Policy pathways towards EU climate neutrality

Roadmap for EU forest sector contribution to carbon, biodiversity, and green economy goals

Mapping status and changes in EU forests

Near real-time monitoring of forests, carbon and biodiversity

Unlocking the EU forest potential to counteract climate change

Comprehensive assessment of forest-based mitigation and adaptation potentials

New Policy Modelling Toolbox for forest bioeconomy

Providing policy makers with efficient decision-making tools for climate action

All together at one table

Policy Makers, Researchers and Practitioners

ForestNavigator

Navigating European forests and forest bioeconomy sustainably to EU climate neutrality

EU forests play a central role for achieving the EU climate neutrality goal: they cover 44% of the region’s land and absorb nearly 10% of its greenhouse gas emissions each year. This contribution is expected to grow in the future. However, due to increased demand for wood, more natural disturbances and forests reaching maturity, the rate of carbon removals from European forests has been declining in the past decade.

The ForestNavigator project assesses the climate mitigation potential of forests and forest-based sectors by modelling robust policy pathways, aligned with medium (2030) and long-term (2050) climate goals, and supporting EU and national decision makers. ForestNavigator applies integrated approaches combining observational data, policy expertise, and a range of advanced modelling tools to develop a Policy Modelling Toolbox, capable of addressing climate change impacts on coupled ecological and socioeconomic systems. The Toolbox relies on a near-real time monitoring of forests, carbon and biodiversity, and provides policy makers with efficient decision-making tools for climate action. With a primarily European scope, ForestNavigator zooms into carefully selected EU Member States to enhance the consistency of the EU and national pathways, and zooms out towards the global scale, for extra-EU future drivers and potential leakage effects.

 

ForestNavigator

24

Consortium
partners

ForestNavigator

14

European/Non-European
countries

ForestNavigator

48

Month
project duration

ForestNavigator

44%

EU Forest
coverage
ForestNavigator

~ 10%

Emissions per year
absorbed by forests

News

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D6.3 National and EU baseline pathway for forest sector

by | 24 November 2025 | Public Deliverables | 0 Comments

In recent years, the EU27 forest carbon sink—including forest land and harvested wood products—has shown a marked decline due to natural disturbances, climate change impacts, forest aging and changes in harvest intensity. This weakening sink poses a challenge for EU climate policy. To assess future trajectories of the forest sector, we developed a cross-scale, harmonized Baseline scenario within the ForestNavigator project, representing the development of forest emissions and removals under a continuation of current management
practices and recent wood demand trends, without the introduction of new policy measure after 2023. This Baseline integrates projections from national forest carbon models (CBM-CZ, CBM-IE, CBM-IT, Heureka) and the EU-level GLOBIOM–G4M–X modelling framework.

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D6.4 Report on modelling the EU forests in a multisectoral context

by | 24 November 2025 | Public Deliverables | 0 Comments

Task 6.4 of the ForestNavigator project focuses on developing a robust and integrated modelling toolbox to assess the climate mitigation potential of the EU forest-based sector. Building on the conceptual framework of Task 6.1, the toolbox enhances existing models by addressing key limitations in representing climate change impacts, forest disturbances, harvested wood product dynamics, and cross-sectoral policy interactions. At its core, the toolbox integrates the GLOBIOM/G4M-X modelling framework, which combines economic land-use modelling with detailed forest management simulations that now include climate-induced risks and adaptive responses.

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The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems

by | 24 November 2025 | Academic Publications | 0 Comments

Rockström, Johan et al.
The Lancet (2025)

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Are you a forest manager, working for an NGO or in the wood industry and you want to bring your concerns into forest policies?

Are you a policy maker looking for hands-on tools supporting your policy decision-making?

Are you worrying about the current trend that EU forests are absorbing less carbon?

 

Work with us on strategies to reverse this trend!

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JOIN US!

 

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Fulvio di Fulvio

Fulvio Di Fulvio, PhD

IIASA

(ForestNavigator Co-Principal Investigator)

“ForestNavigator develops the next generation Policy Modelling Toolbox to address the gap between the needs of decision makers and the capacity of current large-scale models supporting their policies.”
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Andrey Lessa Derci Augustynczik

Andrey Lessa Derci Augustynczik

IIASA

(Scientific coordinator)

“Our approach combines forest data with multi scale biophysical modelling. This will help us to quantify pathways for the EU forest sector, which consider not only alternative carbon sequestration in the forest and wood products, but also synergies with other policy goals.”
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Petr Havlík

Petr Havlík, PhD

IIASA

(ForestNavigator Co-Principal Investigator)

“ForestNavigator will provide the EU and national policy makers with a unique decision-making platform enabling continuous dialogue between policy makers and scientists to support the contribution of sustainable forests to the ambitious EU climate action, also beyond the project’s lifetime.”
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