The date of the call is preliminary and may be revised. The call description will continue to be revised and made more precis until the call opens for applications.
Sweden, the EU and the world face complex challenges and changes – natural, technical and societal – that affect forests and the forest sector. This call intends to enable research that explores potential futures and future pathways for forests and the forest sector from a broad range of perspectives, including social, cultural, technical, economical, natural science, and other relevant perspectives. The projects are expected to provide new knowledge that strengthens the potential for forests and their values, products and services, to contribute further to a multitude of societal goals and towards a sustainable development of society.
Forests and the forest sector play a key role for a wide variety of societal goals, from meeting the global demand for products, mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss, to being a source for regional development and incomes. Forests are also affected by the development that occurs in other countries and in other sectors. In Sweden, a large share of forest products is exported, making the Swedish exports account for around 6% of the global export market for forest products. This means that Swedish forests, landowners, companies, and financial actors are affected by – and affect – what happens in other parts of the world, through trade, policy and other factors. The context for forests is also changing as a result of developments in other sectors, such as the energy sector, and the industrial development in northern Sweden. The forests themselves are facing the effects of climate change, pests and other changing dynamics. The forest sector thus needs to continue to develop to adapt to the changes ahead and ensure that forests and the forest sector can contribute increasingly to meet the many needs of society in different ways, both today and tomorrow.
In this call, we are looking for research across a range of aspects and viewpoints on the future of forests and the forest sector in a global context, with a connection to Sweden. The call aims to fund research that takes a long-term systems perspective on the forests or the forest sector, and welcomes research from a broad range of perspectives, including social, cultural, technical, economical, natural sciences, and other relevant perspectives. For example, this may involve research projects that highlight potential or desirable futures for the forest and the forest sector, explore pathways to these futures, and simultaneously manage trade-offs between the many values of the forest and different stakeholders. It might include how the roles of the forest or the forest sector are affected by developments in other sectors or in other countries. The call also includes research projects that investigate drivers, frameworks (including technical, ecological, and policy conditions), and opportunities and obstacles for different paths of development and various types of major transitions related to the forest, forestry, forest products and services in the forest sector as a whole, and along the different value chains. The call does not include the development of, for example, specific products, bioenergy, biobased materials, production methods, forestry practices, wood construction or pure forest ecology analyses. These aspects may, however, be included as a part of a project to the extent to which they have a clear relevance from a system perspective.
The call is intended for researchers in all disciplines at Swedish higher education institutions, research institutes or public agencies with a research mission. Formas welcomes researchers both from the social sciences and humanities and from the natural sciences and technical disciplines. In particular, this call encourages interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary projects that include and bring together multiple disciplines. The projects should be able to provide a clear scientific contribution which, from a broad perspective, can give both an overview and depth to the questions studied. Projects may, but do not have to, include doctoral students. The projects should include activities for communication and utilization of results.
In this call, it will be possible to apply for funding for projects with a duration of three or four years (36 or 48 months) with an annual budget averaging 3 million SEK per project year. Three-year projects have a maximum total budget of 9 million SEK and four-year projects a maximum total budget of 12 million SEK. The call’s total budget is up to 80 million SEK.
In this call, the main applicant and participating researchers must hold a doctoral degree and be associated with a Swedish higher education institution, research institute, or public agency with a research mission, that is a Formas-approved administrating organisation.
Formas may require that project participants in the approved projects participate in seminars and dialogue with other projects funded in this call, as well as in conferences and similar activities within the framework of Formas’ other initiatives relating to forest-related research and innovation.
Decisions on which projects will be granted funds are expected to be made in June 2025.