Partners

The project is coordinated by the European Forest Institute (EFI) and it will be implemented in cooperation with University of Hamburg (UHH) and University of Leuven (KU Leuven) which are the coordinating organisations of the EFI Project Center SURF (SUpporting the global implementation of REDD+ and FLEGT).

European Forest Institute (EFI)
EFI is an international organisation, established by European States. EFI conducts research and provides policy support on issues related to forests. EFI facilitates and stimulate forest-related networking and promote the dissemination of unbiased and policy-relevant information on forests and forestry. EFI also advocate for forest research and for the use of scientifically sound information as a basis for forest policies. These activities are conducted by our HQ and Regional Offices. More information can be found here.

World Forestry, University of Hamburg (UHH)
The World Forestry serves as an excellent academic institution and as a hub for forest and environmental research and outreach activities. Major research areas of the institute include: international forest development and forest policy, sustainable management of all types of forests, climate change and forest biometrics, spatial statistics and forest information systems, small-scale forestry (community-based forest management, and household-based forest management), REDD+, FLEGT, and international forest monitoring. Currently, the institute is implementing several projects which deal with land-use management, forest carbon inventories, assessment of forest degradation, combined EO/ in-situ forest inventories, community-based and household-based forestry, economics of forest management, criteria and indicators for SFM, and developing participatory biodiversity monitoring system.

Since many years, the institute has been active in tropical and sub-tropical countries, in particular Brazil, Nicaragua, Surinam, Ghana, Guyana, Nepal, Indonesia, Madagascar, and Viet Nam. The World Forestry team is composed of biometricians, spatial analysts, land-use planning specialists, remote sensing and GIS specialists, community/household-based forest management experts, modellers, and economists. More information can be found here.

University of Leuven (KU Leuven)
The Catholic University of Leuven’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (KU Leuven) conducts research and research synthesis on ecology and management, sustainability and global governance through the Forest Ecology and Management research group and the interdisciplinary and interuniversity research platform KLIMOS that it is coordinating. Research is carried out in several tropical countries, e.g. Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Vietnam and Indonesia.

SURF project centre
In 2014, the EFI Board accepted the proposal from several of its Associated Members to establish a Project Centre – SURF – that aims at performing interdisciplinary synthesis, foresight and knowledge transfer on ecosystem services of forests worldwide. SURF will activate and strengthen European and international research in the subjects of REDD+ and FLEGT and will develop synergies among these subjects. UHH and KU Leuven are the coordinating organisations of the project centre. More information can be found here.