FORCES aims towards establishing an evidence-based nature-based solutions (NbS) framework by implementing innovative forest-based solutions. FORCES seeks to develop ecosystem-based adaptation actions that simultaneously preserve high levels of biodiversity, ensure sustaining natural capital and the flow of ecosystem services while protecting communities’ livelihoods and contributing to climate change mitigation. Considering that combined actions on climate, biodiversity and societal challenges cannot efficiently be achieved without multiple actors’ engagement in local actions, FORCES’s strategy is to develop local innovation actions, provide methods and tools to support their extended use and assess their potential global impacts. Thus, FORCES will: i) conduce trans-disciplinary research based on new developments in environmental and social sciences underpinned by stakeholders’ expertise; ii) design, implement and assess local innovation actions based on stakeholders’ engagement; iii) address cross-scale issues from local actions to global impacts; iv) elaborate a tool box of science-based methodologies and standards to promote the use of nature-based solutions that contribute to achieving specific UN sustainable development goals, combining SDG13 “Climate action” and SDG15 “Life on land”, and address societal challenges. FORCES will develop research and innovation actions in various types of forest socio-ecosystems, aiming to generalize forest-based solutions, and will interact with similar projects on other ecosystems through a clustering approach as mentioned in the call. Forests are appropriate for this research and innovation action because: (1) forests harbor an important terrestrial biodiversity and are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to cumulative effects of annual climate on trees, (2) forests are social-ecological systems providing multiple ecosystem services and contributing to people welfare, they are a lever for C-sequestration and substitution, (3) in the context of global change and multiple uncertainties, the emergence of a new paradigm in forest management offers opportunities to innovate, (4) forests are at the cross-road of multiple EU policies but biodiversity and climate objectives are not yet considered jointly in forest policies and strategies. NbS will be designed and assessed in six types of forest systems in Europe and the CELAC. These Innovation Action Areas will be supported by associated Research Sites for data acquisition and model calibration. Multiple time frames will be considered to account for uncertainties in global change scenarios (2035, 2050, 2100).