FORADVISE will develop a European network of forest advisory organisations, actors, and networks, to support the modernisation of the forestry sector, and advance towards EU and national policy targets. It will speed up knowledge flows, increase the competences of forest advisors beyond traditional areas of advice, and develop pathways towards a future Forest Knowledge and Innovation System (FOKIS) in Europe. Its ultimate goal is to advance towards more resilient, multifunctional, and productive forests in Europe. To achieve this, FORADVISE, creates a EU forest advisory network on forestry, and animates an iterative knowledge sharing process, combining national and international action, and implements knowledge transfer pilots to adapt advisory practices to new contexts. It develops training modules, contextualising well proven approaches and materials, delivering them through a MOOC. It develops a Cost Benefit Analysis toolkit to increase advisors’ capacities to assess social and economic implications. Lessons learned are the basis for a systematic engagement of policy makers, to create feasible and desirable pathways for the development of forest advisory systems in Europe, and to integrate forest advisors into the Member States’ AKIS. All these activities are supported by an analysis of the Forest Knowledge and Innovation Systems, and the needs and preferences of its different actors. Project activities are supported with dedicated communication and dissemination activities, and exploited through tailored impact pathways, including a digital knowledge platform. As the project advances, a smooth transition towards a self-sustained network is embedded into project activities. A dedicate task identifies working modalities and business models for the long-term continuation of the network, building upon the experience of the FOREXT initiative. FORADVISE consortium gathers Europe’s main actors in forestry advice.

Mediterranean forests play a pivotal role for local economies by providing a large array of ecosystem services and goods. Despite its potential, the sector is facing significant challenges at many levels, including: low profitability of slow-growing timber, niche markets for Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFPs), and a wider context of aging rural population, farmland abandonment and scrub encroachment, leading to an increase in the occurrence of megafires, which is further aggravated by climate change. A sustainable, inclusive, smart bio-based economy centred on multipurpose trees and NWFPs can be part of the solution, if triggered by an improvement in knowledge exchange channels between NWFP practitioners and scientists, and among regions. The purpose of INCREdible is to address the existing research and innovation knowledge divide in relation to NWFP-service systems of the Mediterranean basin. In particular, INCREdible aims to link knowledge and foster collaboration among different groups of stakeholders, developing innovative business models and enhancing the expertise of rural regions towards the development of inclusive economic strategies. To achieve these objectives, INCREdible will developan Innovation NETworks (iNets) around crucial lines of Mediterranean NWFPs: cork, resins, aromatics, and edibles. Each iNet will aim to gather best practices (both practical and science-based) related to NWFP production, transformation and trade channels. Particular attention will be drawn to cross-cutting sectorial issues such as: (i) innovative business models and value chains, (ii) innovative access to finance, (iii) innovative marketing and digital tools. Lastly, INCREdible will collect information and knowledge arising from iNets into an interregional online platform, which will function both as deposit and exchange system of information among partners, existing networks and organizations, for raising awareness of existing success cases and cross-fertilization.

ROSEWOOD4.0 builds on the well-established ROSEWOOD network of Regional Hubs connecting multiple actors along the forest value chain to reinforce the sustainability of wood mobilisation in Europe. The new action will especially reinforce and enlarge the links with Eastern Europe by creating a new Eastern Hub including new countries (Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine). Secondly, the action puts special emphasis on digitalisation (forestry industry 4.0) and digital tools (social media, platforms, e-learning) for training and coaching, enabling practitioners to share know-how with much wider impact. The focus on ICT addresses the two main challenges in wood mobilisation: 1) better access to resources through defragmentation of forest owners and 2) increased volume to the market and higher transparency. The project’s extensive dissemination of best practices, technological and non-technological innovations and research results feeds directly into national and regional Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) in forestry and builds an efficient interface with the EIP-AGRI and the EIP Raw Materials, supported by the European networks EFI and InnovaWood. The multi-actor action closes knowledge gaps, connects and transfers tangible knowledge and best practice between forestry practitioners across the whole Europe. In an open innovation environment, the coordination of Regional Hubs facilitates also new opportunities for exploitation of near to market innovations and fosters business partnerships between stakeholders, aligned with local and regional development plans, to complement existing or initiate new Operational Groups within the EIP-AGRI. ROSEWOOD4.0 will contribute to enhanced competitiveness of the forest industry and to vital development in rural areas within the European Bioeconomy by responding to the imminent need for broader sharing of ICT-driven solutions in forestry.

