Pan-European sustainable forest management indicators for assessing climate-smart forestry in Europe

The increasing demand for innovative forest management strategies to adapt to and mitigate climate change, and benefit forest production, so called Climate-Smart Forestry, calls for a tool to monitor and evaluate their implementation and their effect on forest development over time. The Pan-European set of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management is considered one of the most important tools for assessing many aspects of forest management and its sustainability. This study offers an analytic approach to select a subset of indicators to support the implementation of Climate-Smart Forestry. Based on a literature review and the analytic hierarchical approach, 10 indicators were selected to assess, in particular, mitigation and adaptation. These indicators were used to assess the state of Climate-Smart Forestry trend in Europe from 1990 to 2015, using data from the reports on the State of Europe%s Forests. Forest damage, tree species composition and carbon stock were the most important indicators. Though the trend was overall positive with regard to adaptation and mitigation, its evaluation was partly hindered by the lack of data. We advocate for increased efforts to harmonize international reporting and for further integrating the goals of Climate- Smart Forestry in national and European-level forest policy making