PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Forests are an essential factor if the EU is to reach its climate goals. Forest management is the main means to improve their ecosystem services, as well as to increase their resilience to climate change. These objectives can be specifically reached by increasing the carbon stocks of forests and reducing the impacts of the supply chain for wood products through the development of incentives and credit trading schemes for companies in the wood sector.
OBJECTIVES
The main goals of the LIFECO2PES&PEF project were as follows:
- Analyse the ecosystem services of three forest areas located in the Alpine and Tosco-Emiliano Apennines regions in Italy;
- Create a system for certification of credits linked to forest ecosystem services;
- Evaluate the entire lifecycle of the wood industry, in accordance with the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology, to minimise the industrys environmental impacts; and
- Support policymakers in improving forest management through the Rural Development Funds and promoting wood for energy use.
RESULTS
The project has achieved the following results:
- Quantification of the carbon sink (baseline) and assessment of risks from fires, windthrows and landslides in three Italian forest areas: Fusine (Udine), Comunalie Parmensi (Parma) and Demanio Forlivese (Forlì).
- Implementation of sustainable forest management, entailing the increase of ecosystem services, through cutting and silvicultural activities in demo lots located in each of the three pilot areas (50 ha overall).
- Development of a "Product Environmental Footprint" (PEF) study for four companies of forest sector and preparation of “Improvement Plans” to reduce the footprint of specific wood products.
- Setup of a toolkit for companies in the wood sector to help them calculate the environmental footprint of wood pallets and provide indications on how to reduce their impacts.
- Development of a method for the calculation of carbon stored in wood products and wood species through an IT platform available online.
- Development of Standard Rules for the certification of ecosystem credits generated by sustainable forest management, application of the rules in the three project areas and economic quantification of the related credits.
- The first set of ecosystem credits, generated by the forest interventions implemented by the project, were put on the voluntary market through a selected trade platform and sold to a private industrial company.
- Procedures to include ecosystem credits in the Green Bonds system, in accordance with the “Guide for EU Green Bond Standard".
- Regional Guidelines for Wood Consumption, intended for policy stakeholders, to promote the use of local wood for durable, reusable or recyclable products and ensure the long-term storage of CO2.
- Publication of two regional regulations (Emilia-Romagna and Friuli Venezia-Giulia) to support sustainable wood chains at local level through the generations of ecosystem credits and adoption of Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) in wood sector.
- Design of a manual for the project replicability at EU level.
