The following paper “ToSIA—A tool for sustainability impact assessment of forest-wood-chains” Lindner, M., Suominen, T., Palosuo, T., Garcia-Gonzales, J., Verweij, P., Zudin, S. and Päivinen, R., 2009, published on line. To access the paper click here.

The Congress will include one week of plenary sessions, parallel sessions, presentations, discussion, parallel events and exhibits. 

Deadline for abstract submission is 31 December 2009, although submissions well in advance of the deadline are strongly encouraged. Acceptance decisions will be made no later than 10 February 2010.

The event will bring together leading scientists and policy makers to take stock of current research into the management of ecosystem services for human well-being.

More info on here.

The European Commission is preparing a major conference on “Sustainable development: a challenge for European research” that will take place in Brussels on 26-28 May 2009. This conference will initiate a structured dialogue on how to reform European research to best respond to sustainable development challenges. It will also investigate ways for improving the science-policy link and the relationship between science and society. Call for papers and competition deadline: 15 January 2009

The Final EFORWOOD Conference will be held in Uppsala, Sweden, from 23-24 September 2009. The conference will bring together researchers, policy makers and practitioners from all over the world in discussion about  Sustainability Impact Assessment of the Forest-based Sector.

The EFORWOOD project was presented on The International Conference “The European Forest-Based Sector: Bio-Responses to Address New Climate and Energy Challenges?”  held from 6-8 November 2008, in Nancy, France.

Assessing Sustainability of Forest Based Activities in Rural Areas of the Northern Periphery (Northern ToSIA) project will test and develop the applications of the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA) together with regional development bodies and forest industry companies in Finland, Sweden, Scotland and Norway.

The workshop was held from 24 to 26 of September 2008 at IFER, Jilové u Prahy, Czech Republic. The main purpose of the workshop was to build the topology of the EU-FWC in the EFORWOOD database using the EFORWOOD database client.

New possibilities for ToSIA application on local level raised on road show meeting in Latvia this August.

Once more the EFORWOOD road-show was presented to the stakeholders. This time it was during the 6th COST Domain Committee (DC) on Forests, their Products and Services (FPS) held in Vienna on 10-11th September 2008. The presentation was given by Jean-Michel Carnus from INRA.

The 5th FTP conference offered an excellent networking opportunity to those working in Europe’s forest-based business. The EFORWOOD project was presented as part of the satellite event “Forest-based sector projects in the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme – introduction, findings and experiences” by project coordinator Kaj Rosen (Skogforsk) and module 1 leader, Risto Päivinen (EFI). 

Growing towards the Future - Joint innovation for successful forest-based business in Europe

The 5th FTP conference will be held in Slovenia, president of the European Union during the first half of 2008. Venue will be the beautifully situated alpine town of Kranjska Gora. The conference will offer an excellent networking opportunity to those working in Europe's forest-based business.

Being co-organiser of the international conference Impact of Land Use Changes in Berlin 6-9 April 2008, EFORWOOD partners gave in total 9 presentations. Here you can find the slide versions of the presentations. Among other things results from the second prototype of ToSIA was presented.

The second ToSIA prototype is now available. The report aims to inform researchers as well as interested stakeholders and the general public about the progress of work on the sustainability impact assessment (SIA) approach in EFORWOOD.

The aim of the session was to share experiences on best practices in data collection and to provide guidance on how to calculate/estimate indicator values for which data are not readily available.

The first EFORWOOD Conference took place in Brussels on 1st and 2nd October 2007, hosted by three confederation partners in the project, CEPI, CEI-Bois and CEPF.

The second Expert Advisory Panel meeting took place on Brussels on 14th June 2007.

The first prototype of the ToSIA (tool for sustainability impact assessment) has been produced.