FORWARDS will prototype The ForestWard Observatory to provide (a) timely and detailed information on European forests’ vulnerability to climate change impacts, (b) science-based knowledge to guide management using the principles of climate-smart forestry, ecosystem restoration, and biodiversity preservation (CSF & Restoration), and (c) stakeholder engagement and public participation in decision-making processes. We capitalize on data from existing networks (e.g. ICP Forests) and expand this with a Network of Pilot sites through 5 FORWARDS Demo cases plus ~50 trials established via grants to third parties. We will reconcile the current divide between forest information obtained from the ground and remote sensing by incorporating the concept of Monitoring Supersites and novel approaches to more comprehensively characterize cause-effect relationships of forest disturbances. Tools for European-wide forward-looking and spatially explicit projections on forests as well as regionalized CSF & Restoration trajectories will be developed jointly with stakeholders to evaluate synergies and trade-offs of conversion and restoration activities. These will be used to provide good practice guidance on effective CSF & Restoration management practices. The ForestWard Observatory will be constructed under the principle of co-design to address the information needs by users and stakeholders. FORWARDS interacts with several established networks on CSF & Restoration and effectively utilizes five dedicated grant calls to implement forest observations and test CSF & restoration measures. The ambition is for The ForestWard Observatory to become a long-lasting legacy of FORWARDS, which supports decision making across scales to boost the uptake of good CSF & Restoration management practice throughout Europe (local scale for management practice), while efficiently informing about climate change and disturbance impacts and resilience of European forests (regional to EU scale for policy making).

More than half of Europe's soils are degraded by pollution, erosion, and compaction, among other problems, and, in a climate change scenario, this degradation is likely to worsen. Currently, the loss of soil quality is costing an estimated €50 billion per year. However, soil health is still considered an abstract concept that cannot be introduced into financial activities and on which it is very difficult to legislate. The objective of InBestSoil is to co-create a framework for investment in conservation and recovery of soil health, by developing an economic valuation system of the ecosystem services delivered by a healthy soil and the impacts of soil interventions, and its incorporation into business models and incentives. This will allow public and private organizations to give economic value to their actions over soil health, codesign strategies with local stakeholders, and work collectively to deliver national and EU policy ambitions. InBestSoil will provide data, evidence, tools and models to assess how investment in soil health can contribute to the transition to a long-term resilient and sustainable use of soil, using 7 lighthouses and 2 living labs, which provides a total of 9 study areas across 4 biogeographic regions from Europe (Boreal, Continental, Atlantic, Mediterranean), and different land uses (agriculture, forest, urban, mining), as models for co-creation and co-design (multi-actor approach, responsible research and innovation and open science). This 48-month project will involve twenty partners from ten countries, with very different profiles (universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, consultancies, farmers, and NOGs, among others). This design will facilitate the scaling up of results and their internationalisation, facilitating investments in soil health for companies, public administrations and investment groups around the globe.

Industrial Crops can provide valuable resources for high added value products and bioenergy. MAGIC aims to promote the sustainable development of resource-efficient and economically profitable industrial crops grown on marginal lands. To achieve that an up-to-date database of existing resource-efficient industrial crops will be developed with information on their agronomic characteristics, input requirements, yield performance and quality traits for end-use applications (WP1). A Decision Support System (DSS) will be developed and validated with the active involvement of farmers and end users. In parallel, current and future marginal lands in Europe facing natural constraints will be mapped, characterised and analysed to provide a spatially explicit classification that will serve as a basis for developing sustainable best-practice options for industrial crops (WP2). The most promising crop species will be identified taking advantage of the profound experience of the consortium and in a multi-actor approach with stakeholders. Further investigation actions include the creation of new breeding tools and strategies towards better crop varieties (WP3), the identification and optimization of appropriate agronomic practices with limited input requirements (WP4) and the development of suitable harvesting strategies and logistics to optimise the biomass supply-chains (WP5). The impact of MAGIC will be maximized by integrating sustainability aspects (covering environment, society and economy) of the value chains (WP6). Success stories of industrial crops in EU regions will be analysed addressing technical, environmental, economic and social issues to produce policy recommendations and best-practice guidelines for their promotion at local/regional level (WP7). The project results, database, maps and the DSS tool will be used as dissemination tools to increase farmers’ awareness and establish strong links with EIP AGRI (WP8).

Wetlands cover 5-8% of the world’s land area and have a huge capacity to sequester carbon (C). Healthy wetlands accumulate C effectively due to water-logged conditions promoting highly stable C content. The EU aims to cut GHG emissions by at least 55% by 2030.This ambition requires new GHG mitigation measures within all sectors including LULUCF sector, where wetlands as C rich ecosystem can contribute to efficiently to both EU's climate targets and biodiversity strategy. Currently there is still a high uncertainty prevails of wetlands’ spatial and C sink extent, as well as source estimates and sustainable alternatives in restoration. This hinders the efficient use of wetlands in C mitigation and adaptation in the context of other LULUCF mitigation options. We will advance the state-of-the-art on the geospatial knowledge base on wetlands and their use and degradation in Europe. We will apply a co-creation approach to develop procedural knowledge and find ways for integrating multiple targets, supporting more inclusive, community-based approaches to wetland restoration. Diverse novel experimental data on ecosystems’ responses to wetlands’ management and restoration regimes under different types of land-use and will be acquired and synthesised on biodiversity and other ecosystem services (BES). At the local level, Living Labs (LL) support and integrate interdisciplinary and multi-actor research on ecological, environmental, economic, and social issues. Models will be utilised to scale up experimental data from LLs, to gain an understanding of the potential impacts of upscaled wetland restoration options on BES provision, as well as changes in BES provision at the EU level for various policy-relevant time periods and the most policy-relevant CC mitigation and BD targets. We will assess the societal impacts of wetland restoration, especially on BES benefits and costs of different restoration approaches and wellbeing impacts at local, national, and EU levels.

Europe’s bioeconomy is expected to foster economic growth and to tackle significant societal challenges with less harmful environmental effects through innovative, sustainable and inclusive use of European forest resources. Increasing demand for biomass and other ecosystem goods and services calls for changes in forest-related policies at different levels and across different sectors. Accordingly, the recent Forest Strategy provides clear signals towards the need for harmonised information for mapping and assessing the dynamic state of forest ecosystems and their services. Building upon scientific advances in COST E4, 39, 43, USEWOOD, FORSYS, ORCHESTRA; the networks ENFIN, EFFIS, SOSIN; the FP7 EUFODOS, S2BIOM, INTEGRAL, SIMWOOD, FIRE PARADOX the project DIABOLO aims to: i) strengthen the methodological framework towards more accurate, harmonised and timely forest information, e.g. on growing stock and stock changes, biomass, carbon, NWFP; enable the analysis of sustainable biomass supply derived from multipurpose and multisource national forest inventories; and facilitate near real-time forest disturbance monitoring, e.g. on forest fires, storm, drought, insect outbreaks; ii) support EU policy processes, international reporting obligations, forest administration and forest planning entities with new methodologies and EU-wide consistent forest information; iii) make innovative use of existing field-collected data and EC space-based applications of EO and satellite positioning systems with reference to INSPIRE and GEOSS, and global monitoring systems such as REDD+, FLEGT and UNFF. To deliver high impact, beyond state-of-the-art work within the ecological and socio-economic diversity in Europe, the trans-disciplinary DIABOLO involves experts in quantitative modelling, policy science and NFIs, from 26 European countries, committed to provide new methodologies and information for various end-uses, including EFDAC (FISE) at JRC, GLOBIOM at IIASA and work at FAO/UNECE.