The 12th European Forest Pedagogics Congress 2017

Forest kindergarden “Explora Cuvete”

2. November 2017

A tree app to identify species

5. December 2017

Published by admin at 9. November 2017

The 12^th European Forest pedagogics Congress 2017

Forest pedagogics - adventures between communicating and educating

Milovy, Czech Republic, 3-6 October 2017

Author: Forest Management Institute, Czech Republic

T he two congress days presented keynotes related to two of the objectives of the Forestpedagogy-strategy of the FCN Subgroup.

A: Forest owners, forest administration and forest enterprises are communicating about management of their forests through Forestpedagogy activities.

B: Forestpedagogy is an educational process to reach environmental maturity and Forestpedagogy is a prime example for ESD.

The keynotes were presented by Emma Berglund (Confédération Européenne des Propriétaires Forestiers), Jiří Svoboda (Forest Cooperative Přibyslav), Martin Šrom (Lipka – school facility for environmental education) and Rolf Jucker (Stiftung SILVIVA). Special presentation was delivered by Dirk Schmechel (Bavarian State Forestry Institute), who summarized key points from the scientific papers presented at the 125th Anniversary IUFRO Congress 2017. The congress topic was wrapped up in the panel discussion. The conclusion of the panel is that forest pedagogy can be both education for sustainable development and mean of communication for forest owners and managers. And these two perspectives do not exclude each other, but may be combined in forest pedagogics programmes.

The congress gathered 129 participants from 17 countries. Besides lectures each participant could have attended 2 workshops, each 2 hours long and 7 forest pedagogics activities, each 20 min long. Participant also joined the Market of Projects in which they could comment on running forest pedagogics projects. The congress was closed by two excursions – one was to Eden Centre, where participants visited the traditional Vysocina village, the pavilion with enviro-friendly technologies and took part in a craft workshop. The other was to Žďár nad Sázavou, where a New generation museum was visited and then to Staré Ransko to join the programme “A Day with a Forester” – a successful forest pedagogics programme for schools by Forest Cooperative Přibyslav.

The congress was opened by Patrik Mlynář, Deputy Minister of the Agriculture of the Czech Republic, Jiří Běhounek, President of the Vysočina Region, Dirk Schmechel from the FCN-subgroup-Forest pedagogy, Jaroslav Kubišta, Deputy Director of the Forest Management Institute Czech Republic, Ondřej Kopecký from the Forests of the Czech Republic, state enterprise and František Kučera, President of The Association of Municipal and Private Forest Owners in the Czech Republic. The closing day was visited by Tomáš Krejzar, Director of the Department of Forest Policy and Economy, Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic.

The congress was hosted by Forest Management Institute, Czech Republic, in cooperation with the Working Group for Forest Pedagogy in the Czech Republic (established by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic) and the FCN-subgroup-Forest pedagogics. The congress was supported by Forests of the Czech Republic, state enterprise and Vysočina Region.

13th European Forest Pedagogics Congress will be held in Pudasjärvi, Finland on October 2018.