Youth Position on the Future of Europe’s Forests
Above – Announcement of the youth position paper on the future of the Europ’s forests!
The IFSA 9th Ministerial Conference Task Force (IFSA MC TF) has released its position paper titled “Youth Position on the Future of Europe’s Forests”.
With this position paper, we aim to convey the youth’s perspective on the FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Decisions and Declarations, announced at the 9th FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Conference. The goal is to foster intergenerational dialogue and provide concrete suggestions on youth engagement in high-level political processes. The position paper follows four main topics: Forest policy processes, Sustainable Forest Management, FoRISK facility, and Green Forest Jobs and Forest Education.
This position paper was developed through a longstanding collaboration between IFSA and FOREST EUROPE, offering a unique opportunity to bring youth perspectives on the future of Europe’s forests directly to European policymakers. Two youth consultation workshops were held, on the 6th of April and the 3rd of May 2024, involving 9 international and European forestry and related-sciences youth organizations. With these workshops, ideas were gethered from students and young professionals on specific topics of the FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Documents. Based on these inputs, the IFSA MC TF developed an initial version of the position paper, and further refinement was achieved through the writing procedure, reviews, and contributions from workshop participants.
The position paper was released during the Ministerial Conference, between the 1st and 2nd of October. Two IFSA MC TF speakers joined the representatives of the FOREST EUROPE signatory states on stage, and where they had an opportunity to present and discuss the paper’s content. This was a great opportunity to announce the youth position and ideas, bringing examples on successful youth inclusion in forest policy, expressing youth vision of future state of European forests, readiness to contribute in the activities of Forisk facility, and suggesting smoothing of the transition from education to jobs.
The position paper was developed with the contribution of six IFSA members: Volodymyr Kravets, Sandesh KC, Marsia Moutzouri, Alina Lehikoinen, Raghav Sharma, and Ole Gramann – working in collaboration with Delia Cretu from Young European Rewilders, and Michael Kinkelbur from Arbeitsgemeinschaft Naturgemäße Waldwirtschaft. The process was facilitated by FOREST EUROPE and took 6 months with significant dedication from our volunteers.
This initiative sets a powerful example of youth inclusion in the policy-making progress. Let’s direct our efforts into making initiatives in kind a standard worldwide!