New eco2adapt report discusses promising examples of forest governance and financing

At a societal level, better governed and financed forests can provide a continuous flow of ecosystem services to urban, peri-urban, and rural communities. This new eco2adapt report (Milestone 13) focuses on cross-cutting, innovative governance models for changemaking and forest resilience. Aside from governance innovations the task also looks at new business and financing models and instruments that can help build forest resilience and support ecosystem-based adaptation in both European countries and China. This report presents the results of a review and analysis of 45 promising examples of innovative forest governance and financing from Europe, China, and elsewhere. The presented innovations range from innovative brokering roles of organisations and new legislative instruments to actionable and evidence-based policy guidelines to crowdfunding initiatives.

Work for the report undertaken by the Nature Based Solutions Institute as part of Work Package 6 paid special attention to innovations that could be of relevance to the 15 Living Labs in the eco2adapt project. These all face their own challenges to forest resilience and ecosystem-based adaptation, for example as a result of climate change, financial pressures, and use conflicts. For descriptive and analytical, existing theories and models of forest and environmental governance and funding innovation were used, such as the Policy Arrangement Approach and the SETFIS-framework developed within EU-project InnoForESt.

The overview of promising innovations will provide an important input to the final stage of the project and will ultimately result in a portfolio of forest governance and finance innovations specifically linked to the Living Labs and eco2adapt’s other activities.

The report is available from the eco2adapt repository, under https://doi.org/10.57745/INTXOD.