: Learning from forestry innovations for the European Green Deal. A research approach

: ABSTRACT Forests and wooded lands are important in the European Green Deal (EGD). This growth strategy for a sustainable green transition in Europe goes hand in hand with constraints for production-oriented forestry and emergent bioeconomy strategies, thus challenging established practices. Therefore, forestry innovations may be key to facilitate the implementation of the EGD. Linking innovations with broader policy goals requires lesson-drawing of policymakers at different levels of European governance. The article reveals enablers and barriers of innovations in forestry and arrives at two hypotheses on forest-related policy learning for the EGD: First of all, policymakers’ beliefs determine lesson-drawing on the role that forests and forestry can and should play in Europe’s ambitious growth strategy. Secondly, genuine interest in experiential knowledge and deliberation about ‘what works’ in innovation practice can help generate ownership of the forest sector in the EGD.

of the Land Use and Land Use Change & Forestry (LULUCF) regulation in 2018, which included forests into the Union's climate mitigation targets.
The EGD emphasizes the supporting and regulating ecosystem services of forests but downplays forests' provisioning and cultural services.Its focus on biodiversity, nature protection and carbon sequestration in current forest-related EU policies hampers production-oriented forest management regimes and the forest-based bioeconomy (Aggestam and Giurca, 2021;Köhl et al., 2021).Moreover, the EGD does not acknowledge needs for adaptations in forest management.Forests play multiple functions for society, business, and the environment.To sustain them under global climate change impact, however, requires dedicated efforts and increased skills of forest owners and managers.
Accordingly, forests and forestry have great potential to facilitate the ambition of a sustainable green transition in Europe yet face significant challenges.Innovations in forestry may be key to support the implementation of the EGD.Innovation is understood here as "the process of making changes to something established by introducing something new" (Mann et al., 2022: 283;Weiss et al., 2020).Such processes of making changes include technologies, products, processes, or management approaches that seek to improve the provision of forest ecosystem services (FES) (Hansen et al., 2019;Louda et al., 2023).
The present article argues that EGD implementation can benefit from forestry innovations if facilitated by policy learning.Empirically, it directs attention to "lessondrawing" about adoption of a specific innovation program of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in forestry and how it relates to the EGD.The lesson-drawing notion was introduced by Rose (1993;2004) and is used frequently in policy and science.Lessondrawing can lead to the "updating of knowledge and beliefs about public policy", as Dunlop andRadaelli (2020: 1125) have put it, and result from social interaction, personal-organizational experience, and/or provision of new or different evidence.
Clearly, "policymakers do not seek fresh ideas for their own sake but to promote political satisfaction" (Rose, 2004: 2).
To develop the research approach that links learning from forestry innovations with the EGD, the article progresses in three steps.First, the methods and research context are explained, including document study and the policy learning approach.Secondly, initial results from the desk research are presented.The article concludes with hypothesis about policy learning from innovation practice in forestry in the context of the EGD.

: 2 METHODS
This section describes the bodies of literature and documents which underlie the methodology for research on policy learning about forestry innovations in European governance.These include: (1) Policy documents on the EGD and its assessment in forest policy analysis, (2) Recent studies on innovations in forestry, and (3) Conceptual articles on policy learning.The implementation of a specific CAP measure for innovations in agriculture and forestry is the research context.It is described at the end of this section.

EGD-related policy documents
EU policies and strategies that relate to forests and forestry are abundant.Here a narrow focus on the EGD is applied and a content analysis conducted to single out how forests and forestry are covered in the text and which cross-references to other policy documents are made.Moreover, literature from forest policy analysis that examines the EGD is referenced to highlight the contested landscape of EU forest-related policymaking.

Research on innovations in forestry
Eighteen articles and one book chapter on innovations in forestry and agroforestry, published mainly between 2019 and 2023, are reviewed (Table 1) to identify definitions of innovation in forestry and the influencing factors (facilitators and barriers).Moreover, contributions from management studies and a MSc thesis are included to explore the OECD definition of innovation ("Other"), which informs many studies on innovations in forestry.The search was based on existing knowledge of the research field, ScienceDirect (key words: forest, innovation), and recommendations from peers.

