Forest restoration paradigms and conflicts in Europe

Forest restoration is gaining importance in Europe. This study aims to investigate how forest restoration is understood in a European context, identifies potential forest restoration conflicts and explores the relationship between stakeholder perceptions and conflicts. To achieve this, 46 semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders in 12 forest restoration case studies in 12 European countries. The results show three distinct ways in which forest restoration is understood by the stakeholders, i.e., ‘forest restoration paradigms’, which may arise from how different actor groups percieve forest related problems and their management. Looking deeper, our results suggest that the perceptions of forest problems may be determined by the ecological and socio-ecological context and the collective values and beliefs of actor groups. In addition, when these underlying values and beliefs clash in a certain context, forest restoration conflicts may occur. For effective forest restoration implementation in Europe, it is important to investigate how stakeholders understand forest restoration and the contexts in which differing perceptions emerge.