43 partners from 22 organisations and 11 countries met in Bonn, Germany, for the Kick-Off meeting of the Spurring INnovations for forest eCosystem SERvices in Europe (SINCERE) project.

The event, held on 25-26 January 2018 took place in the historic “Seminarraum”, where meetings of the German Parliament’s Council of the Elders once took place, and where the EFI Bonn Office and  Resilience Programme has recently established its offices.

Presentations from work package leaders gave an overview on the objectives of the project and tasks ahead. Subsequently, the eleven innovation cases were introduced, spanning topics such as biodiversity, carbon storage, spiritual services and tourism and introducing mechanisms such as auctions for ecosystem services, certification, leasing, new laws and participatory governance.

Altogether, the presentations indicated not only the importance and timeliness of the topic of innovation for forest ecosystem services, but also the potential to advance innovation and a supportive policy environment for this issue in Europe and beyond.

The SINCERE project consortium comes from Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Peru, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Spain and Switzerland.

SINCERE receives ca. 4 Mio Euro in funding from the European Commission’s H2020 programme through the RUR-05-2017 call,  Novel public policies, business models and mechanisms for the sustainable supply of and payment for forest ecosystem services.