Forests are at the center of many of the issues involved in coping with global changes. On the one hand it seems necessary to exploit them more intensively to produce biomass to replace products with a strong impact on the climate, on the other hand it seems necessary to preserve them much more in order to protect the large part of biodiversity they host as well as their role as carbon sinks. The tension between these two seemingly contradictory expectations is the subject of intense debates, which is particularly lively at present in France. Based on the same data, but with different hypotheses, several scenarios have attempted to assess the consequences of the two orientations. Their results are not clearly enough contrasted to favour one scenario in particular. To overcome this difficulty, we believe that 3 new dimensions should be introduced into the analyses. 1) the territorial dimension to better consider local specificities (resources, demands and constraints); 2) the risk dimension to consider the impacts of global changes and the weight of risks in investment options, especially in the very long term; 3) the social dimension to promote better shared collective decisionmaking conducive to better environmental justice inclusive of a diversity of actors. The presentation defines these 3 dimensions and what they imply in prospective approaches.