MDPI Books is delighted to announce Dr. Matteo Vizzarri as the 2025 winner of our Environmental and Earth Sciences competition. Highlighting the importance of research that focuses on sustainable, actionable solutions to the ecological issues of our time, this new publishing initiative allows Dr. Vizzarri to receive full editorial support and a complete waiver of Book Processing Charges (BPCs), enabling open access publication at no cost. To get an insight into their research on forest management, the relevance of Environmental and Earth Sciences, and the benefits of open access, we sat down with Dr. Vizzarri to dicuss his winning monograph.

Could you briefly describe your monograph and what inspired you to pursue this topic?

Climate change and biodiversity loss pose increasing threats to our wellbeing. Forests, covering one third of the Earth surface, are our allies from the natural world to tackle such global challenges seriously. The keystone is transforming the way we look at and manage our land, in particular the forests. Sustainability in forest management and planning, forest governance and forest value chain is a mounting concept but very often associated with environmental implications. This leaves apart the social and economic aspects. The book thus provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive overview of how scientific insights and policy actions are intertwined to address together the three dimensional sustainability around our forests, globally.

If readers remember just one key insight from your work, what would you want it to be?

The consideration of scale, both temporal and spatial, is extremely important to address forest-related sustainability.

What does winning this competition mean for your work and the broader field you’re contributing to?

I always had in mind to write a book myself or with some very close colleague. As a researcher and lecturer at the university, knowledge transfer, experience sharing and translation of complex scientific results into something digestible by the general public are the stepping stones. This award means that I can finally meet those goals. I also believe that this book can provide an easy-to-use guide to dive into the panorama of forest-related sustainability through the eyes of someone trying to bring together scientists and a policy-makers.

Environmental and Earth sciences feel more relevant than ever. How do you see your field evolving over the next few years?

Forestry sciences must enlarge their potential to cover aspects increasingly beyond biophysical and economic productivity, such as conservation of forest habitats and forest-dependent species, supply of forest goods and services, resilience, adaptation and mitigation, etc. Forests and trees are embedded in natural and semi-natural systems, and in some contexts (e.g. mountain landscapes, watersheds, urban areas), they have a prominent role in ensuring human wellbeing. Experts in forestry sciences must therefore gain further expertise in territorial planning, social sciences, and environmental economics. Understanding the basics of three-dimensional sustainability can be a starting point.

How do you think open access publishing will help your work reach readers or communities who may benefit from it?

Open access will be extremely important to reach a large number of interested people. In general, I am a supporter of open access publishing. It’s the only chance to not leave anyone behind. Culture is a human right. People who do not have adequate resources (of any kind) must have in any case the right to access knowledge every time and everywhere. Of course, open access publishing has costs, but there are many ways to cover them or compensate for.

To learn more Environmental and Earth Sciences and its impact on today’s world, see our article on the importance of this subject area.