CO-FOREST at ISPIM Granada: Forests, Data, and the Future of Forestry Education

CO-FOREST took part in the XXXVII ISPIM Innovation Conference in Granada across three sessions spanning research presentations, hot topic discussions, and a panel with global partners. Here's a quick recap!

Hot Topic: “How can innovation save forests?” On Monday, June 8, Olga Kokshagina (LPI) and Kyriaki Papageorgiou (ISPIM) led a hot topic round table discussion around the topic of "How can Innovation Save Forests? Rethinking Learning for Climate Action." This session was part of a wider program of hot topics spanning AI, workforce futures, and innovation competences. It was a lively conversation with participants from Japan, Tanzania, Italy and France interested in sustainability and climate resilience. The hot topic discussion helped to CO-FOREST projectwithin broader questions about what education and training needs look like faced with the scale of the challenge facing forest ecosystems.

Panel Discussion: “From local knowledge to global impact!” Later on the same day, the CO-FOREST team from ISPIM and LPI joined Jon Bruno, CEO of Rainforest Connection (RFCx) in a discussion panel entitled "From Local Knowledge to Global Impact: Innovation Networks in European Forestry." The discussion explored the intersection of technology, data, and forest protection, highlighting some shared challenges: how to generate and interpret meaningful data on forest systems, how to manage natural resources under growing pressure, and how to attract younger generations into forestry as a profession and field of study. Rainforest Connection's work using acoustic monitoring to detect illegal logging in real time made for a rich conversation about what it actually means to generate and curate data in the field, and what skills and partnerships that requires.

Project Presentation: “Learning and Innovation in European Forestry” On Wednesday 10 June, Kyriaki also presented "Creating Opportunities for Learning and Innovation in European Forestry: CO-FOREST Project." The presentation gave an overview of the project and shared first findings from the Future Scenarios work, a key output developed across all five partner countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Greece, and Lithuania.. This included the identification of key national drivers of uncertainty, from climate change and biodiversity pressures to management practices and policy frameworks, and the development of coherent future pathways using morphological analysis and cross-consistency assessment to explore plausible interactions among those drivers. The analysis produced three distinct scenarios, ranging from an optimistic adaptation pathway to a future where crisis response capacity is stretched. The session also prompted discussion on potential links with the German context and ideas for benchmarking across national forestry learning systems.

Stay tuned for more findings as the project moves into its next phase of stakeholder engagement and education material development!