The Small4Good project employs four Living Labs (LLs) in Nordic (Norway), Eastern (Romania), Central (Germany/Switzerland), and Southern (Spain) Europe. These LLs serve as open innovation ecosystems, integrating research and innovation processes in representative environments. Each LL collaborates closely across the project’s five research work packages (WPs) to ensure comprehensive stakeholder engagement and address innovation adoption barriers.
WP1 established and runs the LLs, organizing workshops, demonstrations, and excursions to engage stakeholders, ensuring broad support for multifunctional management approaches. These LLs will act as good practice examples central to the dissemination strategy aimed at forest owner organizations across Europe.
WP2 focuses on understanding motivations and barriers for multifunctional management by small-forest owners. By analysing and clustering forest owner types, WP2 identifies starting points for integrating ecological needs and forest owners' capabilities into business and management models. PES schemes and carbon farming are central to realizing multifunctional management on a large scale, and WP2 investigates forest owners' preferences for these schemes' design properties.
WP3 aims to identify business models for small-scale forest properties owned by traditional and non-traditional forest owners. The models ensure owners maintain or improve financial returns while providing products for a forest-based bio-economy and contributing to carbon storage and biodiversity protection. WP3 will compare current business models across the LLs, identifying leverage points for innovative management supported by suitable institutional arrangements. Promising business models will be developed and discussed with local actors in the LLs, then refined into actual business models for specific properties.
WP4 translates the business models from WP3 into recommendations for silviculture and operation systems. These models aim to improve smallholders' forest quality for ecosystem services, support the EU Forest Strategy for 2030, and adapt management practices to climate change. Operational systems focus on efficient low-volume operations using small equipment and emerging technologies like AI, robotics, and sensing. Selected systems will be implemented and analysed in LLs for costs, environmental impacts, and ability to support the generation of ecosystem services, iteratively refined with input from WP3.
WP5 develops digital tools and applications to support multifunctional management and engage small-forest owners actively. This includes visualization tools for understanding management options, easy information collection using cell phones and drones, and an AI assistant for forest management. WP5 also aims to integrate open data into a dashboard for forest owners, providing comprehensive forest information. All digital solutions and AI systems will be developed and tested with forest owners in the LLs.
