On 27 April 2022 (13.00-15.00 CET), MEPS Jytte Guteland, Elsi Katainen & Simone Schmiedtbauer, Co-chairs of the ‘Sustainable Forest Management Working Group’ of the European Parliament Intergroup on ‘Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development’cordially invite you to the web-conference:

Several ongoing EU-policies include provisions related to sustainable forest management (SFM); as these policies are interlinked, outcomes of one policy might have a certain impact to others. Specifically, while these provisions are not fully in-line with each other, nor in line with already approved EU-policies and objectives, the lack of clarity and coherence within policies creates a lack of input for forest owners and managers hampering the planning of future management of their forests.

Meanwhile, SFM is a key tool for forest owners and managers to ensure the best possible management of their forests, making sure that the decisions they make are ecologically, economically and socially sustainable. SFM is a dynamic and evolving concept, and currently Forest Europe is working on revisiting the set of criteria and indicators for SFM that have been defined and agreed within this pan-European process.

This online event aims at therefore bringing together speakers to exchange about the future of sustainable forest management concept and practices, to clarify the current complexities put forward by several EU-policies concerning provisions related to SFM, and to debate the feasibility of these provisions and possible ways forward, in order to render EU political decisions aligned with constraints and expectations from the ground.

Draft Agenda:

Moderated by Jo O’Hara

13:00 – 13:10: Welcome remarks by MEP Jytte Guteland, and MEP Elsi Katainen

13:10 – 13:20: Intervention by Isabelle Mellier, Chair of the Working Party on Forestry, French Ministry of Agriculture

13:20 – 13:25: Video-message from forest-owners and managers

13:25 – 13:35: Keynote speech by Dr. Georg Winkel, Professor and Chair of the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group, Wageningen University & Research

13:35 – 13:40: Video-message from forest-owners and managers

13:40 – 14:20: Panel discussion with the participation of:

• Bernhard Wolfslehner, Head of Governance Programme, European Forest Institute
• Gaëlle Marion, Head of B2 Unit on Environmental Sustainability, DG AGRI, European Commission
• Representative from IUCN (tbc)
• Antti Asikainen, Executive Vice President for Research, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) (tbc)
• Dr. Peter Mayer, Director of the Federal Research and Training Centre for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape (BFW) (tbc)

14:20 – 14:45: Reactions (5’ per speaker) from:

• MEP Ulrike Müller – video-message intervention (tbc)
• MEP Luisa Regimenti (tbc)
• Joan Calabuig Rull, Rapporteur for the Opinion on the “EU Forest Strategy for 2030”, CoR (tbc)
• Simo Tiainen, Rapporteur for the Opinion on the “New EU Forest Strategy for 2030”, EESC (tbc)
• Tomáš Krejzar, Director, Department of Forest Policy and Economics, Ministry of Agriculture, Czech Republic

14:45 – 14:55: Q&A session with the audience14:55 – 15:00: Key take-away messages by MEP Simone Schmiedtbauer