European partnership: Forests and Forestry for a Sustainable Future

In line with the European Green Deal and its vision for a climate-neutral, prosperous economy by 2050, and the EU forest strategy for 2030, this partnership will mobilise research and innovation to accelerate the transition to a sustainable forest bioeconomy to enhance forest sector value, biodiversity, and climate resilience.

The partnership will deliver knowledge and solutions that will support the implementation of several other European Green Deal strategies and initiatives, notably: the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality target, the EU forest strategy for 2030, the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, the EU bioeconomy strategy, the European industrial strategy, circular economy action plan, the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry Regulation (LULUCF), the EU Nature Restoration Regulation and the proposal for a Regulation on a forest monitoring framework.

The expected outcomes of the topic will contribute to impacts of various Destinations under Cluster 6 of Horizon Europe, notably Destination ‘Circular economy and bioeconomy sectors’.

The partnership is expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• a robust European R&I system for forests and forestry, co-created through complementary forest research agendas across the EU Member States and Associated Countries, leading to strengthened collaborations, enhanced understanding of forest ecosystem resilience, and reinforced role of the EU in the international forest agenda;
• strong consistency between social, environmental and economic dimensions of forests and forestry, and improved knowledge of their interplay is established;
• increased knowledge of the functioning and the role of forests in climate action and ecosystems protection and restoration and improved guidelines on innovative and adaptive forestry regimes for different European regions in order to reach climate mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity, and bioeconomy objectives;
• better understanding of the role of forests in achieving climate and biodiversity objectives in times of accelerating climate change. New knowledge and tools for the timely, consistent, and comprehensive monitoring of forest condition, biodiversity, resilience, and productivity;
• new knowledge, methods, and processes to support major transitions (including increased carbon removals and the restoration of forest ecosystems) and innovations in the sustainable forest-based bioeconomy are developed towards higher added value;
• better understanding of the trends and bottlenecks in the new green forestry business models, including carbon farming, ecotourism and payments for environmental services.

As the main instrument for public organisations in EU Member States and Associated Countries to collaborate in the forest-based sectors, the partnership will facilitate concerted research and innovation actions on Europe's diverse forestry challenges, with the participation of a wide range of stakeholders, thus reducing fragmentation of related R&I.

The partnership should mobilise key partners and stakeholders, including ministries in charge of research, forest-related areas, and environment, funding agencies, research performing organisations, research infrastructures, foresters, industry, NGOs, international networks, etc.

The partnership should align with transnational research and innovation activities, as defined in its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) and address all the following:

• identify R&I priorities to strengthen alignment of European and national research, development and innovation programmes and to increase their policy relevance;
• develop new knowledge and innovative solutions for a systemic and inclusive approach to forest and forestry challenges, looking for synergies in complementary actions and trade-offs between competing actions;
• reinforce the European collaboration on improving the understanding of resilience of forest ecosystems and forest-based sectors, and their underlying constituents to multiple hazards, driven by ongoing climate change and other human made impacts as a basis for adaptation and mitigation measures;
• strike an optimal balance in a range of forest functions and related societal values, including views of different stakeholders, thus responding to societal expectations while supporting the forest industry in a transition towards a greener and circular bioeconomy;
• focus on the multifunctional role and the sustainable management of forests as well as the interplay between forestry biomes, regimes and the continuous provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and resilience to climate change (drought, fire, pests and diseases, compound and cascading risks etc.) as well as climate adaptation;
• consider the cascading use of forest products and higher added value, supporting business and social enterprise development (creating employment and quality job opportunities and diversified revenue for foresters) in rural areas and industrial development in crucial sectors such as sustainable forest-based industries (traditional and emerging branches), construction, transport, and energy;
• stronger focus on the processes that lead to transformations toward sustainability in the forest-based and bioeconomy sector at European level, which will also be key to the forest industry´s long-term competitiveness, in Europe and globally;
• ensure forests and forest management monitoring to ultimately anticipate future developments, provide early alerts on disturbances (e.g., pest outbreaks and climate change driven impacts), and assess the impact of forestry practices on forest and forest soil health and conservation and local communities;
• increase and strengthen international cooperation to develop a critical mass in relation to the global challenges faced including climate mitigation and imported deforestation.

The partnership is open to all EU Member States, as well as to Countries Associated to Horizon Europe. Specific action should be taken to integrate Ukraine in the Partnership to strengthen European sustainable forest management. Partners are expected to provide financial and/or in-kind contribution, in line with the level of ambition of the proposed activities. The partnership should be open to include new partners over its lifetime. Its governance should allow for engaging a broad range of stakeholders, together with the full members of the partnership. Guidelines, standards, and legislation in the field should be taken into consideration, to facilitate the marketing of the methods and products developed in the partnership.

The partnership should allocate resources to cooperate with existing projects, initiatives, platforms, science-policy interfaces, and/or institutional processes at European level, and at other levels where relevant to the partnership’s goals.

To ensure that all work streams are coherent and complementary, and to leverage knowledge and innovation investment potential, the partnership is expected to foster close cooperation and synergies with the Horizon Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, ‘Adaptation to Climate Change’, and ‘Climate-neutral and Smart Cities’, with the existing European Partnerships Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU), Biodiversa+, Water4All, Agroecology, Built4People, Sustainable Food Systems, and with other relevant future partnerships, in particular the project that may follow from the topic “HORIZON-CL6-2024-GOVERNANCE-02-01: European Partnership of Agriculture of Data”. Where relevant, creating links and using the information and data of the European Earth observation programme Copernicus are encouraged.

Cooperation with the JRC may be envisaged, in particular for actions related to forest monitoring and forest management.

Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes to implement joint calls for transnational proposals resulting in grants to third parties. The partnership will provide financial support to third parties as one of the means to achieve its objectives. To explore the full range of financing options available under Horizon Europe, the general annexes of the main Work Programme setting out the general conditions applicable to calls and topics for grants should be considered.

To achieve the international cooperation objectives, and given the global dimension of forests, collaboration with strategic third country partners with proven added value in the field of forests and forestry is strongly encouraged. In particular, the participation of legal entities from international countries and/or regions, including those not automatically eligible for funding, is encouraged in the transnational co-funded calls and/or in other activities of the partnership. Cooperation with international organisations may be considered.

Applicants are expected to describe in detail how they would carry out this collaborative work in practice.

Efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this topic is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

This topic should involve the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities disciplines.

In order to enhance the societal impact of the activities, the approach should empower citizens to contribute to the co-design/co-creation/co-assessment of research and innovation agendas/contents/outcomes.

Cross-articulation with data spaces, and notably with the European Open Science Cloud should be foreseen, exploiting synergies and complementarities of the different approaches.

The Commission envisages to include new actions in future work programme(s) to continue providing support to the partnership for the duration of Horizon Europe.

The expected duration of the partnership is seven to ten years.