What is the Forest Dialogue?
The Forest Dialogue gives all forest-related organisations and stakeholders the opportunity to participate actively in designing Austria’s forest policy, and thus also sustainability policy, within a structured framework.
The decision to start a joint process of policy development was taken because numerous economic, environmental and social interests are competing for forests. Global, national, economic and social trends permanently alter our understanding of the sustainable management, conservation and development of forests.
The Austrian Forest Dialogue encourages the combination of existing forest-relevant and forest-political discussions and instruments across sectors on both federal and provincial level. In addition, synergies, shortcomings and conflicts are identified and objectives and approaches to solutions are jointly worked out.
In doing so, the interests of all stakeholders involved in the Forest Dialogue are regularly reconciled.
The Austrian Forest Dialogue is an open, ongoing, participatory policy development process that attracts attention and is appreciated both nationally and internationally. It is Austria’s most comprehensive participatory process and one of the most successful forest-policy processes in the world.