Governing Europe's forests for multiple ecosystem services: Opportunities, challenges, and policy options

Georg Winkel*, Marko Lovrić, Bart Muys, Pia Katila, Thomas Lundhede, Mireia Pecurul, Davide Pettenella, Nathalie Pipart, Tobias Plieninger, Irina Prokofieva, Constanza Parra, Helga Pülzl, Dennis Roitsch, Jeanne Lazya Roux, Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, Liisa Tyrväinen, Mario Torralba, Harald Vacik, Gerhard Weiss, Sven Wunder

*Corresponding author af dette arbejde

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftReviewForskningpeer review

54 Citationer (Scopus)
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Abstract

Europe's forest provide multiple ecosystem services for societies, ranging from provisioning (e.g. wood) and regulating (e.g. climate mitigation and biodiversity) to cultural (e.g. recreation) services. In this paper, we assess the state and prospects of forest ecosystem services provision in Europe, introducing new data from the European collaborative research projects SINCERE, NOBEL and CLEARING HOUSE, and combining it with findings from the literature. We identify six challenges (1 an insufficient alignment of FES supply and demand, 2 lacking policy integration, 3 ambiguous and conflicting regulatory frameworks, 4 a lack of precise information on FES demand and provision, and innovations to align both, 5 an increasing pressure to adapt to climate change, and 6 a striking diversity constraining European level policy solutions) and three opportunities (1 increasingly heterogenous forest owner objectives potentially matching pluralistic societal demands, 2 diversifying forest enterprises levering innovations in regulating and cultural ecosystem services provision, and 3 the potential of forests to mitigate climate change). Subsequently, we introduce four distinct but complimentary policy pathways for European forest policy to better align forest ecosystem services provision and demand: 1 Better monitoring of FES supply and demand, 2 Enhanced policy integration, 3 Payments for ecosystem services, and 4 Bottom-up participation and learning among ecosystem services innovators. We conclude by emphasizing the momentum that the EU Green Deal unfolds for a future European forest policy to incentivise the provision of multiple forest ecosystem services.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer102849
TidsskriftForest Policy and Economics
Vol/bind145
Antal sider15
ISSN1389-9341
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2022

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
The data generated by the SINCERE-InnoForESt survey of European forest owners and managers indicates that the share of forest income related to provisioning FES grows from South-Western to North-Eastern Europe, while no similar geographical pattern could be observed for regulating and cultural FES ( Torralba et al., 2020 ). In this survey, most innovations reported by forest owners and managers related to provisioning FES (mostly wood production). At the same time, forest owners and managers perceive their innovations for regulating and cultural FES as qualitatively being more innovative and promising. Reportedly, FES innovations are supported by organisational capacity, (e.g., leadership), by available knowledge, by cooperation among private actors, and by public financial support ( Fig. 3 ).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.

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