“We have the need to improve biodiversity on every scale”, says Dr. Frank Krumm, researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research and co-editor of the book How to balance forestry and biodiversity conservation: A view across Europe (2020). “This is what we know from research. It’s one of our tasks. But we also need to see where our forests come from.”
This means considering different forest traditions, different socio-cultural backgrounds, and diverse ownership structures – placing efforts for biodiversity conservation within these contexts.
“So, if I have the need to really manage protection forests, maybe biodiversity conservation is stepping back to a certain extent to provide this ecosystem service of protecting people and infrastructure against natural hazards. And it’s the same for other requests or demands on forests.”
Dr. Frank Krumm
Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
Not a black-and-white issue
Striking a balance between forest management and biodiversity conservation is not a simple task, nor a black-and-white issue, says Dr. Frank Krumm. Rather, it’s a negotiation that needs to happen between local forest managers, forest owners and communities living in close relationship to a specific environment. Balancing different needs is therefore always a contextual endeavor.
By showcasing 32 case studies of forest enterprises, forest owners and regional initiatives, all implementing forest management approaches that integrate biodiversity conservation, the book How to balance forestry and biodiversity conservation: A view across Europe (2020) aims to merge theoretical knowledge with practical examples ranging across different forest types and traditions across Europe.
“There are maybe different solutions in different regions, in different parts of the world, in different forest traditions. This is why we went quite broad and across Europe, across very different ecosystems, across very different socio-cultural systems. And I think that’s a very good reason, to motivate others that they really see, it can work. We have the proof in these cases.”
Dr. Frank Krumm
Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
“It’s important to showcase how things can work”
Every forest is different and not every forest enterprise can provide the same ecosystem services. “Having a 3-hectare forest or a 3000-hectare forest, certainly makes a big difference”, says Dr. Frank Krumm. The book therefore aims to provide forest managers with diverse tools and options that can support their decision-making processes.
“The idea was not only to create a book publication that is freely available, it was also to create a network that people can really learn from each other and see what they are doing, how they cope with challenges and with very specific demands in their areas.” – Dr. Frank Krumm, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
Through a spider graph that considers diverse ecosystem goods and services, the editors aim to make it easier to understand and compare different case study examples.
“The idea was really to find a graph or a way to express that different enterprises follow different approaches and have to fulfil different ecosystem services,” explains Dr. Frank Krumm, co-editor of the book, alongside Andreas Schuck (European Forest Institute) and Andreas Rigling (ETH Zurich).
As a publication that highlights the local and contextual nuances of integrative forest management, the book also aims to contribute to an understanding that timber production and nature conservation do not need be treated as mutually exclusive but rather can be compatible, when forests are managed appropriately.
How can forestry become more integrative?
Through their chapter ‘Driving factors for integrated forest management in Europe’, authors Agata Konczal, Jakob Derks (Wageningen University) and Johannes H.C. de Koning (University of Copenhagen) wanted to better understand how and why nature conservation is being integrated into forest management practices across different European forest units and enterprises.
“So, when a forest owner or forest manager is telling me, ‘I’m implementing biodiversity conservation measures into my forest management practices’, I wanted to check what does it actually mean? What do you do and why are you doing this?” says Dr. Agata Konczal, Assistant Professor at the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group at Wageningen University. “Only through such analysis can we understand why biodiversity conservation is important for practitioners and what helps or hinders their integration into forest management”.
Social expectations and intrinsic motivation are key drivers
By mapping current and future social, economic, political, technological and ecological drivers across 9 European case studies, the authors came across various regional differences around what facilitates or hinders the application of Integrative Forest Management.
However, social expectations generally stood out as important drivers, says Dr. Agata Konczal.
“So, foresters and forest owners, they feel that this is what society expect from them, meaning to focus more on biodiversity conservation. So that was interesting for us to realize is that social pressure can support and help foresters to think and implement these biodiversity conservation measures. But it also hinders, it stops them from implementing biodiversity conservation because they feel, or at least some forest owners and some forest managers reported, that for society it’s never enough, that what they seem to want is no forest management. Rather they only want strict protection. So, here we come to this paradox of social expectation. So that was really important for us to kind of map this to realize how important the social drivers are in the story of biodiversity conservation.”
Dr. Agata Konczal
Wageningen University
Aside from social drivers, a key finding was that forest owners’ and forest managers’ own intrinsic motivation and interest in having thriving and healthy forests strongly supports the implementation of biodiversity conservation.
“They reported that they are doing this because they believe it’s important”, says Dr. Agata Konzcal.
Political and economic incentives matter
The study also shows that political and economic factors are crucial. According to the author, there’s a need to think about the application of policies: “We really need good tools, a good setup for these policies, that will give room to forest owners and forest managers to apply these different policy frameworks in their local context. Because as we know, the situation in European forests vary between regions and we cannot have one stiff framework for all these circumstances.”
“We report that forest managers, forest owners, they expect more incentives, both financial ones but also non-financial incentives, for the activities. On the other hand, the question of the wood market and uncertainties related with the economic situation, that’s what very often stops forest managers, forest owners from experimenting with more biodiversity conservation measures because they may be costly and, in the end, they may impact the economic income.”
Dr. Agata Konczal
Wageningen University
Through TRANSFORMIT project and its Living Labs, the researchers hope a more in-depth analysis of economic incentives will be possible, studying local impacts of policy frameworks, economic markets and different value chains across Europe.
This requires an even stronger collaboration between practitioners, researchers and decision-makers, as well as a long-term observation that grasps what the diverse local needs are and what the specificity of each region or forest enterprise requires for effective and sustainable forest management, mentions Agata Konczal.
The book How to balance forestry and biodiversity conservation (2020) was produced within the framework of the European Integrate Network and has been written by more than 150 researchers and practitioners from 50 institutions and 19 countries. Through its various practice examples, it explores innovative regional- to local-scale approaches of how to balance biodiversity conservation with other ecosystem services in sustainable forest management.