What needs to happen for Europe's forests to deliver on the EU's climate and biodiversity goals for 2050? Three EU-funded research projects – ForestNavigator, ForestPaths, and PathFinder – share their visions for possible answers in the form of forest-based policy pathways to 2050 with Frans Timmermans, the principal architect of the EU Green Deal, joining the online session of the fourth edition of the Forest Talks webinar series. 

Cultivating crops – such as wheat, barley and rye – alongside rows of trees is a system of agroforestry that is known as “alley-cropping”. It serves many functions: in addition to enhancing ecosystems and biodiversity, it can also counteract the negative effects of growing crops in treeless open land. The advantages of alley-cropping come from the interaction between trees and crops, resulting in improved soil quality, reduced wind erosion, enhanced nutrient cycling, and climate change mitigation through increased carbon capture. However, rows of trees can create competition for resources such as water, sunlight and nutrients, which negatively affects crop yield. A research team led by the University of Göttingen has now shown that, in systems with rows of fast-growing poplar trees, choosing between winter and spring crops based on the age of the trees can cancel out competition, creating opportunities for farmers to optimise their harvests. The results were published in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, but advances in early detection and treatment are improving the outlook for patients. Over the past two decades, five-year survival rates have nearly doubled, rising from 15% to 27% – progress driven in large part by clinical research. This Lung Cancer Awareness Month, the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology is highlighting how its research is advancing earlier detection, improving treatments, and enhancing quality of life for survivors.

Enhanced rock weathering could become an important carbon dioxide removal option in European agriculture, but applying rock dust is not itself evidence of durable carbon removal. A new Perspective in Energy and Climate Management argues that the European Union should develop an ERW-specific certification methodology before large-scale carbon crediting begins. The proposed approach distinguishes potential from certifiable removal, combines near-field measurements with conservative modelling of downstream processes, deducts lifecycle emissions, treats time lags and uncertainty explicitly, and requires feedstock, site-suitability and no-harm safeguards. Agricultural and soil-policy instruments could support monitored deployment while tonne-for-tonne crediting is not yet justified.

The Environmental Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (E-DSGE) model developed in this paper is a macro-financial general equilibrium model for evaluating the macroeconomic and financial stability impacts of climate transition policies in China. It incorporates pollution externalities, financial frictions in the banking sector, carbon tax policies, and a differentiated capital adequacy ratio (CAR) requirement policy. The model is well-equipped for analyzing how carbon pricing generates transition risks, how financial frictions amplify these risks, and how structural macroprudential policy can mitigate them while achieving emission reduction targets.

Evidence from 20 European countries links political uncertainty to weaker disclosed green investment, particularly among financially constrained firms. The findings highlight predictable national implementation of climate policy as important for mobilizing private capital for decarbonization.