EFINORD news. New Director appointed for EFI EUROPEAN FOREST INSTITUTE (EFI), PRESS RELEASE,

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1 EFINORD news No 4, October, 2014 New Director appointed for EFI EUROPEAN FOREST INSTITUTE (EFI), PRESS RELEASE, Dr. Marc Palahí has been appointed as the new Director of EFI. The new Director will start his 5- year term on 1 January The decision was made by the EFI Board and the EFI Council gave its assent to the appointment. The Director is based at the EFI Headquarters in Joensuu, Finland. EFI needs to be a catalyser in developing an ambitious European forest research area and supporting a coherent forest-related policy framework, states Dr. Palahí about his vision for the institute. I believe that EFI should become a science-policy platform that builds a common understanding of European forests, he concludes. Dr. Palahí has a PhD in forestry and economics and a M.Sc. in forestry engineering. Previously, he has worked as a Head of EFI Mediterranean Regional Office, EFIMED, where he has been coordinating research, capacity building and networking activities among a network of 40 research and education institutions from 18 Mediterranean countries. Marc Palahí is a visionary leader and he has an impressive track record in developing networks and joint initiatives, as well as in fundraising and leading research and policy support in an international context, states Chairman of the EFI Board, J. Bo Larsen. For the past two years, Dr. Palahí has worked first as Deputy Director and most recently as Interim Director of EFI. During this time, he has been responsible for the overall coordination and integration of EFI s strategic activities related to research and policy support. EFI is an international organization established by European States. EFI conducts research and provides policy support on forest-related issues. With its Associate and Affiliate Member organizations, five Regional Offices and three Project Centres, it offers unique forest research contacts and collaboration at the European level. The Institute has app. 130 staff members and an annual turnover of app. 12 million Euros. More info: Anu Ruusila, Head of Communications, tel

2 EFINORD Annual Meeting 14 th May The first EFINORD Annual meeting was hosted by the Forest Faculty of Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Umeå 14th May, with a following Excursion the 15th May. About 60 participants from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia and Germany took part in the meeting, mostly researchers, but also stakeholders, policy makers and students. Foto Jenny Svennås-Gillner, SLU Dean Peter Högberg opened the meeting stressing the high demand for integrated assessments. Thus, EFINORD is needed, and the faculty has plans to build up a synthesis centre collaborating closely, among other players, with EFI. Annika Nordin, Director of Future Forests, had a presentation on connecting research to practice to explore the future of forests within the interdisciplinary research platform Future Forests at SLU in collaboration with Umeå University and The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden. Mika Mustonen, Head of EFINORD pointed out in his presentation that the special character for EFINORD is that it s operating in the Nordic region with a strong tradition of networking within the forest researcher community of about 1500 individual forest researchers. Nevertheless, there is a clear need for more strategic and structured crossborder cooperation. Harald Mauser from EFI Liason Office in Brussels presented the EU decision making structures and how EFI working for its members in advocating forestry and forest research towards the EU. Photo: Desiree Mattsson The afternoon was dedicated to seminar in Continuous cover Forestry a North-South perspective, moderated by Professor Tomas Lundmark from SLU. Presentations from Slovakia, Germany, Finland and Sweden handled different European contexts and an angle to the topic, and the aspects of industrial forest owner was brought into discussion by Elisabet Salander Björklund CEO at Bergvik Skog- Sweden's largest forest-owning company. Thursday 15th May it was time for the Excursion, hosted by Tomas Lundmark, SLU. The visited places were located in SLU s experimental forests in the Vindeln area Photo: Desiree Mattsson More information and presentations from the Annual meeting can be found on the webpage of EFINORD.

