SIMWOOD | Sustainable Innovative Mobilisation of Wood

The SIMWOOD project aims to increase the mobilisation of wood from forests and woodlands in Europe. The project reached out to stakeholders and regional initiatives with the aim of ‘waking up’ and mobilising forest owners, promoting collaborative forest management and ensuring sustainable forest functions. The project focused on seven general objectives: 1. Understand the current and future motivations of forest owners, 2. Promote forest governance and joint action of stakeholders, 3. Develop multifunctional forest management adapted to forest types, 4. Integrate forest ecosystem services while minimizing environmental impacts, 5. Establish improved adapted forest harvesting techniques, 6. Demonstrate collaborative regional initiatives and solutions, 7. Recommend tailor-made instruments to policymakers, 8. Encourage broad outreach and exploitation in EU regions.

The project involved 22 Regional Pilot Projects to test how well-adapted combinations of measures can contribute to increasing stakeholders’ capacity to mobilise more wood in the participating countries. Every Pilot Projects was to engage stakeholders and help them design projects targeted at particular issues and barriers to mobilisation. We then worked with them to evaluate the outcomes and impacts of their work. We also tested technical developments (e.g. new silviculture schemes, sustainable management computer tools, logging operation methods) and the willingness of organisations to reconsider business-as-usual actions, which provided relevant outputs to encourage new practices and strategies. The main project results are summarized in a Pilot Projects guidance report, a Handbook for wood mobilisation in Europe and an EU Policy Brief.  

SIMWOOD was a four-year EU FP7-KBBE collaborative project, with a total budget of 7.5 million euros and a 5.9 million euros EC contribution. The project consortium included 27 partners from 11 European countries: 13 national research organisations, 11 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), 2 European organisations (EFI and JRC), 1 project support organisation. The Coordinator is LWF Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, Germany. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 613762 from 2013 to 2017.