Forests as Nature-Based Solutions: Ecosystem Services, Multiple Benefits, and Trade-Offs

Dear Colleagues,

Nature-based Solutions (NbS), as conceptualized by IUCN, are actions related to effective protection, sustainable management, and restoration efforts to recover degraded ecosystems, which in turn has benefits on human well-being and the status of biodiversity. Thus, NbS are suitable means to address various societal challenges, including climate change, biodiversity losses, decreases in productivity, water security, risks of pests and diseases, as well as challenges regarding non-sustainable materials.

NbS are closely related to ecosystem services (ES) as these solutions foster the natural capacity of ecosystems to provide ES and thus leverage and enhance ES. As such, NbS rely on natural processes and ES to address challenges rather than relying solely on artificial, engineered solutions. Forests, being one of the most preserved and relatively abundant natural ecosystems, have great potential to provide NbS by, for example, sequestering carbon and mitigating climate change, regulating microclimates, decreasing the costs of cooling/heating, providing spaces for outdoor recreation and contributing to public health, providing wood as a building material and source of energy, providing soil cover and decreasing erosion rates, etc.

However, there are several challenges related to the implementation of NbS in forestry, such as the tendency to prioritize economic outcomes as opposed to engineered solutions, the lack of awareness and understanding of the concept of NbS and the benefits they bring, policy and regulatory barriers, the professional expertise needed for implementing NbS, information/data gaps regarding the ecological effectiveness of NbS, issues related to scale and replicability, etc.

We welcome papers that investigate those NbS-related challenges either (1) in the context of the ecological restoration, conservation, or enhancement of forests’ capacity to provide ES or (2) as studies of stakeholders’ (e.g., forest owners and decision makers) perceptions, attitudes, positions towards adapting/altering forest management to enhance the supply of ES, or even (3) the preferences of the general public and businesses regarding implementing different NBS-related strategies, as they are commonly the ones that benefit from the increased provision of forest ES.

Dr. Anže Japelj
Dr. Silvija Krajter Ostoić
Guest Editors

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• nature-based solutions
• forest ecosystem services
• forest owners
• trade-offs among ES
• policy uptake of NBS
• sustainable management
• environmental equality
• socio-ecological systems