ForestNavigator

Navigating European Forests and forest bioeconomy sustainably to EU climate neutrality

Forests are crucial in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss and are therefore at the heart of the EU Green Deal. In this context, the EU-funded ForestNavigator project aims to assess the climate change mitigation potential of European forests and forest-based sectors. To that end, it will focus on modelling policy pathways and informing public authorities about the best approaches to forest policy and bioeconomy. Relying on a newly developed integrated policy modelling framework for EU forests and forest bioeconomy, the project will focus on selected EU member states and EU trading partners.

ForestNavigator aims at assessing the climate mitigation potential of European forests and forest-based sectors through modelling of policy pathways – consistent with the best standards of LULUCF reporting – and informing the public authorities on the most suitable approach to forest policy and bioeconomy. With a primarily European scope, ForestNavigator zooms into carefully selected EU member states to enhance the consistency of the EU and national pathways, but the project also zooms out towards the global scale and selected key EU trading partners, accounting for extra-EU future drivers and potential leakage effects.
The project will rely on a newly developed integrated policy modelling framework for the EU forests and forest bioeconomy covering 1) all relevant mitigation strategies from forest management to energy and material substitution, 2) climate change impacts, adaptation and natural disturbances, 3) biophysical climate feedback and 4) systematically accounting for impacts on biodiversity, forest ecosystem services and other forest functions, incl. jobs and green growth. To increase the accessibility of the models and pathways assessments, their understanding and transparency, a novel decision-making platform will be established consisting of the web-based ForestNavigator Portal and a community of policy-makers, national authorities and modellers, the Forest Policy Modelling Forum.
To reach its ambitious objectives, ForestNavigator will 1) harmonise, integrate and continuously update existing datasets by including national inventories with new remote sensing data and models, 2) start from complex forest and climate models and through emulators build them into operational policy modelling tools, 3) integrate biophysical and socio-economic information, 4) consider EU forests and forest bioeconomy in the broader context of other land-use and economic sectors, 5) rely on input from policy-makers and other stakeholders.