Smart information, governance and business innovations for sustainable supply and payment mechanisms for forest ecosystem services

The InnoForESt project aims 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. The lessons from different case study regions will feed into a roadmap for the provision of forest ecosystem service bundles and a broad range of dissemination and communication activities. Ultimately, the ambition is that this will lead to better policy coordination, the well-being of EU citizens and the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems.

InnoForESt’s approach is to develop and initiate similar policy and business innovations, building on and simultaneously upscaling existing innovations. This will lead to the more coordinated, efficient and sustainable governance and financing of forest ecosystem services. For this purpose, InnoForESt has brought together a consortium of five European universities, seven environmental and forestry agencies, seven NGOs and user group associations, two SMEs, four forest owners and forest owner associations, and five research institutes and networks located in Germany, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Austria and Belgium.

The focus in the Swedish case is on industrial use of forests that generates a suite of conflicts with regards to other uses of forests, such as the supply of cultural ecosystem services, for instance recreation and tourism as well as spiritual values or biodiversity protection. Diverging interests and objectives for forest use and management in Sweden are rarely addressed by policies that support industrial forest use and undermine the maintenance and protection of the many cultural forest ecosystem services. The Swedish case study looks specifically at people’s values and perception with regard to the non-provisioning services of the Swedish forests and how future forest policies and forest management include these to a greater extent than they do now.

In this project LUCSUS works closely with the UNIVERSEUM science centre in Gothenburg which offers a unique opportunity to engage a range of forest relevant stakeholders and the general public.