Forest restoration paradigms and conflicts in Europe

Summary

Forest restoration is gaining importance in Europe. This study aims to investigate how forest restoration is understood in a European context,identify potential forest restoration conflicts, and explore the relationship between both understandings and conflicts. To achieve this, 46 semistructured interviews were conducted with stakeholders in 12 forest restoration case studies in 12 European countries. The results show three distinct ways in which forest restoration is understood by the stakeholders, i.e., ‘forest restoration paradigms’, which may arise from how different actor groups problematise forests and their management. Looking deeper, our results suggest that these ‘forest problematisations’ may be determined by the ecological and socio-ecological context and the collective values and beliefs of actor groups. In addition, when these underlying values and beliefs clash in a certain context, forest restoration conflicts may occur. For effective forest restoration implementation in Europe, it is important to investigate how stakeholders understand forest restoration and the contexts in which different understandings emerge.