Healthy Forest Regions: Supporting Healthy Forest ecosystems for human well-being in forest Regions

The project tackles the CE-wide challenge of declining forest ecosystem functionality and the loss of biodiversity, resulting from unsustainable forest management practices, intensified by negative impacts from accelerating climate change, both affecting forest ecosystem services (ES) provision for human well-being and territorial resilience.

Therefore, the project has the objective to create commitment of policy- and decision- makers and enable key stakeholders to safeguard forest ecosystem functionality, for enhancing biodiversity conservation and securing the provision of forest-based ES with further positive effects for sustainable regional development.

To achieve this, the project will operationalize the potential for capitalizing on forest ES for local and regional benefits and develop/pilot innovative solutions for a transition to ecosystem-based forest management.

The project’s outputs include strategies for communicating the value of healthy, functional forests and their ES contributing to human health and well-being, and further strategies and action plans for prioritization of regional ES to safeguard forest ecosystem functionality.

A set of jointly/transnationally developed pilot actions leads to the territorial implementation of solutions for the integration of knowledge through educational work and realising regional added value for local stakeholders from different sectors. Furthermore, concrete concepts and tools for marketing forest ES are operationalized for the creation of alternative income generation from forests.

In this context the project creates commitment of policy- and decision-makers for cooperation and knowledge-exchange with regard to safeguarding forest ecosystem functionality.

The project operationalizes the concept of Healthy Forest Regions (HFR) in different regional contexts, where institutional and public commitment and awareness for safeguarding forest ecosystems is territorially integrated on the local and regional level.Enabling stakeholders, decision-makers and local population to safeguard forest ecosystem functionality in HFR by raising awareness for and making contributions of forest ecosystems for human wellbeing accessible for sustainable regional development.

Offering alternative income generation for local and regional forest owners and managers other than timber and fuel wood harvesting by implementing forest-based PES schemes for increasing biodiversity, carbon storage and resilience in HFR.

Empowering policy- and decision-makers to plan and implement cross-sectoral measures to enhance forest ecosystem functionality safeguarding biodiversity and ES for human well-being by determining socio-ecological and institutional frameworks in HFR.