Sustainability Assessment

Decisions about forest use always have environmental, economic and social impacts. We develop and apply indicators to measure these impacts.

Forests provide a wide range of services for their owners and society. The use of forest products and their processing also generally have economic, ecological and social effects. These effects of forest use, forest products and forest services can be measured in the form of indicators that express how sustainable this use is. 

As important indicators of social and economic sustainability, we quantify and analyse forest based work and employment, employment relationships, working conditions, equality, diversity and inclusion. In addition, we quantify the ecological, economic and social sustainability effects of bio-based value chains. 

This enables us, for example, to investigate whether and in which areas bio-based products are more sustainable than other products and what effects changes in political or economic conditions can have on the sustainability of products. Forest certification has established itself as proof of sustainable forest management and is often a prerequisite for market access or transfer payments. We investigate how effective certification is and what differences exist between certified and non-certified forest management.