Deliverable 4.2: Set of reports on CINA workshop findings in case study regions, compiled for ongoing co-design and knowledge exchange

Executive summary

When it comes to innovation, often only results are reported, framing them as success stories. Yet, innovation processes are far less linear and organised than what is suggested by such examples – or theoretical models and textbooks. The sometimes erratic journeys by which these success stories are achieved often remain obscure, just like failures or changes of direction. We demonstrate how strategic workshops were used to take decisive steps forward in an innovation process, sometimes leading to unanticipated results. By showing the practical details of what happened around the workshops on forest ecosystem services, we hope to use it to provide practitioners with illustrative material from which they can learn for their own purposes.

This demonstrator is a kaleidoscope of stakeholder meetings, all of which took place under very different circumstances and played different roles in the InnoForESt Innovation Regions, each developing their own innovations for forest ecosystem service provision. The analytical level of this deliverable is the individual reports on the workshop series in the Innovation Regions – i.e., the respective self-reflection of the teams that have carried out the innovation work in these regions. In this framework chapter, we give an orientation about what took place where and against what background. The reports on Constructive Innovation Assessment (CINA) workshop activities have played a functional role in InnoForESt, because they were a tried and tested means of monitoring the progress of innovation efforts in the regions. Various other tasks and deliverables have already drawn information from this, and we will continue to use it for the next deliverables. The reports were developed as living documents to serve this dynamic function, and to encourage reflection on the activities between the workshops.

List of tables

• Table 1: Overview of innovation aspects per InnoForESt Innovation Region/country
• Table 2: CINA workshop types as carried out in practice per Innovation Region

Abbreviations

This deliverable and the subreports may be cited in the same way an edited book and its chapters would be cited. Citing a subreport could then take the following shape:

[Authors of subreports] (2020) [Name of subreport], In: E. Aukes, P. Stegmaier & C. Schleyer (Eds.) Deliverable 4.2: Set of reports on CINA workshop findings in case study regions, compiled for ongoing co-design and knowledge exchange. InnoForESt deliverable. Eberswalde: HNEE.

Preface

This demonstrator is a kaleidoscope of stakeholder meetings, all of which took place under very different circumstances and played different roles in the different Innovation Regions that took part in the project. We are delighted that the regional teams have documented their workshops and other activities before, between, and after these workshops in such detail. We can now make it available to the interested public.

The main focus of this deliverable is the individual reports on the workshop series in the individual Innovation Regions – i.e., the respective self-reflection of the teams that have facilitated the innovation work in these regions. We give a rough orientation of what took place where and against what background of different forest ecosystem services in Part I below.

The reports on CINA workshop activities have already received a lot of attention in the project itself because they were a tried and tested means of monitoring the progress of innovation efforts in the regions. Various other tasks and deliverables have already drawn information from this, and we will continue to use it for the next deliverables. The reports were designed rather as living/developing documents than a set of separated documents. They were also meant to encourage reflection on the activities between the workshops.

Already during the completion of this formal report (formally called a Demonstrator), we started to convert the existing texts into an interactive online format, which will represent the actual form of deliverable 4.2 in a few weeks from now: a far less linear structure of the texts from this deliverable – a kaleidoscope, in fact – that are also mutually linked and also to connect previous and subsequent deliverables. We want to increase the accessibility for interested readers from practice: simple texts, reading aids, appealing visual design. The whole deliverable 4.2 will be integrated into the existing InnoForESt website.

This deliverable does not offer an in-depth comparative analysis between the various regional innovation processes nor partial analyses of individual processes. These are offered in the following deliverables 4.3 and 5.3. In deliverable 4.3, the series of workshops and other activities are initially placed and classified in the context of the respective regional innovation processes. In deliverable 5.3, implications for the innovation of the governance of forest ecosystem services are derived – against the background of the special InnoForESt approach.

The report has the following structure. The introduction to this report includes a brief overview of the InnoForESt workshop approach. Part I provides a preliminary comparative overview of the Innovation Regions and their workshops as well as a portrait of the innovation in question. Part II of this deliverable comprises the workshop documentation reports themselves.

This deliverable would not have been possible without the energetic reporting of the teams in the different regions participating in the project. They reported, we commented and asked, they replied and added more.

