The European Forest Institute (EFI), originally founded in 1993 in Joensuu and later transformed into an international organization in 2003, is a membership-based forest research organization with a special focus on forest policy. The institute has several facilities across Europe. While the headquarters are in Joensuu, Finland, other officers can be found in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Furthermore, it supports the European FLEGT programme across Asia with further facilities in China and Malaysia.
EFI has a wide focus on forest policy that reaches from research to policy support and project implementation. The research is conducted in five key areas: Bioeconomy, Resilience, Governance, Policy Support, and Mediterranean.
The activities entail the facilitation of forest-related networking and knowledge sharing, production of studies and research papers, as well as the support of the EU REDD and the EU FLEGT process. Beyond that, it regularly collaborates with the European Commission, in particular the Directorate-General Environment.
To date, the EFI was ratified by more than 25 countries across Europe, and has more than 120 member organizations, such as NGOs, industry research centres and universities.

IFSA’s Engagement

In recent years, the EFI has grown to be one of IFSA’s most outstanding partners. Together with IUFRO and IFSA, and the support of the German Government, EFI leads a global study on employment in the forest sector and investigates the future labour market for forestry students. The project, which started in 2018, has become a milestone of our association and will deliver key insights on green jobs and labour market dynamics.
Beyond this collaboration, IFSA is regularly invited to send student delegations to conferences and events across Europe. Moreover, we were appointed to chair the EFI annual meeting in 2020, as a sign for the strong commitment to students and inclusion of youth perspectives on forest policy.
Additionally, the EFI continues to support IFSA through their extraordinary hospitality in Bonn and all over Europe, and allows regular high-level IFSA meetings.

Polina Blinova is the Head of EFI Sub-Commission