Transatlantic Education for Globally Sustainable Forests

Sustainable forest management, with its social and environmental issues, clearly transcends political boundaries.  While it has long been understood that environmental quality in one watershed can be influenced by the specific activities of citizens in numerous countries, concerns about worldwide deforestation, global warming, and trans-global dissemination of insects and diseases, now underscore that students must become aware of global connections in sustainable forest sector development and be encouraged to adopt an international perspective. >> more

TRANSFOR is a proposal EC/Canada program aimed to increase student and teacher exchange and understanding related to improving sustainable forest management (SFM) practices. In particular, several Canadian and EC universities have partnered with the Canadian Model Forest Network, to convey over 10 years of research and implementation of SFM in model forests, to students from 13 universities. The four elements of our proposed program include intensive 2-3 week field courses (organized by each Canadian university, in cooperation with Model Forests), Trans-Atlantic student exchanges to improve sustainable forest management in the 21st century, teacher exchanges for joint curriculum development, and student internships abroad. Following their exchange experience, students will prepare electronically distributed final seminars to be posted on the project website. The faculty coordinators will collaborate on a published paper highlighting key elements of SFM and successes of the TRANSFOR program.

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