Introduction

When it comes to innovation, often only results are reported, framing them as success stories. Yet, innovation processes are far less linear and organised than what is suggested by such examples – or theoretical models and textbooks. The sometimes erratic journeys by which these success stories are achieved often remain obscure, just like failures or changes of direction. We demonstrate how strategic workshops were used to take decisive steps forward in an innovation process, sometimes leading to unanticipated results. By showing the practical details of what happened around the workshops on forest ecosystem services, we hope to use it to provide practitioners with illustrative material from which they can learn for their own purposes.

With this deliverable, we are presenting reports from all six InnoForESt Innovation Regions (IRs) that provide insight into some key points of the innovation processes that lead to new or modified formats for the governance of forest ecosystem services. The focus here is on a series of strategically timed workshops – strategic workshops – that form the landmarks for the innovation efforts. The full course of innovation is traced in detail in another publication of the project, Deliverable 4.3. To support reading these related deliverables side-by-side and to enable easy consultation, we will provide these deliverables as online documents, in which relevant text passages and examples will be interlinked.

The Innovation Region reports in this document all have the same structure: they show how research in all regions has captured the points of departure from which the innovation efforts began; then the individual workshops are described; and finally reflect on what can be learned for further activities in the regions and for the overall project. However, the reports are not limited to the workshops, but also give information about all the work that has been done in the meantime in order to be able to conduct a workshop at all.

Already during the project, the reports enabled a good understanding of what has happened and what continues to happen in each region for everyone involved in the project, focusing on what direction efforts are taking, where difficulties arose, where additional efforts are being made to provide an even more favourable basis for the innovation work.

Constructive Innovation Assessment

The workshops adopted a method of workshop design called Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA), which has long been known from the assessment of emerging technologies and has been used successfully (Rip & te Kulve 2008; Rip & van den Belt 1986). As forest ecosystem service provision and governance involves much beyond technology, we redesigned the approach. The result is our Constructive Innovation Assessment (CINA; cf. Aukes et al. 2019; Stegmaier 2020).

The strategic workshops dealt with the construction and probing of alternative scenarios for the design of forms of governance for forest ecosystem services. The scenarios fed into an estimation of potential effects of activities. Based on this, strategies describing desired outcomes and unintended impacts were developed. The strategic workshops provided the collective reasoning space, in which crucial issues for the proposed innovation options and pathways can be identified together with key actors, in terms of both potential problems and benefits. They also showed the stakeholders how ordinarily side-lined actors could indeed be crucial for the advancement of the innovation.

The scenarios built on a number of research efforts that were made in the first project year: mapping biophysical and institutional conditions for forest ecosystem services across the countries of the Innovation Regions, stakeholder analysis, and governance situation assessment. As the project continued, particularly through the innovation platforms and workshops, the research focused on integrating the new findings from the interactions with stakeholders in the innovation regions into the further development of what we called innovation “prototypes”, i.e. those innovation ideas that were selected in agreement with the stakeholders in order to be promoted further. Prototypes represent the actual innovations and “target objects” of the joint efforts. The learning curve also links one workshop to the next, as the results of one workshop flow into the next innovation campaign and the results of the innovation campaigns into the workshop of the next stage and the revised scenarios used there.

The InnoForESt innovation approach envisaged three types of CINA workshops:

1. CINA Type 1: The workshop on innovation analysis and vision is about gaining an understanding of which innovation should be pursued further, how the innovation could work and what actual and potential effects and limits it has. The workshop also dealt with how innovation coordination could look like or how it could be improved. These discussions should take into account the insights into the development of innovation related to governance, institutions, economic, environmental, or practical issues. The aim was to come up with a series of concrete ideas on how innovation can and should be improved and developed. From this it should also be possible to derive what was referred to in the project as “prototype”, i.e., the version of the innovation with which the innovation network would like to continue, and which should be followed up until the next major strategic workshop.
2. CINA Type 2: The innovation prototype selected during the first analysis and vision workshop was discussed in detail in an early phase of working on it. This includes critical examination of such questions as: (a) what works and what not, and how, about the innovation, (b) what is the reason for this, (c) what are the conditions under which the innovation including the adopted approach can continue meaningfully, (d) what current and potential economic, social and ecological effects and advantages / disadvantages can be expected? A special part of this prototype assessment workshop was an experimental role game (Role Board Game) that examined these questions with a view to selected factors (see Špaček et al. 2019; Kluvánková et al. 2020).
3. CINA Type 3: The last type of workshops, focusing on road mapping, was dedicated to discussing the conditions under which the initiated innovation can continue after the end of the project and what needs to be specifically prepared for it. This requires a clear idea of the ideal shape of the innovation and of its working in future applications. Based on this discussion stakeholders develop an innovation roadmap that shows what needs to be changed, who needs to be involved and how all of this can be achieved. We make every effort to ensure that all innovation work does not end when the project ends. Otherwise, a lot of effort to mobilize people and topics would go to waste.