The lesson-drawing concept in the policy learning literature
Research on policy learning is based in political science.It emerged in the late 1980s/ early 1990s to broaden the range of explanatory variables for policy change.Whereas power and interests have dominated past accounts, debate and argument have then been emphasized (see Héritier, 1993;Majone, 1989;Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1999;Sotirov et al., 2017).The "argumentative turn" to policymaking directs attention to beliefs and assumptions about causality and responsibility, needs and interests, preferences, and obligations.It allows us "to examine closely the communicative and rhetorical strategies that planners and analysts use to direct attention to the problems and options they are assessing" (Fischer and Forester, 1993: 14).
The "lesson-drawing" notion is a pragmatic concept that fits nicely with the research context of the present article.It refers to policymakers' lesson-drawing from "foreign experience" to improve public policy "at home" (Rose, 2004: 4).This process evolves through different stages, including search for lesson-drawing opportunities and scanning of alternatives, sensemaking to decide how lessons from abroad can fit national circumstances, identification of means and ends of a lesson, adoption, and evaluation.Outward looking behaviour and problem-oriented search trigger learning.

Research context
In the last CAP programming period (2014-2020), the EU introduced funding for socalled Operational Groups (OGs).: 3 RESULTS

Forests and forestry in the EGD
The EGD consists of eight elements.Forests and forestry are mentioned in three of them, namely: (1) Preserving and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity, (2) Increasing the EU's climate ambition for 2030 and 2050, and (3) From 'Farm to Fork': designing a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system.Table 2 shows, which goals the EGD foresees for forests, the legislative basis it is referring to for pursuance of these goals, and the type of policy instrument for definition of measures.
The combination of EGD goals with policy instruments reveals that "these instruments

Enablers and barriers of innovations in forestry
Analysis of selected studies in the literature on innovations in forestry revealed different influencing factors (enablers and barriers).Table 3 gives an overview.The factors are described with reference to a range of indicators.

: 4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Linking innovations in forestry with learning for policy goals and measures implies that public policy is not just the result of power and interests but also of debate and argument for the sake of enhanced problem-solving.Forest policy debate, however, is often polarized between environmental-conservationist interests on the one hand and forestry and commodity-oriented interests on the other.Previous studies on forest policy-oriented learning in Germany showed that actor beliefs tend to remain stable and divided in terms of present and future aspects of sustainable forest management (Sotirov et al., 2017).Similar divisions can be observed in European forest governance (Winkel and Sotirov, 2016).
Drawing on Sotirov and colleagues', it can be hypothesized that policy actors who "largely project their past and present core beliefs onto the images of the future scenarios" ( Sotirov et al., 2017: 11), including one in which forests play key roles in Europe's green transition, do not learn substantially but in strategic ways.For example, forest policy actors convinced of the crucial role of multi-functional forestry for the decarbonization of Europe's economy will cooperate with others if it serves their interest to promote the forest-based bioeconomy.In this view, learning from innovation practice will be limited to those areas that fit with the legislative basis of the EGD while stabilizing or even deepening the divisions between the actors involved.
On Empirical research in the field of forestry OGs and the policy learning setting that encourages lesson-drawing for the EGD will be conducted in the frame of the Horizon Europe FOREST4EU project to test both hypotheses and explore the underlying research approach.

Table 1 . Research base innovations in forestry No of articles Journal Title Country of research context Methodology
The focus on enablers and barriers of innovations in forestry allows to test most factors with Likert-type survey questions.The issue is different with respect to government and policy as influencing factor(s) in innovation.Whereas governments perceived as accessible, supportive, and collaborative may be more likely to facilitate innovation in forestry, there is less clarity about the goals and means of forest-related policies and how they affect innovation.
(Callegari and Nybakk, 2022)ng about 'what works' in innovation practice (and what doesn't) has potential to effect policy change -in terms of reframing and/or abandoning (parts of) policies.As Ludvig et al. (2021) pointed out, such change is not simply the result of experience with bottom-up initiatives but rather the result of a complex dynamic between different levels in forest governance, of networking and coordination, and a shared interest in forestry innovations that are not (merely) profit-oriented(Callegari and Nybakk, 2022).Viewed from this perspective, it is hypothesized that lesson-drawing from innovation practice can generate ownership of the forest sector in the EGD if it is not market-based and due attention given to the feedback loops and sense-making activities of the various actors involved.