Restoring and protecting natural and semi-natural forest ecosystems can play a vital role in creating climate-neutral and sustainable societies. Using advanced technologies and methodologies, FORbEST will devise solutions that improve forest function and harness the potential for healthy forested ecosystems as a means of achieving EU biodiversity and climate objectives. We will work with management and conservation practices across five key EU biogeographical regions and one non-EU tropical region, to understand the impact of past and current governance and create shared roadmaps toward sustainable futures. Using a strong complement of technologies including advanced remote sensing, artificial intelligence, citizen science, participatory action research and ecoacoustic methods, we will unlock powerful, comprehensive monitoring regimes of forest habitats, which will enable a better understanding of their resilience and functionality. FORbBEST understands and embraces the complex nature of the socio-ecological systems that characterize forested landscapes. Integrated socio-ecological modelling will enable us to identify win-win forest management practices that support forest protection and restoration, and community co-migration. Our research is grounded in a transdisciplinary approach, using participatory Living Labs to steer our engaged, knowledge-intensive research workshops across the project. These platforms will empower diverse local stakeholders to collectively imagine, iterate, and co-design new paths and best practices for forest management. Robust stakeholder engagement will disseminate tailor-made information on project results, which will, for example, encourage better forest protection and restoration via economic incentives and legal mechanisms. FORbEST will therefore achieve multiple objectives, including climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity conservation, economic diversification, and citizen empowerment across multiple spatial scales.

Trade is a central factor in shaping not only global, but also regional and local development. Trade policy has an especially important part to play in achieving the SDGs. The premise for this proposal is that trade has the power to produce positive outcomes when the policies which define the rules of the game are framed and designed in a way to promote access to markets, fair prices and standards of living for farmers, as well as alleviating rural poverty and ensuring sustainable farming practices. Addressing the relation between trade and SDGs requires an integrated approach to policy-making and inclusive governance. The main objective of this project is to contribute to build new opportunities for fostering the positive sustainability impacts of trade supported by improved design and framing of trade policy at national, EU and global level, including WTO modernization, increased policy coherence at different domains including agricultural, energy, climate, environmental and nutritional policies. The SDGs agenda requires a holistic approach allowing the contextual evaluation of several dimensions at the same time by measuring co-benefits and trade-offs. For this reason, we propose an integrated and systemic approach that combines several quantitative models from different perspectives, and qualitative methods such as specific country/supply chain case studies, Lab-in-the Field experiments and a dynamic trade game considering the fact that SDGs are highly context-related. A wide consultation process involving stakeholders both in the EU and in the partner countries in all the project stages will ensure the transparency and balance of conclusions and policy recommendations. The proposal is directly connected to the work programme “Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy” through analysing how agricultural trade can contribute to meet global sustainability challenges and objectives.