Healthy forest regions

• Project title:  Healthy Forest Regions: Supporting Healthy Forest Ecosystems for human well-being in Forest Regions
• Project acronym: HealthyForestRegions (HFR)
• Project ID: CE0100310
• Program: Interreg Central Europe

Project summary: The project tackles the CE-wide challenge of declining forest ecosystem functionality and the loss of biodiversity, resulting from unsustainable forest management practices, intensified by negative impacts from accelerating climate change, both affecting forest ecosystem services (ES) provision for human well-being and territorial resilience. Therefore, the project has the objective to create commitment of policy- and decision-makers and enable key stakeholders to safeguard forest ecosystem functionality, enhancing biodiversity conservation and securing the provision of forest-based ES with further positive effects for sustainable regional development. To achieve this, the project will operationalize the potential for capitalizing on forest ES for local and regional benefits and develop/pilot innovative solutions for a transition to ecosystem-based forest management. The project’s outputs include strategies for communicating the value of healthy, functional forests and their ES contributing to human health and well-being, and further strategies and action plans for prioritization of regional ES to safeguard forest ecosystem functionality. A set of jointly/transnationally developed pilot actions leads to the territorial implementation of solutions for the integration of knowledge through educational work and realizing regional added value for local stakeholders from different sectors. Furthermore, concrete concepts and tools for marketing forest ES are operationalized for the creation of alternative income generation from forests. In this context, the project creates commitment of policy- and decision-makers for cooperation and knowledge exchange with regard to safeguarding forest ecosystem functionality. The project operationalizes the concept of Healthy Forest Regions (HFR) in different regional contexts, where institutional and public commitment and awareness for safeguarding forest ecosystems are territorially integrated on the local and regional levels.

Project objective:  The overall objective is to create commitment of policy- and decision-makers and key stakeholders in Healthy Forest Regions (HFR) for enhancing forest ecosystem functionality, safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) for human wellbeing and strengthening sustainable regional development. Therefore, the project will operationalize the potential of capitalizing on forest ES for local and regional benefits and develop solutions for a transition to ecosystem-based forest management.

• Project start: April 1st, 2023
• Project end: March 31st, 2026
• Project duration: 36 months

Project web page: interreg-central.eu/projects/healthyforestregions/