In practice, the three types of workshops were not only implemented once, but also implemented several times, in some cases, especially with regard to type 1, with the help of which the further innovation work should get the appropriate focus. Sometimes more than one meeting of this well-organized type was necessary to select the prototype.

In principle, all three workshop types were constructed such that everyone involved could speak to each other on an equal footing. To a large extent people worked together on the innovations and their sub-tasks instead of just brainstorming. With regard to real-life involvement of the participants, preventing language barriers was crucial in all seven Innovation Regions: German, Finnish, Italian, Slovak, Swedish and Czech were spoken at the CINA workshops. For this reason, the workshops were not organized by a central team, but were largely in the hands of the regional teams, which were able to speak to their stakeholders in the local language. Of course, it was also crucial that participants had the opportunity to express themselves as effectively and comfortably as possible, as only then the network-building- and policy-relevant nuances could be understood and used. The CINA agents were centrally located in each Innovation Region. With CINA agents we mean a group of people from three organisations. First, this includes the practice partners on regional level. Second, this involves the scientific partners of the regional teams which translated conceptual ideas into the innovation and the findings from the innovation process back to the InnoForESt project level. Third, this includes the CINA assistance team on project level advising the teams in the regions in preparation, carrying out, and analysing the CINA workshops. They also ensured that the events and findings in the regions were played back into the overall project using the previous reports and also verbally, in numerous meetings.

Part I – Overview of the innovation projects

In the following, we give a brief overview over the innovations of the InnoForESt innovation regions. First, we characterise the six innovation efforts according to a number of general aspects (2.1). Second, we outline the individual innovation projects in brief profiles (2.2).

I.1 Preliminary comparison of general aspects

The InnoForESt innovation processes supported by the CINA workshops were stimulated in the following Innovation Regions: Eisenwurzen (Austria) along the entire forest-wood value chain, the Land Trust Association Čmelak in the surrounding area of Liberec (Czech Republic), the compensation schemes of the Habitat Bank based in Southern Finland (Finland) and the forest share in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Germany), as well as an approach to landscape development and value chain integration in the Fiero di Primiero (Trentino, Italy) and the Love the Forest educational project at Universeum in Gothenburg (Sweden). The innovation regions have a number of specific features (Table 1). The spectrum ranges from new governance innovations to further development of existing ones. At the same time, the kinds of governance innovations vary: from compensation-based ecosystem services via value chain foci to education on forest ecosystem services. The central actor is alternately in the state, business or networks rooted in civil society. Here, “central” means that the other (e.g., business and civil society) groups of actors are also present where, for example, the state is the linchpin (and vice versa).

Half of the cases are newly developed initiatives. ‘New’ means that they were not fully functional before in the region the project started. There were first individual attempts in the Eisenwurzen (EIS) to promote forest-wood-related value chains, other habitat bank models in other locations than in Finland (S-FIN), and historical models for the special pasture management in Trentino (PAT). This is different in the three other cases in which an existing form of governance of forest ecosystem services should be renewed and the project was used as an arena and resource for precisely this purpose – as is the case with the Land Trust Čmelak around Liberec (LIB), the forest shares in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (MWP), and the Gothenburg (GOT) education project. These initiatives were phasing out or had recently lost momentum, and the project provided revitalization measures and gave new impetus.

