Forests in systemic transition – balancing efficiency with fairness and resilience - ForTran

Public description of the goals at the beginning of the project

Global changes in the forest sector accentuate the several conflicting views on how to use forests in Finland. Forests are an important source of intangible and material well-being, but their resilience is being challenged by climate change and biodiversity loss. At the same time, the forest sector faces the challenge of creating increasing economic value. The project will work with different stakeholders to develop solutions to these sustainability challenges in the Finnish forest sector. The project will use participatory and qualitative research, forest modelling and computational optimisation methods, as well as systems analysis to outline ways to reconcile the objectives of biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and economic well-being in a fair and sustainable way. This project, coordinated by the University of Jyväskylä, also involves researchers from the University of Eastern Finland, Aalto University and the Natural Resources Institute Finland.