ForestPaths’ Annual General Meeting took place on 25-27 September in Varese, Italy, bringing together experts from the project’s 16 partner organisations and providing a platform for sharing major project achievements and planning of the next steps in the project.
The meeting was opened by project coordinator Dr Hans Verkerk who highlighted numerous achievements since the previous annual meeting in Finland. Some of these achievements include:
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Climate and Biodiversity-Smart forest management approaches across Europe and behavioural factors underpinning forest said approaches through demo-cases, surveys and interviews;
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The development of the most recent ForestPaths Feature #3, which is a policy brief on current climate change and biodiversity policies and how they affect European forests and wood use;
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Dynamic wood flow material assessment and visualisation and Life Cycle Assessment tools;
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ForestPaths’ second Policy Lab, which concluded just before the start of the annual meeting;
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Development of European-wide forest structure and composition maps;
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Progress in developing ForestPaths’ next generation modelling framework.
Further topics for commendation and discussion consisted of Climate and Biodiversity-Smart forest management, enhanced and evaluated forest ecosystem and biodiversity models, implementation of policy pathways in models, as discussed in the second Policy Lab, the next Policy Engagement Forum and insights into forest land use and management modelling.
On the final day of the event, a hybrid joint session was organised between ForestPaths and sister projects ForestNavigator and PathFinder, with the aim of enhancing collaboration. Each project coordinator highlighted past year’s achievements and their next steps, opening up the space for synergy opportunities, such as the next webinar of the joint series Forest Talks and an infographic showcasing the three projects’ objectives and collaborative efforts. The event concluded on a positive note with valuable feedback from ForestPaths' stakeholder advisory board, highlighting the comprehensive approach of the project and its commitment to continual improvement.
Stay tuned for ForestPaths’ further progress!
