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Side events at the Eighth Mediterranean Forest Week 2024 – day 2
30/01/2025
The Eighth Mediterranean Forest Week (8MFW) held in Barcelona, Spain, from 4 to 7 November 2024, hosted a total of 14 side events, where key regional stakeholders showcased their work, research and projects.
On day 2, 5 November 2024, six side events took place:
Policy forum on landscape resilience in the Mediterranean
The first ResAlliance policy forum welcomed policymakers, researchers and practitioners to discuss landscape resilience in the Mediterranean, and related policy priorities and needs.
Led by the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), the European Forest Institute (EFI) and the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC), the event provided valuable insights into the basic concepts of resilience thinking and findings, from a practitioner survey on barriers and gaps to landscape resilience.
Through interactive discussions, and using Mentimeter for audience engagement, participants were invited to voice the barriers, bottlenecks, innovations and knowledge gaps that they perceive to be important as they work to maintain or raise the resilience of Mediterranean rural landscapes.
In a second international policy forum, to be held at the end of 2025, ResAlliance partners will present and discuss practical solutions and policy recommendations to address the challenges and needs identified during this first forum across four thematic priority areas: governance, technology, management practices and finance.
Additional resources:
Sandra Bohne (CIFOR) and Christopher Martius (CIFOR)
Agroforestry and mixed farming systems for a more resilient Mediterranean region – the Transition project
This side event showcased the final outcomes of the Transition project, a PRIMA-funded initiative focused on promoting agroforestry and mixed farming systems to increase the resilience of farming systems in Mediterranean contexts.
Over the course of the project, partners from six Mediterranean countries used a participatory approach to identify barriers to adoption, develop decision-making tools, and create a regional road map tailored to stakeholders’ needs, particularly farmers. Field studies and on-farm demonstrations provided practical insights into innovative agricultural practices.
The event served as a platform to showcase our key findings and engage in meaningful discussions, and promote knowledge exchange and collaboration among researchers, policymakers and practitioners. The event highlighted the contributions of agroforestry systems and mixed farming to enhancing the sustainability and resilience of Mediterranean agroecosystems in the face of global change.
By presenting actionable solutions and tools, Transition has supported the agricultural sector to shift towards sustainable models to address the challenges posed by climate change and environmental pressures while strengthening rural communities. This milestone also fostered networking opportunities and set the foundation for scaling up successful practices across the Mediterranean.
Additional resources:
Diana Jiménez De Santiago (University of Vic) and Sergio Ponsá Salas (University of Vic)
Innovative solutions for fire-risk management
Hosted by FIRE-RES and EFI, the side event focused on the importance of new ideas and creative approaches to deal with the growing problem of wildfires. The keynote speaker Fábio Silva, opened the discussion by sharing how combining research with real-life action could help communities better prepare for and recover from wildfires.
The event featured short, 5-minute pitches from innovators representing diverse professional backgrounds. The topics presented included:
- Wildflyer by Daan Aerts and Joost Lubach
- Proyecto Mosaico by Fernando Pulido
- Real-time fuel moisture mapping for the European Union by Víctor Resco de Dios
- Firewine by Soazig Darnay
- From devastation to conservation by Laia Crespo and Jordi Jon Pardo
After the presentations, a networking session brought everyone together to share ideas and make new connections. This event showed how important teamwork and innovation are in solving wildfire challenges and helped FIRE-RES move closer to its goal of creating more resilient communities and forests.
Additional resources:
Carmen Rodriguez (EFI), Franciszek Kaczmarek (EFI) and Inazio Martinez de Arano (EFI)
BREATHE – Earth observation-based enhancement and verification of land use, land-use change and forestry inventories for forest and biomass: use case application to Mediterranean forests in Southern Türkiye GeoVille, leader of the BREATHE project consortium, highlighted the role of remote sensing in ecosystem restoration.
The BREATHE project developed a fire-emission model based on Earth observation (EO), including a classification by severity levels, which can be implemented across the Mediterranean basin using a high-performance cloud-based information and communications technology system and a user-friendly dashboard. EO technology combined with independent forest reference data provides consistent and accurate monitoring of forest restoration progress.
The keynote speaker, Eray Özdemir from the Turkish Ministry of Forestry (OGM), discussed the need and requirements of Türkiye’s greenhouse gas national inventory report (GHG NIR) for land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
Remote sensing may play a role in the future with the implementation of the first best-practice example of an EO-based LULUCF monitoring, reporting and verification system in Türkiye.
SISTEMA, another Austrian remote sensing company, provided insights into creating above-ground biomass density (AGBD) maps and extracting valuable information from satellite data, which can be used as input data for the assessment of CO2-equivalent forest emissions and removals.
Virginia García Millán from the University of Malaga demonstrated how to map Mediterranean forest species using satellite data and artificial intelligence.
The event revealed that remote sensing was somewhat underutilized.
Nadine Scherf (GeoVille) and Natalie Morin (GeoVille)
Mediterranean Consortium for Biodiversity – a socioenvironmental approach
At this side event, the International Association for Mediterranean Forests (AIFM), the International Union for Conservation of Nature Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation (IUCN-Med) and Tour du Valat presented the Mediterranean Consortium for Biodiversity (CMB), the RESCOM project and two case studies in Tunisia and Türkiye, promoting nature-based solutions to increase the resilience of Mediterranean ecosystems.
The event was hosted by Naoufel Ben Haha, Director-General of Forests in Tunisia and incoming chair of Silva Mediterranea, and Ümit Turhan, Deputy Director-General of Forests in Türkiye, and outgoing chair of the committee.
During the rich discussions that took place between foresters from Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, a common observation emerged: our ecosystems are collapsing under the combined weight of biodiversity loss, climate change, overexploitation of resources and obsolete governance. The Tunisian case presented here is a perfect illustration of this paradox: local people depend on forest resources that they are legally forbidden to use.
Faced with this reality, the participants proposed joint action at regional level to radically transform forest governance by considering local communities as the legitimate guardians of their natural heritage. Through targeted training, they can develop income-generating activities that also benefit the environment.
This innovative vision of forest co-management goes beyond environmental considerations to promote a genuine social endeavour that can be replicated throughout the Mediterranean basin. The time has come for countries to reform their forestry codes by recognizing the central role of local populations in the sustainable management of fragile ecosystems.
Additional resources:
- AIFM
- Contact: [email protected]
Martin Fillot (AIFM) and Alain Chaudron (AIFM)