Happy International Day of Forests!

Written by José Bolaños and Maria Schlossmacher

This year the International Day of Forests (IDF) will address the exciting theme “Forests and Education”. It is an occasion to raise awareness, to inform and to educate a broad public, different stakeholders and forest-managers about forest-related topics.

Forests cover one third of land on Earth, and they perform crucial and vital functions around the world. Trees improve our lives both at a grand scale and at the local level. Despite those benefits, deforestation and consequences of climate change are among other great challenges for forests.

One outstanding example of how to integrate education into our work are the Marteloscope demonstration sites. The EFI Resilience Programme coordinates these forest education sites, which groups and excursions can regularly visit. Marteloscopes allow a deeper understanding of forest-management and the international network is constantly growing. We challenged our colleague Jakob Derks (INFORMAR Team) to explain what a marteloscope is in 30 seconds.

The European Forest Institute’s approach is very much related to this year’s motto: “Forests and Education”. Therefore we advocate for forest research and provide knowledge about forests. Investing in forestry education can change the world for the better. EFI staff sees education as a key motivation for our daily work throughout our different projects and facilities. Today we are happy to wear our EFI t-shirt to stimulate a new way of thinking, which envisions innovative wood solutions such as wood-based textiles, bioplastics and climate-smart building constructions.

EFI Bonn staff wearing our wood-based EFI T-shirts

Besides the daily work at all EFI facilities, this is another step towards enhancing the resilience of our forests to global changes. Moreover, interested groups and guests are always welcome to visit our offices in Bonn , located in the historical building of the former Federal Council of Germany.

Spring School visitors

Yesterday, an group of students participating in the Spring School organized by the Uni Bonn Department of Biology Didactics (FDdB) and the German Association of Biology, Biosciences and Biomedicine in Germany (VBIO) came to the Resilience Office and talked with our Principal Scientist of Forest Governance, PD Dr. Lukas Giessen, about EFI’s broad international activities in the different projects. This annual conference gathers junior scientists in the subject biology didactics from different universities such as Bonn, Karlsruhe, and Koblenz and Landau.

The students were interested in how EFI works to live up to our connecting knowledge to action mission, and stressed the importance of sharing information for educational purposes.

Not only today, on a day that is dedicated to forests worldwide, but every day do we work to contribute to increase awareness of how forests build a sustainable society.

Happy International Day of Forests!

The International Day of Forests was established by the UN General Assembly back in 2012 as a day to appreciate and value the importance of forests and to raise awareness of the threats forests are facing all over the globe.

29 European states have ratified by the Convention on the European Forest Institute (EFI). EFI facilitates and stimulates forest-related networking and further promotes the dissemination of policy-relevant information on forests and forest-management.