Resilience challenges and measures related to the forest value chain in Europe: tailoring prioritisation efforts

Forests play an essential role in preserving biodiversity and providing essential ecological, social, and economic services. However, increasing pressures from human activities, environmental changes, and climate change emergencies are calling for improving social-ecological resilience of ecosystems and related value chains. Adapting to these changes whilst delivering their various services and functions is crucial. This study assesses three European case areas: Bavaria (Germany), Galicia (Spain), and Finland at national scale, to examine how stakeholders with expertise in forest industry, ownership, and research prioritise resilience challenges and related measures (policy actions aimed at enhancing resilience). To do so, we employed a participatory decision-making approach in which stakeholders conducted pairwise comparison of challenges and measures. These comparisons were aggregated through an AHP-like process to derive relative priorities amongst these groups and areas. Participants identified biodiversity decline as the most pressing resilience challenge in Finland, tree species suitability in Bavaria, and risk of forest disturbances in Galicia. In all case areas, ecological aspects dominated the rankings, whilst socio-economic factors ranked lower, suggesting a need to better integrate these dimensions into resilience strategies. The findings also reveal contextual differences across the three stakeholder groups, providing policymakers with a useful basis for context resilience policies.