Balancing biodiversity conservation and wood production

Responding to global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss, European forests are expected to simultaneously deliver biodiversity conservation, renewable wood resources, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and a wide range of ecosystem services. While European forest-related policies increasingly recognise forests as multifunctional systems, yet delivering these objectives on the ground remains challenging due to ecological, economic and social trade-offs.  

Integrative forest management offers one response: a holistic approach that incorporates biodiversity conservation and adaptation into forest management for the sustainable provision of multiple ecosystem services1. Beyond silvicultural techniques, this depends on governance arrangements that provide clear objectives, coherent policy frameworks, appropriate incentives, and effective collaboration between policymakers, forest owners, managers,, scientists and other stakeholders. By bringing these actors together, the event aims to move beyond general calls for multifunctionality towards a clearer understanding of where synergies are possible, where hard choices remain, and what policy can do to support them. 

This ThinkForest event will explore the following questions: 

• To what extent can integrative forest management reconcile biodiversity conservation and wood production under increasing climate and societal pressures, and where does it reach its limits? 
• Which governance approaches, policy instruments and incentives would enable the implementation of integrative forest management across Europe's diverse forest landscapes and ownership structures? 
• How can science, monitoring and stakeholder dialogue support evidence-based implementation and help navigate trade-offs between conservation and forest use?

This ThinkForest event is organized in collaboration with TRANSFORMIT project and Integrate Network.