Guidelines for the Development of Upscaling Plans

Forest restoration has a long history in Europe and activities for improving forest conditions implemented for a wide range of reasons (Erdozain et al. 2025; Menéndez-Miguélez et al. 2025). Hence, there are many hundreds – if not thousands – of sites across Europe intended as demonstration or pilot projects for innovative approaches to restoration [e.g. Menéndez-Miguélez et al. 2024a; Restore database]. However, these projects have generally not led to sufficient widespread uptake of forest restoration action to meet policy aspirations (Ockendon et al. 2025). One common reason for this is a gap between those establishing and running the pilot projects and those who have the resources and agency to enable larger-scale adoption of the good techniques being piloted or demonstrated.

The SUPERB project developed a suite of 12 demonstration sites in ecologically degraded forest landscapes across Europe between 2021 and 2025. These represent a range of challenges and stressor that call for different restoration actions. The demonstration areas work with local stakeholders to address these challenges and seek to find practical solutions that ensure biodiversity and range of ecosystem services and benefits.

As a “pilot” intended to test and explore specific restoration actions for further implementation in other areas, a route-map provides an important starting point for others to build upon. Given that restoration is high on the policy agenda, your route-map may also provide inspiration to other pilot projects and collectively support the development of European wide and long-term processes that ensures the delivery of nature’s benefits to people and help protecting forest biodiversity. As such, your contribution aligns with the ambitious goals of the EU Green Deal and global environmental agreements.