European Forests Between Digitalization and Climate Change: A Pan-European Analysis of EIP-AGRI Operational Group Innovations

European forestry and agroforestry systems are foundational to the European Green Deal's climate and sustainability objectives. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the European Innovation Partnership for Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability (EIP-AGRI) Operational Groups (OGs) as a critical policy instrument for implementing these objectives on the ground. By systematically analyzing the innovations co-developed by these multi-actor partnerships, we assess their capacity to translate high-level strategy into tangible, practice-led solutions that address pressing sectoral challenges in climate change and digitalization.

This pan-European analysis, carried out within the FOREST4EU project, employed a mixed-methods framework, combining thematic, semantic, and network-based cluster analysis of 175 distinct innovations generated by 86 OGs across ten European countries to map the continent's forestry innovation ecosystem.

Our findings demonstrate that OGs are directly confronting climate change, with a major innovation cluster focused on "Climate adaptation and forest resilience" to address stressors like drought, forest fires, and pests. Critically, the primary response to these challenges is the deployment of advanced digital and geoscience-based tools, including sophisticated Decision Support Systems (DSS), remote sensing and LiDAR technologies, GIS-based forest data management, and mobile applications for forest inventory. This problem-solution dynamic explains the predominance of technological (33.1%) and process (26.9%) innovations, which show clear geographic specialization reflecting national priorities, from digital forest management in Italy to climate resilience in France and bioeconomy value chains in Spain and Portugal.

The analysis consolidates these findings into four interconnected innovation domains: (i) digital forestry and data-driven management, (ii) climate adaptation and forest resilience, (iii) sustainable forest management, and (iv) bioeconomy-oriented value chains. The interplay between these domains proves that digital tools are not being developed in isolation but are instrumental in creating integrated, climate-smart solutions. We therefore assert that the EIP-AGRI Operational Group is a validated and effective model for translating EU climate policy into practice. It provides a powerful bottom-up mechanism for co-creating the tailored, territorially-embedded, and science-based responses required to enhance Europe's forest resilience and climate mitigation capacity.