EIT Climate-KIC is hosting two sessions at the Fire in the Earth Systems Conference on June 3rd and 4th in Caceres Spain.
Science-policy Brokerage for Sustainable Forests: Lessons Learned from the INFORMA Project
Conveners: Doan Ho, Saskia Keesstra, Christina Oragbade
Challenge-led system mapping is a collaborative method in which stakeholders are convened and encouraged to work together to understand the challenges and solutions within a complex system, which in the INFORMA project’s case is a forest and its wood value chain. The system mapping methodology attempts to view a system holistically, including interconnected factors like government policies and social dynamics. By involving various stakeholders with different perspectives and roles, the methodology aims to break down silos and promote knowledge exchange. The INFORMA forestry project specifically used this methodology to guide knowledge transfer and integration pathways of research into society. INFORMA used the system mapping methodology to identify relevant stakeholders and their specific challenges, along with how the INFORMA consortium interacted with these external stakeholders, giving a view into what barriers may exist in their collaboration. This will inform the work of involving, communicating, and creating buy-in for INFORMA’s research outputs by external stakeholders like forest owners, policymakers, and carbon certification providers. The project then held workshops to foster open engagement and build a network across the quadruple helix at the EU level willing to shape and utilise the project’s outputs.
Subsequently, a dynamic network map was created to visualise the project’s engagement with and the relationships between these stakeholders. This map showed crucial weaknesses and strengths in the research team’s relationships with actors, identifying weaknesses to be shored up and strengths to be exploited. Strong relationships with certain stakeholders would serve as entry points for knowledge transfer between the project and the greater society with the aim of increasing acceptance of INFORMAs policy recommendations, forest carbon certification scheme innovations, and sustainable forest management practices. Additional steps involve further workshops to identify stakeholders’ interests in forest carbon certification, facilitating the development and testing of innovations in certification schemes and new business opportunities. The mapping showed that the consortium’s type of collaboration with the most important European-level actors were weak on collaborations on an innovation. This speaks to the consortium’s academic makeup and signals that it has work to do when communicating and advocating for its carbon certification innovations due to its weaker experience om this. When looking at the type of knowledge transfer, past interactions were numerous and strong on the European and global levels whilst being moderate on the national level. This insight signals that the consortium must put more effort into communicating outputs on the national level.
Session 7: From Science to Society: INFORMAÂs Journey in Integrating Stakeholder Voices for Forest Wildfire Resilience
Conveners: Doan Ho, Saskia Keesstra, Christina Oragbade
Wildfires are a growing concern for the ecological and social fabric of Europe, and sustainable forest management (SFM) is key in mitigating their impact. The latest scientific findings indicate that improved SFM can double forests climate change mitigation impact by 2050. This session explores the crucial role of stakeholder integration in forest and wildfire management within the context of the INFORMA project. The INFORMA forestry research project (https://informa-forests.eu/), funded by the European Commissions Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme, employs a holistic approach to bridge the gap between practitioners working on the ground, scientists, policymakers, carbon markets, and civil society at large. A lot of research is being funded and undertaken, but the trick is then translating those quantitative results into concrete policy recommendations for governments, as well as translating science into something to which practitioners and citizens can relate. Therefore, civil society and policymaker insight during the actual research process is crucial to making science practical. When citizens are well-informed and involved in research from the very beginning, the societal and government willingness to uptake new policy recommendations or new scientific results is increased. This session provides a comprehensive overview of the INFORMA project’s process of integrating stakeholder mapping and stakeholder engagement in shaping forest management practices and wildfire resilience.