Session 5.3 Individual presentations: Science-Policy Interface and the role of interdisciplinary research

Chair:

Ida Wallin, Chair of Forest and Environmental Policy, University of Freiburg

TA: Louisa

Schedule

1. Johanna Johansson: What is at stake and what does it take? Cross-boundary collaboration and policy (in)action in the adoption of a National Forest Programme
2. Michael Kirchner: Integration forums – the hot spot for meeting stakeholders to integrate forest science into natural hazard management
3. Santi Pratiwi: Science-Policy Interface in Forest and Conservation Policy Dynamic – A Case Study of Geothermal Utiliziation in the Indonesian Conversation Forests
4. Ida Wallin: Futures of the Helge å River catchment – a synthesis of four cases of knowledge co-production
5. Nataša Lovrić: Policy makers involvement in the creation and future uptake of the European Strategy for the Conservation and Use of Forest, Crop and Animal Genetic Resources

Johanna Johansson, Södertörn University, Sweden

What is at stake and what does it take? Cross-boundary collaboration and policy (in)action in the adoption of a National Forest Programme

Inspired by the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance (IFCG), this paper analyses the emergence, process and outputs of a cross-boundary collaborative process initiated by the Swedish government in 2014. It builds on an extensive empirical background and ongoing research from the Swedish efforts to launch and implement a National Forest Programme (NFP) between the years 2014-2019, including semi-structured interviews, participant observations, stakeholder comments, records of public hearings and enacted policy documents. The results show that the collaborative endeavours had many merits, particularly by providing a space for joint deliberation and capacity building on complex and conflict-ridden issues pertaining to current land use. However, the outputs, emancipating primarily from deliberations within four stakeholder groups, reveal a discrepancy between initial expectations and the final programme endorsed by the government in 2018. These include, for instance, a lack of prioritizations on how to achieve multiple and often conflicting goals in management, unclear efforts on how to govern towards a bio-based, low-carbon transition, and how to best offer incentives for landowners going beyond compliance with environmental regulations. Further, political realities delayed the adoption of the programme, which caused a lack of internal legitimacy by key non-state stakeholders. The paper concludes with key insights for research on collaboration and policy design and suggest ways forward with the work ahead.

Michael Kirchner, Research Assistant at the Chair of Forest and Nature Conservation Policy in Goettingen

Integration forums – the hot spot for meeting stakeholders to integrate forest science into natural hazard management

The forest-science based solutions for natural hazard management proposed by applied research projects are expected to develop practical relevance. In order to achieve this ambitious goal of knowledge transfer, the innovative Research-Integration-Utilization (RIU) model is applied in the GreenRisk4Alps Project. Here, the integration of scientific information focus on (1) the bi-directional selection of scientific information by actors and (2) the selection of actors within integration forums. A review of literature and empirical evidence collected by the GreenRisk4Alps project in 2018-2020 show that only selected scientific information makes it into praxis and highlights that three different types of integration forums define the relevant actors who drive the integration into praxis.

This new integration forums concept provides answers to the questions of how a scientific project should address relevant actors and how they can be involved in the development of relevant solutions. According to the RIU model, relevance is achieved by offering participation to practitioners only within the integration phase. Therein, they are involved in bi-directional activities inside a specific integration forum. The integration forums could be understood as the missing link for targeted stakeholder involvement inside applied research projects. Based on that RIU model extension we recommend strengthening the practical relevance of projects by conducting a pre-analysis in order to identify already existing integration forums and to also trigger new integration forums.

Ida Wallin, Chair of Forest and Environmental Policy, University of Freiburg

Futures of the Helge å River catchment – a synthesis of four cases of knowledge co-production

Various futures methods conducted as collaborative processes with researchers, policy-makers and practitioners have been promoted as useful to better understand and gain more knowledge about current complex challenges to our landscapes and to support planning and action towards long-term sustainability. A common challenge with futures research is to what extent the methods actually lead to better knowledge and what is meant with better knowledge. Studies addressing this challenge are still rare. Four different projects using futures methods have been conducted in the Helge å catchment in southern Sweden between 2011 and 2020. The projects have all been centered around participatory future scenario processes together with practitioners and other stakeholders from the area and focused on themes including ecosystem services, sustainable landscape management and climate change related issues. Otherwise, the projects have had different theoretical entry points, process designs, specific methods and tools, types of outputs, etc. This gives us a unique opportunity to compare and contrast different futures methods and the types of knowledge that they generate. With any participatory process, context matters – but in this comparison it will matter less, as all projects have been conducted in the same area within the same 9-year-period, including similar stakeholder groups and focused on similar themes; environmental sustainability and ecosystem service production. By comparing these four cases, we assess the knowledge that has been generated using the participatory futures methods, and discuss how, where and when this knowledge would be useful. Based on these insights, we make practical recommendations regarding what contexts and what knowledge needs different futures methods are appropriate for and how to integrate practitioners in a way that is constructive and meaningful for everyone involved.

Natalija Lovrić, European Forest Institute – EFI

Policy makers involvement in the creation and future uptake of the European Strategy for the Conservation and Use of Forest, Crop and Animal Genetic Resources

In this study we use a foresight participatory approach to include the perspectives of identified policy makers from the European Union and the European Neighbourhood Policy countries in developing a European strategy for the conservation and use of crop, forest and animal genetic resources. This enables them to discuss the role of Genetic Resources in meeting geographical, economic and societal needs in Europe and beyond, with expected beneficial impacts far into the future (2030/2040), as well as aims to assess the outlook for the uptake of this strategy in the wider policy making perspective. For this purpose we formed a policy maker stakeholder panel (with 21 renowned representatives from the EC and national level policy makers in their represent domains, public sector and NGO’s) for their active involvement in creating and uptake of this strategy, which is planned to be a policy framework for securing biodiversity for food and forestry in the region to complement the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The study is using Delphi methodologies to discover the policy maker’s needs, current level of knowledge and preferences for tailoring the strategy and building solutions for its future implementation. As a first step, interviews were carried out with the panel members, to explore how the European genetic resources strategy is expected to change in the domains towards 2030 and beyond, and which factors will impact most this development. Afterwards, a follow up survey is carried out with the same panellists to scope what came out in the interviews by also having the possibility to comment the opinions expressed by others in the interview process. As an end-step, focus group is carried out for developing an action plan on the uptake of the strategy and for reaching a final consensus. The collected data is analyzed, according to the general principles of the Delphi methods.