Agata Konczal

• PhD in Cultural Anthropology
• Postdoctoral Researcher at Wageningen University & Research

Forest restoration is gaining importance in Europe. This study aims to investigate how forest restoration is understood in a European context, identify potential forest restoration conflicts, and explore the relationship between both understandings and conflicts. To achieve this, 46 semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders in 12...

In recent decades, there has been a global consensus on the urgent need for coordinated efforts to combat forest loss and degradation, given forests' critical roles in climate change mitigation, biodiversity, and local economies. Major policy initiatives, including the Bonn Challenge, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and the Eu-ropean Green...

Forest or land restoration in general features large on current environmental agendas. Multiple examples exist of past efforts to restore tree cover. Forest restoration proliferated in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe, but it has been pursued in multiple locations around the world and during different historical periods. This chapter rev...

Climate change alters the operational environment of forest management. The need to increase forest resilience and manage forests based on the best available knowledge is urgent. However, it is unclear to what extent scientific knowledge is integrated into practical forest management guidance. To explore how the integration of research works in for...

Combining different diverse data on human and environmental history during the Anthropocene is an extremely challenging task, particularly, if one wants to compare written or cartographic data with a whole range of environmental data recorded for more than the past 200–300 years. In this article, our objective was to demonstrate that one of the key...

This study assesses whether and to what extent national and regional policy developments meet the EU Forest Strategy goals. It analyses those policies in 15 countries in and outside the EU, as well as in three regions in Spain. The countries are: Austria (AT), Czech Republic (CZ), Finland (FI), Germany (DE), Ireland (IE), Italy (IT), Lithuania (LT)...

Integrative forest management approaches, aiming to combine the provision of multiple forest ecosystem services in the same forest area, are popular forest management concepts in Europe. Their understanding and application varies, however, across the continent. This paper looks at one dimension of integrative forest management approaches in particu...

The development of societies, including spiritual development, is closely connected to forests. The larger interrelations among changing societies, transforming forest landscapes, and evolving spiritual values related to forests have yet to be extensively considered. Addressing this research gap is important to avoid the neglect of spiritual values...

This article looks at the state/forest relationship and how and when the state creates discourses about the forest to serve its current objectives and policies. It is a case study of the Polish state and its approach to forest restoration practices. Looking at past actions since 1918 through which the Polish state has restored the forest, the text...

What is Closer to Nature Forest Management? Closer-to-Nature Forest Management is a new concept proposed in the EU Forest Strategy for 2030, which aims to improve the conservation values and climate resilience of multifunctional, managed forests in Europe. Building on the latest scientific evidence, this report attempts to define the concept based...

Deliverable 1.2 is intended to be a guide, a structured interpretation and evaluation of the current knowledge used to collate evidence on intended outcomes and unintended impacts of UF-NBS for urban ecosystem regeneration and human wellbeing. The information reported herein is based on the compilation of a reference-recorded knowledge repository o...

Governance, institutional and economic frameworks in China and Europe are considered to be decisive for the design, implementation and impacts of urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS). Several lines of inquiry were established to focus the analysis; these were developed in a co-design process with project partners. To provide an evidence...

The maintenance, conservation, and appropriate enhancement of biodiversity remains an important goal for forest management in Europe. Biodiversity is generally considered valuable per se as well as being important for the adaptability and stability of forests. Forest management can support biodiversity through a range of practices – such as support...

All across Europe, the increasing importance attributed to forest biodiversity has led to forest management practices that try to incorporate conservation practices into forestry. This Integrated Forest Management (IFM) is a popular but heterogeneous concept that has been applied in different ways to accommodate various local traditions, climatic,...

The tension between biodiversity conservation and multipurpose forest management may lead to conflicts. An internationally prominent example is the Białowieża Forest Massif (BFM), an extensive forest complex with high levels of naturalness. We apply a systematic, multidisciplinary assessment process to review empirical evidence on different dimensi...

During the last few years (2016-2019) forestry in Poland has received special attention from domestic and international audiences. In particular, the conflict relating to the Bialowieza Forest in Eastern Poland has been widely covered by the media. Yet there reminds a lack of understanding relating to Polish forestry paradigms. There are only a few...

Integrated forest management (IFM) can help reconcile critical trade-offs between goals in forest management, such as nature conservation and biomass production. The challenge of IFM is dealing with these trade-offs at the level of practical forest management, such as striving for compromises between biomass extraction and habitat retention. This p...

Supplementary data to https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110670.

The Białowieża Forest is a large forest complex recognised worldwide for its biodiversity richness. It is situated on the border between Poland and Belarus. Białowieża Forest has been a place of a long-time conflict between biodiversity conservation and land use aimed at wood production. The most recent controversy (2015 - 2018) related to the stat...

Artykuł porusza zagadnienie „gajów pamięci” – ich sadzenia oraz organizowania wokół nich aktywności przez polskich leśników. W tych działaniach wykorzystana zostaje pamiętająca funkcja drzew. W ramach polskiego leśnictwa drzewa nie mają jedynie rosnąć – nie są wyłącznie skarbem natury. Mają uczyć pamiętania i współuczestniczą w tworzeniu konkretnej...

Czym jest las i kto ma prawo o nim mówić? W antropologii środowiska, a zwłaszcza antropologii lasu, nie ma jednoznacznej odpowiedzi na to pytanie. Autorka wykorzystuje badania etnograficzne oraz analizę procesów „instytucjonalizacji natury”, by pokazać, że w polskim leśnictwie las nie jest kategorią daną i niezmienną, ale powstaje w wyniku zderzeni...

n this article we present research that took place in two separate forest regions, the southern Yukon Territory, Canada, and the Tuchola Forest region of Poland. Though undertaken separately, the authors discovered that a linking concept in both projects was that forests were the subject of numerous and shifting perceptions by locals. As a means of...