An Adaptive Participatory Engagement Framework for the Forest–Climate Nexus: Co-Creation, Participatory Action Research, and Socio-Economic Indicator Validation Across Europe

Climate change is transforming European forests through increasingly frequent and intense droughts, storms, pest outbreaks, wildfires, and hydro-meteorological extremes. These biophysical pressures interact with socio-economic conditions and governance arrangements in complex and context-specific ways, shaping both vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Addressing such challenges requires climate-smart forestry supported by decision-support tools and climate services that are co-produced with forest managers, public authorities, and local communities.This study introduces an Adaptive Participatory Engagement Framework (APEF) that integrates Participatory Action Research (PAR), a structured four-stage co-creation process (co-design, co-production, co-dissemination, and co-evaluation), and governance-aware validation of socio-economic indicators across Europe. The framework was implemented in eight Case Study Areas (CSAs), selected to encompass the fourteen European Forest Types (EFTs). Drawing on multi-stage stakeholder workshops, semi-structured interviews, and iterative qualitative analysis, the study explores stakeholders’ main themes of discussions regarding climate-related forest risks, identifies socio-economic and governance constraints on adaptation, and translates these insights into necessary prerequisites for supporting the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) as a climate service and tailored management practices.Results show that economic uncertainty is a pervasive concern across all CSAs and is strongly linked to workforce shortages and institutional fragmentation, which together limit the feasibility of adaptive silvicultural practices under climate stress. By triangulating bottom-up stakeholders’ evidence with top-down policy frameworks and governance feasibility assessments, the study delivers a validated set of socio-economic indicators and a composite Socio-Economic Index (SE-Index) suitable for DSS integration. Overall, the findings demonstrate that meaningful and scalable participatory engagement is achievable across diverse governance contexts and provide an empirically grounded pathway for the co-production of climate services and management practices to support adaptive forest management across Europe.Acknowledgements This research received funds from the project “OPTimising FORest management decisions for a low-carbon, climate resilient future in Europe (OptFor-EU)” funded by the European Union Horizon Europe programme, under Grant agreement no101060554.