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There has been a strong quest for mapping and assessing ecosystem services (ES) to support governance. Yet, the institutional landscape that governs ES provision across multiple contexts has received less attention. We fill this research gap by developing and operationalising a framework for the analysis of policy documents that address European forest ES provision. By coding and analysing references to forest ES as well as innovations and governance mechanisms addressing these ES in national strategies on forest, biodiversity and bioeconomy, we map the institutional landscape of forest ES provision in Europe. We further analyse how biophysical supply of forest ES is connected to policies paying attention to ES and identifying innovations and governance for their provision. Innovations identified in policies centre around value chains of wood and bioenergy or biodiversity conservation, while non-wood forest products, cultural heritage, and recreation receive little attention. Biophysical supply of provisioning ES is connected to policies emphasising many innovations, while little supply of regulating ES could trigger service innovations and several new governance mechanisms. As forest ecosystems have received much attention in global, European and national sustainability policies, our institutional mapping illustrates that there is room for more use of innovations in promoting ES provision.
Enduring sustainability challenges requires a new model of collective leadership that embraces critical reflection, inclusivity and care. Leadership collectives can support a move in academia from metrics to merits, from a focus on career to care, and enact a shift from disciplinary to inter- and trans-disciplinary research. Academic organisations need to reorient their training programs, work ethics and reward systems to encourage collective excellence and to allow space for future leaders to develop and enact a radically re-imagined vision of how to lead as a collective with care for people and the planet.
Governance Innovations for forest ecosystem service provision – Insights from an EU-wide survey
(2022)
This paper analyses the occurrence of governance innovations for forest ecosystem service (FES) provision in the forestry sector in Europe and the factors that influence innovation development. Based on a European-wide online survey, public and private forest owners and managers representing different property sizes indicate what type of governance innovation activities they engage in, and why. To investigate forestry innovations as systems, the analysis focuses on biophysical, social and technical factors influencing innovation development. The results of our exploratory quantitative analysis show that most innovation activities identified are largely oriented towards biomass production. Accordingly, most forest owners implement efficiency-driven optimisation strategies for forest management and technological improvement for provisioning service supply, to generate income. In contrast, the provision of regulating and cultural services is not yet a prominent part of forestry innovation activities.Reasons are rooted in a market-oriented economic rationale focusing on timber production, a lack of financial resources to compensate for other FES provisions or institutions to provide backup and security to forest owners and managers for engaging in innovation development. Given that the provision of a wide range of FES is a politically well-established objective for forest management in Europe, a strategy is needed that helps to align actors and sectors for supporting and co-financing related forest management approaches and business models. The current revision of the forest related policy framework on EU level under the EU Green deal poses a window of opportunity for better fostering novel governance approaches for more sustainable FES provision.
Little is known about the emergence and development of novel governance approaches for forest ecosystem services provision, what drives them, and how they can be fostered. Existing frameworks often deal with single aspects of resource management and thus fail to assess processes, multi-level influences, and interacting dimensions and factors in a system-based understanding. In this article, we introduce the conceptual foundation and an empirical application of an adapted Social-Ecological System framework with additional elements that builds on the idea of complex and interlinked social-ecological-technical-forestry-innovation systems that allows for the identification of key factors for revealing forest ecosystem services dynamics to understand the emergence and development of such governance innovations. The development and testing of the framework was based on six case studies for knowledge co-creation. To showcase its application, two governance innovations were examined: a voluntary carbon market payment scheme in Germany and a network approach for forest-pasture management in Italy. The application of the framework reveals required adaptations to improve innovation by systematically unpacking the system dimensions and identifying fostering and hindering factors and their interdependencies. We highlight the output of a sound system-based information basis that allows for purposeful innovation conditioning by policy makers, practitioners, and other related actors.
