After three years (2017-2020) of networking, learning and capacity building interactions between science, policy and practice the SURE project reached an end. An overview of the project tasks and activities are collected and available on the website. We would like to thank all our partners for the fruitful collaboration and great support.
Welcome to SURE
European forests are affected by different disturbances. They range from pests and insect damages to megafires and transnational storm events and can have profound impacts on forest ecosystem services and livelihoods. As forest disturbance regimes have intensified during the last decades, making forests more resilient has gained in importance. Experiences from both practice and science on how to best cope with risk and respond to disturbance events are crucial for developing and improving response strategies in policymaking and practical management.
The project SUstaining and Enhancing REsilience of European Forests (short: SURE) will tackle these challenges by fostering cross-border exchange and highlighting best practices. Coordinated by European Forest Institute’s Bonn Office and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture, SURE is aiming at enhancing forest resilience and addressing disturbance related risks as an integral part of sustainable forest management through facilitating networking, learning and capacity building.
A European Forest Risk Community
One of SURE’s main objectives is establishing the European Forest Risk Facility, an unbiased platform of exchange and knowledge transfer between science, practice and policy. The Facility aims to facilitate cooperation and exchange between communities, thus providing transnational access to knowledge and experience while incorporating existing expertise in Europe (like the projects KoNeKKTiW and Plurifor). It will collect and distribute data for a better understanding of forest risks to support effective collaboration and coordination of relevant national bodies and facilitate the exchange of good practice, ultimately leading to better-informed political decisions on matters relevant to forests and forestry.
Exchange and Communications
To facilitate the network activities and share training materials and other resources, SURE utilizes the RISKPlatform, a virtual communication tool for the European Forest Risk community. It aims to connect practitioners, academia and public stakeholders and initiates the discussion of risk-related topics and the exchange of best practices. Furthermore, members of the network can share documents, information on recent publications and events in a multidirectional way. The SURE project welcomes all the project partners to join the activities on the RiskPlatform.
Information on current events, news, activities and more in-depth reports developed in the framework of SURE can be found on the Resilience Blog.