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Description
Over the last decade, we have been increasingly confronted with the effects of climate change, which are becoming more visible and intense (e.g. heat waves, droughts, floods, etc.). Climate change is also one of the main causes of biodiversity loss. The project "ForestNet" addresses the loss of biodiversity in Slovenian forests due to climate change and economic exploitation of forests. The solution to preserving biodiversity in forests, allowing forest ecosystems to function normally even in times of climate crisis, is the creation of protected areas - forest reserves. Only biodiverse ecosystems can provide benefits for society, e.g. water and air filtration, carbon storage, soil retention, a source of raw materials and space for relaxation, recreation, etc. Forest reserves are natural forests that are left to develop naturally and are no longer managed. In the course of the partners'' past activities, the need to systematically and comprehensively address the issue of scarcity and to establish forest reserves also on the land of physical owners has become apparent. The ForestNet project is addressing the problem through an advocacy campaign, where we will build evidence to establish legal-formal options for contractual and trust protection on forest land owned by private owners, thus enabling the establishment of forest reserves of smaller sizes (e.g. 1ha and larger) on land owned by private owners. Private owners will be entitled to compensation by committing to cease forest management in their forests, while still owning the land, which is not the practice for establishing forest reserves and protected areas. The project "ForestNet" addresses the problem of disconnected civil society in the field of forest protection, which is reflected in the absence of timely and professional responses to ad-hoc interventions in forest space and the lack of civil society participation in the processes of adoption of strategic and legislative documents.