Forest ecosystems provide a range of goods and services that are essential to human well-being. Yet global environmental problems, increasing urbanization, industrialization pressures, and dominant market mechanisms put into jeopardy the long term sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services (FES). Markets tend to favor private goods, such as timber, and are typically less able to provide sustainable financing mechanisms for public goods and services, such as carbon storage, biodiversity conservation or recreational value. European forest owners and policy makers alike are looking for governance innovations that generate economic opportunity while ensuring the future provision of FES.
This systematic literature review aims to consolidate existing academic empirical research on local or regional level governance innovations in Europe concerned with generating forest-based revenue through FES provision. Thus, it complements conceptual literature dealing with challenges and opportunities of financing the provision of FES. When conducting the review we followed the process guidelines developed by ‘Collaboration for Environmental Evidence’ (Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, 2018). Out of a total of 3962 scanned papers, 23 papers containing 48 case studies were identified and analyzed in detail, to address the following guiding questions: (1) What types of FES related (governance) innovations for forest-based revenue generation exist and which FES do they address? (2) What are the motivations driving innovation development? (3) What are the implications for forest management? We found four types of governance innovations: forest product and organizational innovations which largely relate to provisioning FES; service innovations, which generally relate to cultural FES; and financial incentive systems or payment schemes targeting mostly regulating services. We identify potential synergies between two high-priority EU policy objectives: rural economic development and securing future FES provision. Currently, governance innovations’ forest management implications and associated impact on (future) FES provision are rarely addressed in this literature. We recommend future policy and research to give greater consideration to the interdependencies between securing a range of FES, (rural) economic development, and forest management, to realize potential synergies.
Forests are key components of European multifunctional landscapes and supply numerous forest ecosystem services (FES) fundamental to human well-being. The sustainable provision of FES has the potential to provide responses to major societal challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, or rural development. To identify suitable strategies for the future sustenance of FES, we performed a solution scanning exercise with a group of transdisciplinary forest and FES experts from different European regions. We identified and prioritized fifteen major challenges hindering the balanced provision of multiple FES and identified a series of potential solutions to tackle each of them. The most prominent challenges referred to the increased frequency and impacts of extreme weather events and the normative mindset regarding forest management. The respective solutions pointed to the promotion of forest resilience via climate-smart forestry and mainstreaming FES-oriented management through a threefold strategy focusing on education, awareness raising, and networking. In a subsequent survey, most solutions were assessed as highly effective, transferable, monitorable, and with potential for being economically efficient. The implementation of the solutions could have synergistic effects when applying the notion of leverage points. Seven emerging pathways towards the sustainable supply of FES have been identified. These pathways build on each other and are organized based on their potential for transformation: (1) shifting forest management paradigms towards pluralistic ecosystem valuation; (2) using integrated landscape approaches; (3) increasing forest resilience; (4) coordinating actions between forest-related actors; (5) increasing participation in forest planning and management; (6) continuous, open, and transparent knowledge integration; and (7) using incentive-based instruments to support regulating and cultural FES. These pathways can contribute to the implementation of the new EU Forestry Strategy to support the balanced supply of multiple FES.
This Special Issue provides insights into conceptual approaches, methodological procedures and practice findings for the development and assessment of governance innovations for the sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services (FES) in Europe. We depart from the observation that the sustainable and balanced provision of FES requires novel policy, management and business approaches that need to overcome challenges in order to emerge, develop and flourish. These challenges are rooted in the diversity of forest ecosystems and institutional contexts, a lack of system understanding, of innovation dynamics, the public good character of many FES, and a production-oriented reference frame for forest management. We use a set of good governance innovation practices in form of new actor alliances and payment schemes as a basis for assessment and learning how to promote different kinds or bundles of FES. The contributing authors of the SI combine several methodological approaches to understand the working conditions of such innovations, including integrated mapping, stakeholder and governance analysis, and a forward-looking scenario approach for innovation assessment. Applying multi-methods and multi-actor approaches fruitfully orchestrated a constructive debate among stakeholders on the chances and challenges of governance innovations in Europe, to allow for their uptake in forest policy, business and practice.