Report on managers' and owners' willingness to adopt management scenarios and feasibility of a mechanism of payment for forest ecosystem services

European Union (EU) forest policy framework simultaneously calls for increased wood mobilisation to support the bioeconomy and for greater protection of forest ecosystems to enhance biodiversity and climate resilience. As forest management decisions are ultimately made by forest owners and managers, this deliverable addresses the critical need to understand the factors hindering transitions to less and more intensive forest management practices and thus achieve EU policy objectives. Our findings reveal that transitions towards alternative forest management strategies are hindered by a wide range of economic, institutional, knowledge-related, social, and environmental barriers. Among economic barriers, intensification is primarily constrained by high transition and operational costs, while the lack of financial incentives for conservation consistently emerges as the most important barrier to less intensive management, underscoring the need to develop market mechanisms that effectively remunerate non-productive Forest Ecosystem Services (FES). Institutional and policy-related factors further constrain the scope for change: owner and managers preferences and policy momentum converge more strongly around close-to-nature and multifunctional forestry than towards fully unmanaged regimes. Combined with evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment indicating welfare losses associated with transitions to unmanaged forest, these findings suggest an implicit agreement among policymakers, society, and forest managers that a minimum level of management is required. At the social level, transitions towards more intensive strategies are similarly constrained by societal expectations, norms, and foresters' preferences, suggesting that forest management decisions are embedded within broader social and cultural systems. Beyond economic, institutional, and social barriers, our results show that environmental, and particularly climate change-related barriers, hinder management changes in either direction through two main pathways: climate hazards and ecological uncertainty discourage departure from established practices, while limited technical guidance constrains the capacity of forest owners and managers to adapt.

Delia Moens de Hase, Kato Van Ruymbeke, Liesbet Vranken,.