About the project

LEARNFORCLIMATE addresses the urgent need to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by promoting multifunctional management of forests in times of rapid socio-ecological change.

The aim is to support learning that enables concurrent achievement of multiple forest related objectives while responding to climate change related stress and disturbances. Previous research highlights goal conflicts between biodiversity-, climate-, and forest policy objectives, and new ways to handle goal conflicts and promote synergies are called for.

Learning, understood as changes in key actors' beliefs and behaviour, is key to handling the combined pressures of these challenges. Climate related disturbances and stress, such as droughts, fires and storms, can be disastrous but they can also open opportunities for learning and change. However, the knowledge about the preconditions and outcomes of such learning processes is limited.

LEARNFORCLIMATE develops innovative methods for collaborative science-, practice-and policy learning. The project investigates the connections between disturbances and stress, policy change, forest owners’ and managers’ behavioural responses, and ecosystem services outcomes. An interdisciplinary team of social and natural scientists in four European countries apply an integrated, cross-country comparative and transdisciplinary research approach in collaboration with key actors in each country.

LEARNFORCLIMATE identifies factors enabling and constraining learning and goal- achievement; develops innovative methods for promoting learning; and provides decision support and policy recommendations on how to realise multiple objectives and SDGs under climate related stress and disturbance.