Structure and work packages
The project links a wide range of perspectives from policy, business and society with the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and innovation research in a mutual enriching and co-creative way for sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services.
Seven work packages are devised to coordinate the project and facilitate the development of innovation platforms, testing of promising policy and business approaches in selected cases and foster cooperation between a large range of forest users, managers, administrators and scientists for the sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services.
WP 1
Project management and coordination provides a project structure, manages internal communication, runs meetings, and submits financial/technical reports to the Commission.
Lead: HNEE – Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development
WP 2
Mapping and assessing forest ecosystem services and institutional frameworks will merge European level information on forest ecosystem services and various governmental and industry sources to map the socio-economic and institutional forestry landscape across Europe. In addition to the network and compensation schemes case studies focus on, further policy and business niche innovations for co-learning will be identified.
WP 3
Smart ecosystem service governance innovations will develop a conceptual analysis framework, design and test prototypes, experimenting with policy and business innovations for smart and sustainable forest ecosystem service governance. Further, prototypes of improved and promising policy and business approaches that include payment mechanisms for the holistic basket of forest ecosystem services will be collaboratively developed and tested for the selected case studies with help of behavioural experiments.
WP 4
Innovation platforms for policy and business will make information on forest ecosystem services, institutional frameworks and niche innovations (WP2), as well as of policy and business prototypes for provision of distinct forest ecosystem services (WP3) available in real-world case studies for multi-stakeholders, including public and private actors from different sectors and administrative levels. WP4 will further navigate innovation networks in real-world contexts through the establishment of innovation platforms in seven selected countries.
Lead: ZALF – Leibniz-Centre of Agricultural Landscape Research
WP 5
Innovation process integration will assess and connect the decisive economic, socio-technical, political-institutional, and biophysical-ecological conditions, as taken stock of in WP2. By means of a transdisciplinary research and following a multi-actor approach this WP will compile and integrate insights from various disciplines, experiences with and accounts of policy, business and management practice; a diversity of stakeholders’ interests, visions, and concerns, including civil society perceptions, user demands, and facilitators’ suggestions; and finally integrate also the analytics from a multi-layer perspective.
WP 6
Policy and business recommendations and dissemination will develop recommendations for forest policy and business practice for sustainable forest ecosystem service provision and financing, informed by evidence from WP2-WP5. Furthermore, WP6 will elaborate and implement a communication plan, create a website and novel social networking tools, disseminate findings, organise regular stakeholder meetings and a final event in Brussels.
WP 7
Ethics requirements will safeguard all procedures, processes and criteria related to the identification and recruitment of research participants, consent procedures and procedures for data collection, storage, protection in compliance with national and EU legislation.
Lead: HNEE – Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development