Forests, cornerstone of the EU economy (42% of EU land) and source of multiple social and environmental benefits, need to be managed according to the sustainability principles as stated in EU Forest Strategy. However managers lack accurate / up-to-date data to support it. Traditional forest inventories characterize forests from the ecologic and dasometric perspective; but they are expensive and typically planned on a 5-10years basis. This periodicity is often much lower than required for planning forests´ commercial or recreational activities on the basis of these data. Forest change rates demand tools able to monitor, on annual basis, the forest extension, the attributes of available timber, or the different ecosystem services emerged. MySustainableForest aims to develop a pre-commercial service and platform for forest stakeholders, compliant with open and standard interfaces, to integrate Earth Observation into the forest stakeholders’ decision making processes and operations. It will be implemented on the basis of GMV prototyped service, eoForest and will leverage on partners’ expertise on LiDAR and forest modelling. It engages relevant European public and private forest stakeholders: RAIZ (R&D branch of The Navigator Company), Croatian Forest Research Institute, Mendel University in Brno, Forest Owners Association of Navarra and Lithuania, Centre Nationale de la Propriété Forestière, European Forest Institute, and 2 innovative SMEs (MADERA+ and Föra). Its added value will be demonstrated in 6 different bioclimatic zones from Portugal, Spain, France, Croatia, Czech Rep. and Lithuania, and across a variety of management protocols and forest usages. The economic viability of the service will be assessed and the associated business model validated. As a larger implication of MySustainableForest, it is expected that End-Users optimize their operations up to 10%, participating SMEs´ headcounts increase up to 20% and GMV market share in the sector is incremented up to 10%.

"Background informationThe forest owners’ profiles and practices are nowadays in full evolution, all over Europe: how to meet their needs, thanks to the new information and communication technologies? This is the key question that structured a first eforOwn project (2012-2014), and revealed that these owners expect simple, attractive and modern self-training tools; in the same time, the trainers and teachers wanted to see their pedagogical approaches evolve and use the same type of tools to support their tasks. It is in this context that the eforOwn+ project was born.Objectives of the projectThe main objective of eforOwn+ was to provide forest owners in France, Belgium and Spain with free access to educational resources on the Internet. These resources were intended to be and were designed to also serve the needs of forestry students, as well as teachers and trainers who wish to integrate them into their technical and pedagogical practices. Number and profile of participating organizationsSeven organisations were involved in eforOwn+, two in Spain, two in Belgium and three in France: in each country one forest development organisation and one educational institution were partners ; in France was also added as partner a public organisation in charge of e learning in the agriculture and forestry sector, that supported the whole partnership, on pedagogical and editorial engineering issues. Description of the main activities implementedThe main activity of eforOwn+ has been the production of educational resources: slideshows, fact sheets and videos for three levels - or their equivalent at the European level: A (novice owner, level 4- upper secondary), B (intermediate owner, level 5 - bachelor) and C (expert owner, level 6 university). Of the 85 resources planned, 75 have been produced and are available on line, accessible to all on the the project partners’websites . These resources include 28 slideshows, 39 fact sheets and 8 videos. The list of resources evolved during the project in order to best meet the target audience’ expectations and to avoid redundancies between several resources. Of the 75 resources, 69 are available in French, 23 in Spanish and 10 in Catalan (as of 23.07.2019, Rosa's translations are missing, see with her what she can do by 1 September). Two resources are also available in English to allow for a wider dissemination and to interest future partners in joining the project. Results and impacts achievedAt local, regional and national level, the impact for the beneficiary audiences is essentially, for forest owners, a better appropriation of the knowledge and know-how necessary for the implementation of sustainable forest management, and, for students in the forest sector, the improvement of their learning and future professional practices; for the target audiences (trainers and teachers), the improvement of skills in the design and use of distance resources.Long-term benefits The ""eforOwn"" brand has been registered with the European certification body EUIPO and is awaiting validation (approximate date of registration and publication of the brand: 10/10/2019). A post-program charter has been drafted and signed by all partners in the eforOwn+ project. This charter sets out the post-programme action modalities ensuring the long-term anchoring of the partnership, as well as the common process of production and dissemination of resources: the resources produced during eforOwn+ will be monitored to be regularly updated; new resources may be produced and will benefit from the eforOwn brand, following the decisions of the eforOwn Liaison Committee which will meet once a year. Other partners may join the Liaison Committee and use the brand, in accordance with the terms specified in the post-program charter and following the decisions of the Committee members."