Interested stakeholders from the forest-based sector were able to learn a lot from the various presentations on “Sustainable Forest management” on day one or “Building with wood” on day two. The presentation of the projects was highly informative, exciting results were found and passionately presented. Inspiring was the very active participation of industry stakeholders in the projects (e.g. FunEnzFibres, FIRENWOOD). Networking between the projects of the two calls was also very effective; direct opportunities for cooperation were found or results were shared and used in other partner projects (e.g. CLICKdesign/WoodLCC).
Among the various keynote speeches, it was especially interesting to listen to Mr Nicolas FAIVRE, REA. Besides illustrating the EU investments in forest R&I, Mr Faivre discussed the different impacts of ForestValue, ranging from improving the resilience of forests to climate change to promoting the bio-economy while preserving biodiversity. Mika KALLIO, Project Coordinator of ForestValue, gave a great insight by informing the audience that ForestValue is currently the 6th ERA-NET project after predecessors like WoodWisdom or Sumforest, and that all together have launched 8 joint calls with total investments of more than EUR 100 million in the forest-based sector. The first day of the ForestValue Final Conference was closed by Dr Mariano FUENTES SEDANO, Counsellor of the Municipality of Madrid who gave an introduction to the Madrid Metropolitan Forest Project. Dr FUENTES pointed out, that “the forest is a tool to fight against climate change, against desertification and against pollution. In Madrid, a space like this is life insurance”. After the presentation, more than 80 attendees visited two different areas of the Metropolitan Forest – e.g. the Avenida del Talgo plot, where it has been possible to restore a highly degraded environment in a semi-arid climate.
Our final keynote speaker, Dr Andreas KLEINSCHMIT VON LENGEFELD, (Homo Silvestris Europae) highlighted and discussed the major developments in the European context in the forest-based sector in respect to the transnational RTDI funding during the past two decades. After this, Dr Kleinschmit von Lengefeld moderated a panel discussion involving six distinguished experts representing different ForestValue stakeholder groups. The lively discussion focussed, among other things, on individual turning points in/for forest-based research in the last 20 years. One of the issues raised was understanding the importance of communication, not only about communicating forest-based research to society but also about communicating with other sectors.
The conference closing speech was given by Mr Mika KALLIO, also announcing two new projects which will further support the development of the forest-based sector in Europe: a 4-year RIA project EUFORE (European FOREST Research and Innovation Ecosystem), supporting the preparation for a possible European R&I Partnership on Forestry, which started 01/11/2022; and a 5-year CSA project ForestValue2 (Innovating forest-based bioeconomy), aiming at identification of common research and innovation priorities agreed among the participating national and regional R&I programmes, and at implementation of a joint call, resulting in the funding of transnational collaborative R&I projects, expected start date of 01/01/2023.
FNR has a major role in ForestValue, actively planning and implementing the 2 joint calls, producing the newsletter, organising events and working on statistics etc. At the ForestValue final conference FNR (Carina Lemke) majorly helped in organising and moderated day 2 (“Building with wood”) of the event.
For recordings, presentation slides and more info, please check the event website https://forestvalue.org/final-conference/.
More information: www.forestvalue.org
The project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon2020 Research & Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 696356.
FNR contact person: Carina Lemke
