Forests and agroforestry systems cover over 47% of EU land and are essential for climate mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity protection, ecosystem services, and rural development. Despite their strategic importance for the European Green Deal and EU Forest Strategy, the sectors face structural challenges: fragmented ownership (16 million landowners managing around 60% of forest land), uneven innovation uptake, administrative complexity, and limited cross-border knowledge transfer.
EIP-AGRI Operational Groups (OGs) provide an effective bottom-up innovation model, bringing together farmers, foresters, researchers and advisors. However, their results often remain regionally confined, and OG distribution across Member States is uneven.
FOREST4EU addressed this gap by building a European multi-actor network structured around five cross-country Innovation Topic Hubs (ITHubs): Wood Mobilization; Forest Adaptation to Climate Change; Sustainable Forest Management and Ecosystem Services; Non-Wood Forest Products; and Agroforestry.
The project strengthened knowledge transfer, cross-regional cooperation, and science–policy integration through structured innovation collection, multilingual capacity-building materials, study visits, and policy dialogue. Social sciences contributed through governance analysis, identification of policy barriers, and stakeholder engagement processes.
FOREST4EU contributes to a more cohesive European innovation ecosystem, supports climate resilience and rural sustainability, and enhances the scalability of forestry and agroforestry innovations.