Proposals will:

• Establish a European network to gather information on current developments in demo and long-term observation sites;
• Reinitiate EU participation in the International Co-operative Programme on the Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICP Forests) for long-term observations of forest ecosystems;
• Develop an evidence-based overview on current and planned forest restoration activities across Europe and their socio-economic and environmental impacts;
• Quantify possible synergies and trade-offs between contrasting forest management objectives at different spatial, temporal scales in different social environmental contexts in Europe;
• Analyse typical restoration cases to systematise knowledge on implementation successes and failures in specific regional settings, and distil best practices cases and business models for upscaling;
• Engage with key stakeholders and citizens to develop regionalised restoration trajectories through assessment of regional restoration pathways;
• Consider forward-looking forest conversion through adaptive forest management to mitigate/prevent future adverse effects;
• Improve communication and network/capacity building and exchange of experience, engagement with key stakeholders including national and regional policymakers and enable knowledge exchange beyond the forest community;
• Pilot climate-smart forestry measures and support forest restoration of damaged areas and degraded ecosystems in view of the diverse forest conditions, value chains and societal needs found across Europe.

Proposals may involve financial support to third parties, particularly for setting up of the observatory and for supporting the implementation and scaling-up of climate-smart restoration pilots.  The maximum amount to be granted to each third party is €150,000 as it is one of the main objectives of the action to provide financial support to third parties.
In this case, consortia must define the selection process of organisations, for which financial support will be granted. It is expected that up to 40% of the project budget will be devoted to grants to third parties.