Charting the final year of INFORMA: Progress and pathways forward
By Rina Tsubaki and Santiago Alarcón.
Surrounded by the breathtaking Carpathian region in Romania, the city of Suceava recently hosted the seventh edition of the INFORMA General Meeting. Held at the prestigious Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava, this two-day gathering brought together 23 representatives from 11 partner organisations on-site, with an additional 10 participants joining remotely online. With the project entering its final year, the meeting served as a crucial ‘checkpoint’ to ensure the project remains on course to meet its promised objectives.
Over two packed days, partners reviewed key developments across all work packages. One of the key focuses of INFORMA is the well-designed interactions and involvement of local stakeholders to ensure effective scientific knowledge transfer and capacity building. While fieldwork across the five bioregions continues to provide valuable data on aboveground biomass, deadwood, and belowground carbon, acting as key inputs for our technical aspects of scientific work, it’s crucial to consider the real-world applicability and transferability at the practical level. Stakeholder insights are therefore helping us design, for example, a training format for the science-practice interface in the ‘INFORMA train the trainers’ activities. We are also in the final phase of ‘feedback loops’, which involve questionnaires designed to tailor future forest management training to the needs of local stakeholders. These insights are essential for driving transformative change, with a strong emphasis on on-the-ground perspectives.
We also explored the growing role of ‘integration fora’, spaces where researchers, practitioners, and policymakers come together to exchange science-based knowledge. These fora are proving essential for translating research into actionable forest management strategies. Data collection is nearing completion, and scientific publications are expected later this year. These will focus on assessing the impact of forest management on carbon stocks using remote sensing technologies, with potential applications in carbon certification.
As the project enters its final year, our focus shifts to effectively communicating and disseminating the scientific results. We’ve discussed a range of strategies for engaging diverse stakeholders, moving beyond the traditional “scientist-to-scientist” dialogue to include non-experts and key multipliers, such as the media. Recently, our partners from Climate-KIC led an impactful session at the Carbon Farming Summit, where they highlighted the role of forestry in carbon crediting. This session helped broaden our outreach to larger, often harder-to-reach, stakeholder communities.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to announce an upcoming session at the Climate Arena Conference in Budapest in October 2025. This will provide a unique platform for dialogue with investigative journalists eager to explore nature restoration issues across Europe. These types of engagement activities are vital for raising awareness about the scientific advancements INFORMA is generating and ensuring that our findings resonate with a broader audience.
With several peer-reviewed publications expected by the end of the year, we encourage you to stay tuned and keep a close eye on our scientific publications section for the latest updates.