Introduction to the CLIMB-FOREST project: Climate Mitigation and Bioeconomy Pathways for Sustainable Forestry

The CLIMB-FOREST Horizon Europe project (101059888) addresses a need to strengthen the role of European forests in mitigating climate change while maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem services and old-growth forests. By integrating empirical data, advanced modelling and a multi-actor approach, CLIMB-FOREST generates science-based socio-economic pathways for future climate-smart forest management across Europe.

WP1: Mapping Current Forests and Management Patterns
The first work package provides a pan-European mapping of forest status and managament, and specific fieldwork within primary forests. We produced pan-European forest age, structure, carbon storage and management regimes from national forest inventory data. Through paired site comparisons of primary and managed forests, the project quantifies how forestry practices influence carbon sequestration. These maps form the empirical backbone for later modelling and scenario analyses.

WP2: Process Understanding at Field Sites
CLIMB-FOREST quantifies biogeochemical and biophysical processes at long-term monitoring sites across climatic gradients in Europe. Using field measurements and satellite observations, WP2 assesses carbon uptake, disturbance responses, and other climate-relevant processes in forest ecosystems including short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs). A database of over 80 contributing sites, with linked carbon stocks and ecosystem function data improves the understanding of forest climate effects.

WP3: Bioeconomy and Wood Product Preferences
WP3 explores the socio-economic dimensions of forest-based mitigation. This work package quantifies the role of forest products, especially long-lived ones in climate mitigation and for the bioeconomy. Interviews and surveys with forest owners, industry actors and end-users capture preferences, perceived barriers, and incentives for adopting alternative wood products and management practices.

WP4: Pan-European Integrated Modelling
WP4 brings together data from WP1 – WP3 and management recommendations from WP5 into advanced, integrated modelling frameworks. These models simulate different management and socio-economic pathway scenarios for the future, and simulate how climate, associated disturbances and management alternatives in each pathway influence biodiversity and forest states and function over the whole of Europe, as well as trade-offs between targeted policies and desired environmental benefits.

WP5: Stakeholder Engagement and Adaptation
This work package actively engages with forest owners, wood industries and civil society through field visits and workshops in representative forest regions. Stakeholders identify and refine optimal management strategies that enhance resilience to climate change while delivering biodiversity and ecosystem services. These participatory activities ensure that project outputs are grounded in real-world needs and concrete adaptation.

We are 3 years into the project, and well on the way to provide suggestions for forest management pathways in Europe that are scientifically sound, sustainable and climate-mitigating. The modelling outcomes already point to a clear trade-off between high volume of timber produced in highly productive and greenhouse gas intensive socio-economic scenarios and more environmentally sustainable scenarios.