The European Forest Institute (EFI)

The Euro­pean For­est Insti­tute (EFI) is an inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion estab­lished by the Euro­pean states. It has 28 Mem­ber Coun­tries, and c. 115 mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions from 37 dif­fer­ent coun­tries work­ing in diverse research fields. EFI pro­vides for­est-relat­ed knowl­edge around three inter­con­nect­ed and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary themes: bioe­con­o­my, resilience and governance.

EFI con­ducts research and pro­vides pol­i­cy sup­port on for­est relat­ed issues. Fur­ther, it facil­i­tate and stim­u­lates for­est relat­ed net­work­ing as well as pro­motes the sup­ply of unbi­ased and pol­i­cy rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion on forests and forestry. It also advo­cates for for­est research and for sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound infor­ma­tion as a basis for pol­i­cy-mak­ing on forests.

EFI excels in car­ry­ing out projects at the Euro­pean lev­el, and has a track record of over 30 projects car­ried out for the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion DGs dur­ing the past few years. EFI puts increas­ing empha­sis on cross-sec­toral approach­es in its research and devel­op­ment activ­i­ties. It is thus in a good posi­tion to have effi­cient access to social, eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal exper­tise cov­er­ing all of Europe’s bio-geo­graph­i­cal regions. The work in the field of pol­i­cy sup­port includes enhanced sup­port for deci­sion tak­ers and pol­i­cy mak­ers. For exam­ple, the high-lev­el forum on forests, Think­For­est, brings togeth­er high-lev­el pol­i­cy mak­ers and lead­ing Euro­pean for­est sci­en­tists to gen­er­ate sci­ence-pol­i­cy dia­logue on strate­gic for­est-relat­ed issues. EFI is quick­ly becom­ing a lead­ing sci­ence-pol­i­cy plat­form pro­vid­ing for­est-relat­ed knowl­edge to build a sus­tain­able future: con­nect­ing knowl­edge to action.

EFI has a strong pol­i­cy sup­port role by host­ing the EU FLEGT Facil­i­ty [3] which sup­ports the EU For­est Law Enforce­ment, Gov­er­nance and Trade (FLEGT) process in devel­op­ing coun­tries, relat­ed to the imple­men­ta­tion of the EU FLEGT Action Plan. EU FLEGT Facil­i­ty assist the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and the EU Mem­ber States in their joint efforts of its implementation.

EFI’s Project Cen­tre RUSFOR is a wide net­work of Russ­ian for­est organ­i­sa­tions which focus­es on for­est pol­i­cy and gov­er­nance issues. RUSFOR start­ed its five-year term at the begin­ning of 2014, under the coor­di­na­tion of St. Peters­burg State For­est Tech­ni­cal University.

Ini­tial­ly, RUSFOR will focus on capac­i­ty build­ing, for exam­ple organ­is­ing year­ly sum­mer schools to sup­port a new gen­er­a­tion of Russ­ian sci­en­tists, and bet­ter con­nect them to Euro­pean insti­tu­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, it is a plat­form which will enable Euro­pean sci­en­tists and stu­dents to be bet­ter con­nect­ed to Russ­ian institutions.