The discussion started with highlighting the role forests play in climate change and biodiversity loss themes that were discussed in the previous two roundtables of the day. Forests are rich in biodiversity and are hugely important in the fight against climate change. This has also been addressed in the European Green Deal. The new EU forest strategy for 2030 is one of the flagship initiatives of the European Green Deal and also builds on the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030. The panelist gave short interventions about various aspects of the forest strategy. Giurca focused on the policy instruments under the Green Deal that are relevant to the forest sector. Perugini zoomed in on perspective on the revised LULUCF Regulation. Savalesi mainly focused on the role of climate litigation related to forestry policy, while Madeira highlighted the practical problems with implementation in Portugal. The following discussion discussed the international effects of the EU forest policy, its implementation challenges, and the different stakeholder critiques the policy has received.
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Panel
Alex Giurca leads EFI's European forest governance team in Bonn, Germany. His work experience and interests are in the area of forest policy and governance, with particular focus on sustainability transformations such as the bioeconomy. His recently co-authored a report investigating the opportunities and challenges of implementing the EU Forest Strategy. The report will be launched on 26.06.
Lucia Perugini is a researcher at CMCC, PhD in forest ecology with scientific background in forestry and climate change. Since 2003, she has been involved in the UNFCCC negotiations, providing technical and scientific support to the Italian Delegation on issues related to agriculture, LULUCF and REDD+. Her research activity is focused on assessment of climate change mitigation options in the land sector as well as the link between the scientific and policy communities in several EU Funded research projects. She is currently part Expert Group on Carbon Removals of the European Commission.
Annalisa Savaresi is an expert in environmental and climate change law, with 20 years’ experience working with international and nongovernmental organisations. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Eastern Finland, where she serves as Director for the Joint Nordic Master Programme in Environmental Law. She is also the director for Europe of the Global Network on Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) and member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL).
Paulo Miguel Madeira has a PhD in Geography from the University of Lisbon, where he also obtained a MSc and a degree in Geography. He is a post-doctoral researcher at ICS-ULisboa, where since 2021 he is a member of the team of the project ODSlocal – Municipal Platform for Sustainable Development Goals. He has conducted research on regional development and policies, from a perspective that combines the political economy of globalisation and regional policies. Paulo also participated in the evaluation of forestry policies in Portugal, within the project People & Fire: Reducing Risk, Living with Risk.
Moderator
Aron Buzogany works at the Institute of Forest, Environmental, and Natural Resource Policy at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU). His main interests are EU environmental and energy policy-making, including implementation in the member states. He also works on social mobilisation, including the rise of the new climate movement, and on energy transitions, both in EU member states and in Eastern Europe and Northern Africa.
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