Abstract
As bioeconomy “encompasses the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into food, feed, bio-based products and bioenergy” (EC, 2019, p.2), Bolzano’s IUFRO Conference on “The social and ecological value added of small-scale forestry to the Bio-Economy” has addressed the impact of forest-bioeconomy from multiple dimensions (IUFRO, 2020). The CoVid-19 Pandemic required to join forces and to re-organize the former two IUFRO events planned for Padova in June and for Bolzano in October as one online conference. Despite this drawback and the associated change in the framework conditions for organizing this IUFRO conference we took advantage of all the benefits a pure online conference could offer. By bringing together the interests and expertise from different IUFRO divisions (D4, D3, D5 and D9), units and working parties, universities, institutes, and enterprises we could embed this event in an excellent cross-cutting setting. The key messages and findings tackled highly diversified thematic fields. The topics comprised multifunctional and small-scale forestry, socio-ecological and forest ecosystem services as well as nonwood forest products. They tackled the effects for forest owners and possible innovative financing and supplemental income opportunities along regional forest and timber value chains under the bio-economy paradigm and probable climate change effects on the wood to timber market. Thereby the influence of forest policies as well as education, community services or socio-cultural forest items are covered. With this broad set of thematic issues, this IUFRO conference targeted to stimulate the interests of researchers and practitioners along the forest-based value chains for bioeconomy.