU forest policy making. Within the networks, stakeholders will exchange ideas, knowledge and practices. InnoForESt has already engaged a broad set of practice partners to establish the core of the networks. The innovation platforms will function as hubs and as spaces for exchange and learning. The project will scale up the results to the European level, making use of the thorough understanding of Europe’s social-ecological landscape as well as sustainability impacts of different governance mechanisms. The lessons will feed into a roadmap for the provision of forest ecosystem service bundles and a broad range of dissemination and communication activities. Ultimately, this will lead to better policy coordination, the well-being of EU citizens and the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems.

FORADVISE will develop a European network of forest advisory organisations, actors, and networks, to support the modernisation of the forestry sector, and advance towards EU and national policy targets. It will speed up knowledge flows, increase the competences of forest advisors beyond traditional areas of advice, and develop pathways towards a future Forest Knowledge and Innovation System (FOKIS) in Europe. Its ultimate goal is to advance towards more resilient, multifunctional, and productive forests in Europe. To achieve this, FORADVISE, creates a EU forest advisory network on forestry, and animates an iterative knowledge sharing process, combining national and international action, and implements knowledge transfer pilots to adapt advisory practices to new contexts. It develops training modules, contextualising well proven approaches and materials, delivering them through a MOOC. It develops a Cost Benefit Analysis toolkit to increase advisors’ capacities to assess social and economic implications. Lessons learned are the basis for a systematic engagement of policy makers, to create feasible and desirable pathways for the development of forest advisory systems in Europe, and to integrate forest advisors into the Member States’ AKIS. All these activities are supported by an analysis of the Forest Knowledge and Innovation Systems, and the needs and preferences of its different actors. Project activities are supported with dedicated communication and dissemination activities, and exploited through tailored impact pathways, including a digital knowledge platform. As the project advances, a smooth transition towards a self-sustained network is embedded into project activities. A dedicate task identifies working modalities and business models for the long-term continuation of the network, building upon the experience of the FOREXT initiative. FORADVISE consortium gathers Europe’s main actors in forestry advice.

In eco2adapt we will develop the Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) framework, derived from Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), that harnesses biodiversity and ecosystem services to reduce vulnerability and build social-ecological resilience to climate change. We will work in Living Labs in Europe and China, located in climate hotspots, and adopt a cutting-edge approach to investigate how forest managers integrate disturbance and vulnerability into decision-making. Scenarios of how disturbance affects forest dynamics and ecosystem services at a landscape scale will be derived through modelling, and in Living Labs, stakeholders will learn how their choices affect ecosystem services in neighbouring forests. We will combine interdisciplinary knowledge from scientists and stakeholders in Europe and China to understand perception and provide incentivization for adopting EbA solutions, through local capacity-building and national policy plans. Through Scenario Workshops and Stakeholders Working Groups, we will use a capacity-building approach to create and promote innovative technical, economic and governance mechanisms at a regional level. Semantic technology will be applied to create a knowledge base for hosting FAIR data and creating a SmartPhone Application (named the OneForest ToolBox) that allows users to access and add data concerning climate-resilient species, provenances, mixtures, management techniques and ecosystem services, whilst taking into account future uncertainties about climate and societal changes. We also provide a suite of cutting-edge tools to monitor vulnerability and resilience (including invasive species and above-and below- ground biodiversity), at all levels of society – from the citizen to the policy-maker. By including tailored communication to all levels of society, we will reach out to a broad audience that has the capacity to cause positive change.