Our second EU-level stakeholder workshop took place on 27 November, bringing together over 50 participants to collaborate on and co-create a roadmap for the potential implementation of EUFORE’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA).
Laura Liepina from DG AGRI explained the policy context and relevance of EUFORE’s work, especially in relation to the EU Forest Strategy 2030. The project’s work to develop the SRIA and roadmap supports the development of a co-funded Partnership on Forests and Forestry for a Sustainable Future – a transdisciplinary instrument focusing on research and innovation which brings together Member State and EU funding. She provided several recommendations for the SRIA, which will support the proposal for the Partnership, due to be submitted in autumn 2025.
Before diving into the afternoon’s practical workshop, participants heard how the SRIA has been developed so far with stakeholders, and how EUFORE’s research activities to map current and future forest-based research and innovation feed into the process.
Niels Strange introduced preliminary findings from EUFORE’s WP1, which focuses on mapping the current status and past trends within forest-based research and innovation. This information will feed into the SRIA development, helping to show current research gaps. Research topics, activities and capacities have been mapped via an analysis of 35,000 research papers – looking at keywords to detect trends and emerging topics, and analysing which countries and institutions are represented. Keywords like management, forest, climate change are consistently high over time, and emerging topics like land-use and ecosystem services can be seen. Universities dominate in the role of evidence synthesizer, despite the increased push (and funding) for transdisciplinarity and involvement with industry.
Innovation activities have also been mapped via a systematic literature review and patent database analysis, as well as an analysis of the EU’s CORDIS project database. Similar to research activities, analysis shows that activities are highest in Northern European, Mediterranean and Western European countries, with Italy at the top.
WP1 has also mapped funding and governance structures, which showed that there is more private sector participation and funding in forestry than the average for all R&I sectors. Projects involving new wood use & innovative technologies, as well as circular bioeconomy are the most numerous and have received the most funding.
Where WP1 maps past and current activities, WP2 looks to the future. Mikko Kurttila introduced some of the preliminary findings from a survey of 11,000 people across Europe, which aimed to find out what people want from forests. When asked about their personal opinion, regulating and cultural values were more important than provisioning values. Forests are currently important and will become more important in the future – most people are positive to afforestation and tend to agree that wood use in buildings should increase.
Policy analysis has complemented this work, using document analysis, stakeholder workshops and expert surveys to examine the future impacts of regulatory policies. Societal expectations, the policy and legal framework and trends in wood demand/supply will all be put together in a stakeholder workshop in March 2025, which will explore scenarios for the future.
WP3 leader Jan Schmidt gave an overview of the SRIA development process so far, and explained how stakeholders have been involved in the co-creation of the current SRIA draft. There have been two rounds of regional workshops, surveys and interviews with experts, as well as stakeholder participation in the Thematic Working Groups which have drafted the text. The SRIA is divided into four broad R&Ichapters (Forest Ecology, Forest Management, Forest Products and Social Aspects and Policy),
In the second part of the workshop, stakeholders were invited to discuss jointly the SRIA Roadmap. This roadmap is needed for the SRIA implementation – including a prioritisation of topics within each theme, the potential funding mechanisms available, as well as a timeline. Our workshop participants were divided into four groups, with lively discussions taking place as each group worked through a series of questions.
Next steps include the finalisation of the SRIA over the next six months, and to draw the roadmap from the results of workshop, setting out recommendations for prioritised topics, which topics are relevant for which geography, how they should be implemented and a timeline. As soon as the SRIA is finalised, it will be presented to the public via an online event.
