Call for Grants: Establishing Climate-Smart Forestry & Forest Restoration Pilots in Europe

CSF has been introduced as a holistic approach to guide forest management in Europe and builds on the concepts of sustainable forest management, with a strong focus on climate and ecosystem services. Two important components of the concepts are to

• increase carbon storage in forests in conjunction with other ecosystem services, and to
• enhance the health and resilience through adaptive forest management.

CSF aims to have a mix of measures by developing spatially-diverse forest management strategies that acknowledge all carbon pools simultaneously to provide longer-term and larger mitigation benefits, while supporting other ecosystem services.

Objectives and Outcomes

• FORWARDS is a project funded by the European Union that will prototype the ForestWard Observatory, a pan-European monitoring and evaluation tool that will help in demonstrating the impact of climate change on forests, guiding decision-making for practical forest management. As part of its activities, FORWARDS will establish a network of CSF and restoration pilots to provide science-based reference knowledge to guide forest management.
• The aim of this Call for grants is to set up CSF and restoration pilots across Europe as a basis for developing an evidence-based understanding of effective CSF and restoration management practices in supporting climate change mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity.

Supported Projects and Activities

• Supported projects must address all the issues listed below:
  • Establish new field trials in forests for CSF and restoration management practices or test new practices in existing field trials.
  • Address at least one of the following topics:
    • Strengthening of forests and forest management for climate change mitigation.
    • Enhancing the resilience of forests to natural disturbances and/or droughts.
    • Adaptation of forests and forest management to new growing conditions.
    • Restoring forest biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services.
  • Conduct field measurements in controls and treatments, considering both living forest biomass and forest soils. This should include at least tree and stand-level measurements, including tree species, diameter at breast height, height, tree locations, crown dimensions, defoliation (according to ICP-Forest), increment.
  • Address impacts of management practices on multiple CSF and restoration indicators including at least carbon stocks and sequestration in forest biomass and soil, forest damage, tree species composition, forest productivity, and dead wood.
  • Provide open access data to measurement data from the field trials.

Available Funding

• The grant of max. 140,000€ will allow for establishing new or continuing existing field trials in forests for CSF and restoration management practices. The proposed budget for the project may however be greater than 140,000 €. Up to five projects will be awarded in this Call.
• Projects are expected to start in January 2024 and last a maximum of 18 months. The activities shall be completed at the latest by August 2025, although with assured continuation of the trial(s) for a minimum of three years.

Eligibility Criteria

• Grant applications can be submitted by one legal entity or a consortium of legal entities.
• Applicants must, by the deadline for submission of the Application, meet the following criteria to be eligible for the grant:
  • Applicant is a legal entity (legal person)
  • Applicant eligible for funding under the European Union Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme
• Furthermore, the following legal entities (legal persons) will not be eligible for funding:
  • Beneficiary or associated partner of the FORWARDS project.
  • Entities subject European Union restrictive measures.
  • Israeli entities due to activities in the territories occupied by Israel.
  • Public interest trusts established under the Hungarian Act or any entity maintained by such a public interest trust.

For more information, visit European Forest Institute (EFI).