Holistic and multi-transdisciplinary approaches, where multiple goals are achieved in order to improve resilience in societies and ecosystems in the short, medium, and long term, are ideal, even utopian. Hence, science has come together with practical experiences that highlight the importance of working at a ‘landscape’ level. Landscapes, as socio-ecological systems, are key for sustainability and sustainable development, and they represent a realistic unit to interconnect local, national, and ultimately global scales. International efforts regarding holistic natural resources management approaches are not new; however, they are currently pointing to an Integrated Landscape Approach (ILA). Based on a documentation review and analysis, the present article review aims to promote the disambiguation of the ILA concept and provide an updated synthesis knowledge on the ILA. Especially for the forest sector, the ILA has been identified as particularly beneficial, strongly highlighted by the scientific literature, and with an infrastructure of organizations that are encouraging it. The paper presents the rationale of the science behind the concept, as well as the main principles, we identified a variety of definitions with some significant points of overlap, we highlight the inclusion of ILAs in the current international arena and the relationship of ILA’s and Jurisdictional Approaches, and we make a review of the ILA in a challenging world of rapid change. Our review recognizes ILAs socio-ecological management strategy to reconcile conservation, development, climate change, and human well-being goals. ILAs naturally have a social and idealistic construction behind it, which might be just as necessary andsignificant as the journey toward sustainability itself.

The New European Union Forest Strategy for 2030 has been controversially discussed by all relevant interest groups: member states, forest owners, forest-related industry, environmental NGOs. The analysis reveals two central conflicts characterizing the Strategy: sovereignty vs. increased Union control—the primary concern of member states and forest owners; and commodity vs. amenity—a central issue between forest-based industry and environmental NGOs. In this respect it is interesting to note that, while being competitors over influence in European forest policy, both forest-related industry and environmental NGOs share the demand for clearer definitions in the Strategy. The Commission’s position is discussed in view of the central conflicts with no unequivocal results—while in the first conflict the Commission can be assumed to, indeed, seek to obtain more power vis-à-vis the member states, with regard to the second conflict three assumptions are on the horizon: (i) the Commission tries to balance the demands of commodity and amenity- oriented interest groups; (ii) despite environmental rhetoric used, the Strategy is dominated by economic goals; (iii) the strategic vision of the Commission inclines towards environmental goals.

The importance of local forests as places of recreation and human well-being depends very much on their visual impact on human perception. Forest managers, therefore, seek to achieve structural elements or attributes that can be used to enhance the visual aesthetics of managed forest ecosystems. The following survey was undertaken in the Tharandter Forest in Saxony (Germany). The field interviews were focussed on visual aesthetics and acceptance. The statements of the 53 participants in the survey were used to analyse views concerning typical Norway spruce forest types: with the regeneration of deciduous tree species in the background, without regeneration, and with European beech as a second layer in the foreground. The evaluation of the questionnaires confirmed a clear ranking. The forest view with the regeneration of deciduous tree species received the highest number of positive scores, followed by the forest view with beech as a second layer. The forest view characterised by pure and dense Norway spruce trees received the worst rating, differing significantly from the other two, on the basis of the spatial arrangement, visual diversity and acceptance. Linear mixed models demonstrated that visual aesthetics was mostly explained by visual diversity as a result of tree species diversity or mixtures and age structures, the diversity of surrounding structures and colours, ground vegetation or visibility.

This work sets out to apply the Policy Coherence Framework (PCF) to the case of climate policy, taking into account the European, German and Thuringian political levels of analysis. It combines an analysis of vertical coherence between these levels and horizontal coherence within and between different sectoral policies. The study demonstrates disparities between coherence within climate policy itself and between other policy sectors as regards forest area development. It further reveals some contradictions between economic and ecological goals in German climate policy, particularly as concerns the role of forests. According to the authors, this observation can, at least in part, be explained by the national security obligations of Germany as a nation state. This assumption is supported by the observation that the regional level of Thuringia is more consistent with the supranational level of the European Union, both of which can “afford” to favour ecology over economy due to not being nation states. Another finding suggests that the broad and ambiguous definition of climate policy causes many contradictions, leading to an “omnipresence” of climate policy, and in doing so, strips it of its meaning and, consequently, practical relevance.

A comparison between the most relevant forest-focused and forest-related EU policies from the time periods of the three EU forest(ry) strategies of 1998, 2013 and 2021 has revealed an overall rise in the number of forest-related policies that is mainly rooted in the environmental policy sector. Next to the increasing number of policies, a growing preference for regulations over directives as policy instruments was identified. New policy fields that have gained increasing importance over the last 25 years, most prominently climate, energy and bioeconomy policy, create and define additional demands on forests through their cross-cutting relations with other policy sectors. At the same time, multi-issue strategies that have recently been employed by the European Commission might turn out to be unable to solve the trade-offs that are produced by opposing policy goals.