2025

Iliev, Bogomil ; Bentsen, Niclas Scott; Brownell, Huntley; Droste, Nils; D'Amato, Dalia; Arto, Iñaki; May, Wilhelm ; Thomsen, Marianne

Highlights • We conceptualize a forest-based economy respecting climate and biodiversity goals. • Integrated methodologies allow for a holistic assessment and policy relevance. • The framework facilitates an integrated assessment of forest-based value chains. • Sustainable forest resource use can be evaluated by circularity and cascade utilisation. Abstract This study presents a conceptual framework for assessing the sustainability of the forest-based economy and resulting synergies and trade-offs between forest harvest, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. The framework adopts a comprehensive systems approach to map economic activities and associated flows of resources and embodied environmental impacts along the value chain. It builds on methodologies for environmental-economic national accounting, carbon accounting, life cycle assessment and national forest monitoring. The scope includes changes to the marketed ecosystem service of timber provision and the partially or non-marketed ecosystem services of carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. The study provides a structured approach for identifying pathways towards a nature-positive forest-based economy that can simultaneously preserve biodiversity, enhance carbon sequestration for climate benefits, and support sustainable wood resource extraction for downstream producers and consumers. The framework is intended to facilitate an integrated assessment of whether current trends in the forest-based economy could serve as effective strategies for achieving long-term climate neutrality and biodiversity conservation. Key contributions include the design of an operational framework that outlines modelling requirements, data needs, and knowledge gaps, The study emphasizes the necessity for integration of data on ecosystem services with national statistics and international modelling structures to enable robust assessments and informed policy evaluations.