EDUCase Platform

Forest21

FOREST21 is a multi-stakeholder project for strengthening the South African higher education sector in climate-smart forestry. The project team involves five South African higher education institutions (HEIs) that have forestry curricula or are about to start teaching forestry, Finnish and Norwegian HEIs, and the South African forest industry.

People chopping trees and moving them with a tractor

Promoting climate-smart forestry and entrepreneurial skills in forestry education supports job creation as well as mitigation of climate change. FOREST21 is implemented through reforming South African HEIs’ curricula in forestry entrepreneurship education to equip graduates with problem-solving skills, an entrepreneurial mindset, and climate-smart thinking.

Problem-based learning (PBL) methods and student-centered teaching are at the core of the project. Students learn through analysing concrete business challenges in international teams. FOREST21 is developed in close collaboration with the industrial sector as well as teachers and the managerial staff in partner HEIs to identify relevant practices in the local context.

Countries: Finland, Norway and South Africa
Themes: Bioeconomy and agriculture, Educational systems/ methods, Sustainable use of natural resources
Members: HAMK and Aalto University