UFOREST

UFOREST is a three-year Knowledge Alliance project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission. The UFOREST (Urban Forest) project and alliance aims at promoting Europe’s innovation capacity among universities, cities and businesses to deliver a new approach to UF. The project will primarily focus on the EU and UFOREST partner countries of Italy, Spain, Romania, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden but will have a strong EU-global dimension and transferability potential, capitalizing on existing national and international networks of the partnership. 

Urban forests are effective Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) that help mitigate the effects of climate change while improving air quality, urban temperature and lifestyle of modern cities. Main global cities are setting challenging urban reforestation targets while struggling to face related costs and citizens engagement to meet current changing and future needs. On the other hand, urban planning and forestry sciences have failed to provide interdisciplinary training to engage with innovative public-private Urban Forestry (or UF) initiatives and trends.

The main objectives of UFOREST are:

1. To facilitate the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge among universities, local authorities, and business coming from four key interdisciplinary approaches that often are not cooperating: urban landscape planning, forest ecology, socio-economics and, information and communication technologies;
2. To promote a new, innovative and multidisciplinary global blended training course and programme on UF for both students and professionals;
3. To stimulate entrepreneurial attitude of students, researchers and professionals to provide public and private sectors with innovative and cost-effective UF solutions.