3 Future of forests seen from a new perspective What do young people think about the future of forests? Are there differences in their views between Sweden and Finland? This is what we are trying to discover in our research project. Young people will have an important role in the future of forests, because they will be the decision-makers who determine the direction of forest use and policy. Nevertheless, their views of future of forests have hardly been studied. The traditional stakeholder groups, e.g. forest industries and environmental organisations, are already involved in other parts of the Future Forests research programme, so it was decided that young people should be targeted as well. A print screen of the mind map, by Tuomas Nummelin Our research project started at the beginning of this year. We have previously been developing a new data collection tool at the Finnish Forest Research Institute. The tool is based on the concept of a mind map. It works online, and should provide an intuitive and interesting way for a respondent to tell us their thoughts. During this year, we have been developing an improved version of the tool. We have also been familiarising ourselves with the Swedish forest industry, and together with Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) have created the basis for data collection. The development of the new tool has relied on cooperation between EFINORD and SLU. SLU has assisted in the development from coding to testing. We first tested the tool with our colleagues at SLU in Umeå, and then on some SLU students. These gave us ideas on how to improve the tool and we have been making changes to it over the spring and summer. In May, we presented the project at the meeting of Scandinavian Society of Forest Economics, which gave us some scientific feedback. In July, we had the interesting opportunity of presenting our tool at SLU s event in Almedalen week in Visby. We again got some useful feedback from visitors. More than that, Almedalen -which is the biggest political assembly in Sweden- was a new experience for us Finns and showed that Nordic politics differ a lot between countries. We have also cooperated with the University of Helsinki by testing the tool with students of Environmental Science in September. The test results were very positive, and we should be ready to start the data collection after small tweaks to the tool this autumn. The data will be collected in both Sweden and Finland. The project is a collaboration between EFINORD and Future Forests research programme headed by SLU. Finnish Forest Research Institute will be in charge of data collection in Finland. If you are interested in hearing more about the project or in participating in the data collection, please contact either: Maria Riala (maria.riala@efi.int) or Tuomas Nummelin (tuomas.nummelin@efi.int)

4 News from the office in Umeå Göran Bostedt is working on a report that will give an overview of the prospects for increasing forest biomass supply in Northern Europe. The motivating force behind this report is the expected increase in demand for forest raw materials and the associated need to discuss strategies to ensure that these increases can be accommodated within the region without large price increases. Göran will also developing a PhD course in State of the art in payments for environmental services (PES) and market-based instruments. The course is in cooperation with the Department of Forest Economics at SLU, the Centre for Environmental and Resource Economics, CERE, and the Scandinavian Society of Forest Economics, SSFE. This work is part of EFINORD s work in facilitating capacity building through networking. Göran is also responsible for EFINORD s work on ecosystem services in urban forests, conducted in collaboration with the Department of Forest Resource Management, SLU. More information: goran.bostedt (at) efi.int Coming Events 2 nd Nordic Conference on Forest Policy Science, , Ängavallen, Sweden. The conference is organized by the Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre (SLU in Alnarp) and Department of Forest Products (SLU in Uppsala) and supported by: EFINORD and Nordic Forest Research (SNS). More info: WEBPAGE Workshop on Energy Markets around the Baltic Sea Region The workshop is to be held at the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla), Vantaa, Finland on October 31, Researchers who participate in the EFINORD coordinated project Energy Markets around the Baltic Sea Region shall meet to review the status of the project and draw up a working plan for collaboration on research in woodbased bioenergy in Baltic Sea countries. The workshop is organized by EFINORD and Metla, and is sponsored by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Workshop "Silviculture in Changing Environment, , Kirkkonummi, Finland. The research programmes Forests and Water and Forests and Silviculture in the future of the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla), the Future Forests of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and EFINORD are inviting researchers working in these two countries with themes related to forests and water or forests and changing climate to a workshop to present their research and discuss possibilities for future collaboration. More info:

5 Changes and challenges EFI Annual conference decided in its meeting in September in Bilbao on continuation of the EFINORD starting period for An evaluation of the regional office will take place in Mika Mustonen s contract as the head of EFINORD Regional Office will expire in the end of this year, and he will move to a new position in Natural Resources Institute Finland starting from The head of office post will be announced in an internal call at Finnish Forest Resource Institute Metla, who s the sponsoring the post. Desiree Mattsson, whom been working as Research and administrative assistant since February 2012 will end here position December Here replacer will be situated in Umeå at the Forest Faculty and will be presented in next issue. In next Newsletter, December, we will inform more about the changes and the new staff. Take it easy and do not forget to enjoy life!