Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are recognised as a promising economic instrument for diversifying income for forest owners and rural communities, while supporting biodiversity and climate change mitigation. Despite growing policy recognition – through the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 – the practical uptake of PES across Europe remains uneven and constrained by governance, financial and institutional barriers. The project’s analysis of over 100 PES and PES-like schemes across Europe found that access to EU funding is often hindered by high transaction costs, legal uncertainty and administrative complexity, while local or regional arrangements tend to be more workable and better adapted to real conditions.

Funded by the European Union’s LIFE Programme, LIFE ProForPES (Promoting effective forest PES through the EU financial and state aid programs) brought together Etifor, the University of Padova, the European Forest Institute (EFI), the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) in a three-year effort to collect, synthesise and integrate existing knowledge on forest PES and PES-like schemes across Europe. Building on this analysis and an extensive stakeholder consultation process – involving more than 60 experts through a Delphi process and 35 representatives of forest owners, public authorities, NGOs, researchers and market actors in a final workshop in Vienna – the project developed seven operational scenarios for integrating forest PES into European funding programmes: from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to the EU’s Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF), through to utility-led and municipality-led schemes.

Etifor led the development of the research framework for data collection and interpretation and conducted the SWOT analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the PES schemes examined, helping to define the seven core design themes – from targeted ecosystem services to payment design – underpinning the final scenarios. The project concluded with the publication of Guidelines and recommendations on incorporating PES in EU-supported financial programmes, which translate the evidence gathered into 12 tangible recommendations: from ensuring legal and funding stability to promoting blended public-private finance, from hybrid (action- and results-based) payment design to a proposed European Forest PES Gateway, through to a dedicated EU forest PES mechanism complementary to the CAP. The recommendations come with a practical action matrix outlining roles and concrete tasks for forest owners, policymakers, intermediaries, researchers and private investors, offering a hands-on guide to accelerate the uptake of forest PES across Europe.

• Research framework to guide data collection, data analysis and interpretation
• Analysis of PES and PES-related mechanisms in Europe
• SWOT Analysis report 
• Report gaps and potential for integration of PES within the EU financial framework
• Preliminary options for integration of PES and PES-related mechanisms to EU framework programme
• Guidelines and recommendations on incorporating PES in EU-supported financial programmes
• Policy Brief – Recommendations for better integrating Payment schemes for Forest Ecosystem Services into EU policies