WB6 Forest Landscape Restoration Plan
Under the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans (GAWB), the Protection of Nature and Biodiversity pillar supports the WB6 Forest Landscape Restoration Plan (FLRP), the first regional forest landscape restoration (FLR) plan of its kind, developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The plan delivers on Action 39 of the Revised Action Plan 2025–2030, which mandates the completion of a Restoration Opportunities Assessment Report (ROAR), the development of the regional FLRP, and the start of restoration activities by 2028.
The plan covers a 20-year horizon to 2050, with a phased approach beginning with enabling conditions in 2027–2029, pilot restoration from 2029, and progressive scale-up thereafter. High natural landscape value across the Western Balkans Six (WB6) is accompanied by strong degradation pressures and limited capacities for integrated spatial management, making a coordinated regional restoration instrument particularly relevant.
Vision and strategic direction
Regional takeaway: the FLRP sets a shared 2050 vision of resilient, multifunctional forest landscapes across the WB6, supported by a 2030 mission to shift from fragmented, reactive responses to integrated, landscape-based action.
Shared regional vision by 2050: “By 2050, forests and forest-related landscapes in the WB6 are resilient, multifunctional systems that strengthen the region’s capacity to respond to climate, economic, and societal challenges while providing vital ecosystem services, conserving biodiversity, regulating water and soil resources, reducing disaster risks, preserving natural and cultural values and landscape identity, and contributing to well-being of local communities and sustainable spatial development.”
Shared regional mission by 2030: “By 2030, the WB6 move from fragmented, sectoral and largely reactive responses to climate and environmental pressures, to integrated, landscape-based and preventive action that places forest and forest-related landscapes at the centre of regional resilience.”
The mission is built on landscape character as the common framework for planning and management, with sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation planned and implemented together. It directly advances the GAWB commitments and aligns domestic action with European Union (EU) accession requirements and the WB6 commitments under the Rio Conventions and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Figure 1. FLRP implementation timeline: phased approach to forest landscape restoration across the WB6, 2027–2050.
Source: IUCN ECARO, WB6 Forest Landscape Restoration Plan (Sarajevo: Regional Cooperation Council, 2026).
Restoration needs and priorities
Regional takeaway: the ROAR analysis identified more than 50 priority restoration areas covering approximately 725,000 hectares across the WB6, where degradation pressures from fire, land-use change, and climate stress converge with high ecological and socio-economic restoration value.
The FLRP applies a landscape-based approach to restoration, moving beyond individual site interventions to address the functionality, connectivity and resilience of entire forest and forest-related landscapes. Priority areas were identified through the ROAR process, which combines spatial analysis of degradation, ecological connectivity, climate vulnerability, and socio-economic factors. These areas represent the highest-value restoration opportunities where coordinated investment would yield the greatest combined returns for biodiversity, climate adaptation, water regulation, and disaster risk reduction.
The approach is consistent with the EU Nature Restoration Regulation, which establishes binding restoration targets and requires domestic-level restoration plans, and with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), which sets biodiversity benchmarks to 2030 and 2050. The European Landscape Convention provides the conceptual basis for the landscape character approach that underpins the FLRP’s spatial planning methodology.
Strategic goals and targets
Regional takeaway: the plan is structured around five strategic goals with measurable targets, covering institutional capacity, ecological restoration, financing, regional cooperation, and inclusive participation, to be delivered in phases from 2027 to 2050.
Table 1. The five strategic goals of the WB6 Forest Landscape Restoration Plan.
Source: IUCN ECARO, WB6 Forest Landscape Restoration Plan (Sarajevo: Regional Cooperation Council, 2026).
| Goal | What it commits the region to |
|---|---|
| Goal 1. Build capacities and enabling conditions for landscape-based FLR | Establish the planning, regulatory, institutional, data, and technical preconditions for coordinated, spatially differentiated restoration, introducing landscape character as the common conceptual and methodological framework guiding FLR across the WB6. |
| Goal 2. Restore resilient, connected, and climate-adaptive forest and forest-related landscapes | Target ecological functionality, biodiversity, connectivity, soil and water regulation, climate resilience, and disaster risk reduction in the priority areas identified through the ROAR. |
| Goal 3. Secure resilient and diversified funding for FLR | Shift restoration from fragmented, donor-dependent financing towards a stable model combining domestic public finance, international support, private investment, and locally relevant incentive mechanisms, mobilising at least €25 million by 2030. |
| Goal 4. Strengthen regional cooperation and coordinated FLR implementation | Establish a regional FLR coordination mechanism by end 2027, supporting joint preparation, implementation, knowledge exchange, monitoring and data gathering across the WB6. |
| Goal 5. Ensure inclusive participation, local stewardship, and fair benefit-sharing | Involve communities, landowners, land users, civil society, academia, and the private sector in planning, implementation, monitoring, and benefit-sharing, strengthening the evidence base and building public legitimacy. |
Financing and implementation
Regional takeaway: restoring the 725,000 hectares of priority forest landscapes requires an estimated €1.5 to over €2 billion over the full implementation horizon to 2050, with an initial target of at least €25 million mobilised by 2030.
The financing estimate applies a differentiated cost methodology across the ROAR-identified priority areas. The conservative scenario projects a total need of approximately €1.48 billion; the central scenario reaches €2.15 billion; the upper bound of €3.38 billion represents fully loaded costs and serves as the ceiling of the strategic range. The working planning range is €1.5 to over €2 billion.
Implementation is phased: the enabling period (2027–2029) focuses on institutional and regulatory readiness, spatial planning, and monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) infrastructure; pilot restoration begins from 2029 in selected ROAR priority areas; progressive scale-up follows as financing instruments mature and domestic frameworks align with EU accession requirements. The plan maps specific financial instruments to each strategic goal, including domestic budgets, the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) III, EU pre-accession support, the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) instruments, and private investment.
Monitoring and accountability
Regional takeaway: the plan includes a monitoring framework with six indicators across the five strategic goals, each with defined baselines, targets and verification sources, allowing progress to be tracked at both regional and domestic levels.
The monitoring framework links each goal to measurable outcomes: the establishment of a regional coordination mechanism (Goal 1); hectares under active restoration and ecological connectivity improvements (Goal 2); financial commitments mobilised (Goal 3); joint cross-border actions delivered (Goal 4); and community and stakeholder participation rates (Goal 5). The framework is designed to be interoperable with EU reporting requirements and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework indicators.