The partnership project between Stora Enso, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Newcastle University that was initiated in early 2024 to advance positive impacts on forest biodiversity has been completed. The aim of this collaboration was to create a framework for the forestry sector to reach a net positive biodiversity impact with active forest management by reducing threats to species and conserving and restoring ecosystems.

"The forest sector now has a practical tool to become a positive contributor to biodiversity. This marks the start of a broader journey to embed long-term positive biodiversity outcomes into core business processes. By doing this Stora Enso wants to show how forestry can be both economically viable and ecologically credible," says Toby Croucher, Chief Sustainability Officer, Stora Enso.

The main outcome of the partnership project is a proof of concept demonstrating advanced integration of the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) biodiversity metric with the Heureka forest planning system, developed by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and currently used by Stora Enso for its forestry business decisions. The new framework enables informed prioritisation of biodiversity actions across forest landscapes over time, ensuring that the most urgent threats to biodiversity are addressed first and in the most effective way while preserving wood production.

"Incorporating the calculation of the opportunity for species extinction risk reduction into forestry management models is ground-breaking. It enables the development of scenarios for biodiversity to predict the current and future state of species in space and time, a major breakthrough both from a scientific perspective and in its practical implications. The work done by Stora Enso and the IUCN Species Survival Commission Global Biodiversity Framework Taskforce, hosted at Newcastle University, to advance the concept of predicted STAR is also extremely consequential in its own right," says Dr Thomas Brooks, Chief Scientist at IUCN.

This achievement was made possible by a cross-disciplinary team comprising forest planning specialists from Stora Enso and scientists from Newcastle University. The team has successfully linked biodiversity management actions in forestry with measurable biodiversity outcomes.

Forestry planners explore multiple scenarios for forest management with the objective of optimising forestry for the best economic return over time. The new framework for forest planning also includes biodiversity in this optimization with a strong connection to the Red List of threatened species. Hence the best possible economic return can be balanced with the best possible biodiversity outcomes over time.

"If applied at scales, this model using the STAR metric provides the mechanism through which forestry companies could finally deliver their full potential contributions to global goals for nature as agreed in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Sustainable Development Goals. This could be a real game changer, not only for the sector but to accelerate progress towards a nature-positive future," says Dr Philip McGowan, Professor of Conservation Science and Policy at Newcastle University, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Global Biodiversity Framework Taskforce.

Stora Enso has piloted the framework in its own land holdings in Sweden to prioritise scenarios for forest management with a verifiable net positive impact on biodiversity. In this pilot, the reference for net positive impact on biodiversity was either the current state of the forest or a scenario for the forest including no management.

The results of the collaboration, including the technical details of the new modelling framework, will be published in a scientific journal and presented in the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2025 on 9-15 October 2025 in Abu Dhabi.