Exploring the practice and pathways to scaling up forest sector innovation is vital because global forest use and demand for wood and non-wood forest products are rising rapidly, affecting billions of people and putting pressure on forest ecosystems. At the same time, deforestation, unsustainable harvesting, and climate-change-driven stressors like wildfires and pests threaten forests’ health and resilience, creating urgent and sometimes competing management needs. Supporting and improving innovation can help reconcile these pressures by enabling sustainable forest management and community benefits, while filling gaps in awareness and research —especially beyond technology-centric, Western-focused perspectives — so effective solutions can be created, adopted, and scaled.
This fall 2026 Yale Forest Forum speaker series will explore the opportunities, challenges, and pathways that exist and are emerging in forestry innovation. This series will highlight speakers across a wide variety of forest research institutions, practitioner settings, and geographies. The series is developed and supported by members of the Latin American Network for Forestry Education (RELAFOR), and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ (IUFRO) Scaling Up Science-based Forest Sector Innovation Task Force, and their broader networks.
The objectives of this series are to:
- Explore thematic areas covering forest sector innovation across technological, policy, institutional, social, and financial domains.
- Highlight innovations in both the Global North and South, as well as principles and approaches for responsible and inclusive innovation, development, and adoption.
- Share opportunities, challenges, and pathways for promoting forest sector innovation.
This series will explore the following questions:
- What is innovation in the forest sector?
- What is needed to design functional innovation ecosystems?
- How are digital technologies shaping and advancing forest monitoring, planning, and management?
- What frameworks and factors should we consider when creating, introducing, and scaling innovations in the forest sector?
- What are the elements that trigger forest sector innovations in emerging economies?
Join us every Thursday from September 3 to December 10, from 12-1 p.m. U.S. ET. There will be no webinars on October 22 or November 26.
*Note: Sessions through October 29 will be held from 12-1 p.m. EDT (GMT-4). Beginning November 5, sessions will be held from 12-1 p.m. EST (GMT-5).
The series is free and open to the public. Each session will be recorded. We will offer certificates of attendance for CEUs for foresters and practitioners who attend the live webinars. Please email yff@yale.edu for further information.
Series Hosts
This fall 2026 speaker series is hosted by The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment, College of Forestry – Oregon State University, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, Mexico and the Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina.
Series Facilitators
The series is led by Gary Dunning (The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment), Eric Hansen (College of Forestry – Oregon State University), Ivana Zivojinovic (BOKU University), and Sandra Rodríguez-Piñeros (Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, México), and María Isabel Delgado (Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina).
Photo: Samuli Skantsi