Townhall EGU 2024

Townhall EGU 2024

Vienna (Austria), 15 April, 19:00–20:00 (CEST)

Link to the event here.

During the EGU General Assembly, Rossella Guerrieri (Chair of the CLEANFOREST COST Action) and Chloe Hill (EGU Policy manager) organized a Townhall meeting on

Integrating independent forest monitoring initiatives in Europe to support policy: the time is now. Building synergies among the different initiatives in Europe is one of the goals promoted by the CLEANFOREST COST Action. The Townhall meeting was a follow up event on the panel discussion we had last year in Thessaloniki. This is a needed step forward from the scientific communities involved, in order to be able to gain a more holistic view of forest responses to global change drivers, as well as to support other relevant end-users of data produced, such as remote sensing and modeler communities. Last, but not least, a coordination of different forest monitoring networks is becoming crucial to fully support the implementation of the forthcoming Regulation of the European Parliament and Council on a monitoring framework for resilient European forests proposed by the European Commission. The Townhall meeting intended to bring together researchers at any stage of their careers involved in monitoring initiatives as well as those actively involved in bridging science and policy to support the achievement of policy targets within the Green Deal. The event included talks from invited speakers followed by an open discussion with the audience. Topic addressed in the first part and invited speakers are summarized below:

How scientists can engage with policymakers
Chloe Hill (Policy Manager of the European Geosciences Union)
Relevance of forest monitoring in the EU policy
Régine Roncucci (EU Affairs Manager at the European Parliament Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development) Q&A
Example of forest monitoring networks in Europe and need to build synergies among them

About 40 participants attended the Townhall meeting (not too bad, given that the event was at 7pm!), with a broad research interest, as summarized in the Figure below:

Presentations from the invited speakers was followed by a lively discussion brining up important points on the need to build connections among different initiatives, including current Horizon Europe projects focusing on forest monitoring, on the challenges in communicating effectively with policymakers but also on the strengths and limitations of the draft proposal of the forest monitoring law recently proposed by the European Commission.

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