Besides new or further development of approaches, we also consider the variety of governance forms or types dedicated to forest ecosystem service provision. They relate to and focus on different forest ecosystem services (sometimes in a more comprehensive way, sometimes with a weight on one particular kind of service or one concrete individual service). The governance focus on education comes closest to a focus on one specific ecosystem service, as education belongs to the generally accepted ecosystem service category of cultural services. There is a broad range of different FES – more or less explicitly – addressed by the innovations under scrutiny, resulting in a quite diverse picture. In general, in many cases, the innovations are aiming at balancing provisioning ecosystem services, often linked to extractive use (e.g., timber production) of forests and the use and conservation of regulating and cultural ecosystem services within the forests, thus trying to balance communal/societal/collective and private (economic and other) benefits. However, there are cases where specific FES – individual or at least FES categories – are of particular importance. Examples include regulating ecosystem services in FIN (biodiversity conservation) and MWP (CO₂ emission compensation), and cultural FES in GOT (and partly in EIS). In other regions like PAT, LIB, and partly EIS, balancing of timber production and other provisioning services with biodiversity conservation and the safeguarding of regulatory services like water quality and quantity regulation and protection from avalanches is aimed at.

In addition, we can see that the six Innovation Regions have developed quite different dynamics. All of them put the InnoForESt instruments of the CINA workshops into practice in different ways (Table 2). When reading the CINA reports, you can understand these dynamics and varying framework conditions from the project context. In addition, in the subsequent deliverable 4.3, we will also interpret the circumstances of the variation analytically on the basis of the process analyses to be presented there. Deliverable 4.3 takes a close look at the complete innovation processes.

Some type 2 (prototyping) or type 3 (road mapping) CINA workshops could not be fully planned or were performed with some delay because of Covid-19 restrictions. Instead, the regional partners and the overall project endeavour to set up online workshops that could perform the same functions. In two cases, extensive consultations with the stakeholders in the region were necessary in order to work out viable innovation ideas and initiatives (EIS, MWP). In other cases, due to local dynamics and organizational circumstances, not many CINA meetings/workshops have yet taken place, but innovations have been and are being worked on in other, more informal or bilateral ways (LIB, PAT). In one case, the Slovak Hybe region pursued in parallel to the Czech Čmelak, it was possible to start a parallel or complementary process in a neighbouring region with a similar land trust initiative. Although that did not develop as hoped, insights from this were also used for the more committed initiative and in general.

I.2 Short portraits of the innovation cases

In the alphabetical order of the countries, we offer brief portraits of the innovation cases that outline:

• What was the innovation at the beginning of InnoForESt?
• What happened during/due to workshop trajectories?
• What developments occurred on the regime and landscape levels?
• What is the state of affairs with respect to the governance innovation?

These portraits have been written after most of the innovation work had been done and draw on the self-accounts of the CINA reports authored by the Innovation Region teams.

I.2.1 Eisenwurzen Forest value network (Styria, Austria)

As a mountainous, forest-rich area in the heart of Austria, the Eisenwurzen region in the border triangle of Lower Austria (Mostviertel), Upper Austria (Traunviertel), and Styria (Eastern Upper Styria) has a long-standing tradition in forestry, timber production, and woodworking. Despite its tradition and forest culture, the region lags behind others in the country in terms of socio-economic development. Bearing this in mind, a regional research and development NGO called STUDIA strived with some success for drawing together the previously rather fragmented regional production chains involving forest products to integrate and thus upgrade them. In turn, a more holistic view on forest ecosystem service provision is intended to lead to the sustainable supply of provisioning, regulating, regulatory, and cultural ecosystem services as well as biodiversity conservation. From the start, the Innovation Team envisioned and actively encouraged an expansion of the range of actors involved, moving from actors restricted to traditional forestry production chains to the inclusion of the tourist sector and local artisanship but also nature conservation – all with an eye on intensifying cross-sectoral collaboration and potentially improving the socio-economic situation of the region.

In this Innovation Region, one workshop of each InnoForESt workshop type was organized. After intensive pre-research involving – mostly one-on-one – interviews and focus groups, the first CINA workshop encompassed a set of three scenarios revolving around regional furniture and design, tiny houses, and experiencing the forest. As envisioned, the Innovation Team managed to attract actors with a wide variety of backgrounds in all parts of the forest value chain. Enthusiasm abounded among the participants and a euphoric sense of change characterised the spirit. The discussions during this first workshop made clear that the scenarios offered by the Innovation Team were appreciated and sparked curiosity, but that there was an elephant in the room which was not yet addressed by the scenarios: closer, more structured collaboration. Whereas this was originally thought to come along naturally with the proposed scenarios and subsequent concrete manifestations in the form of pilots, the workshop’s outcome triggered the Innovation Team to incorporate this as a stand-alone scenario – yet closely related to the more topic-/issue-oriented scenarios – in the following workshop: Innovation Platform Forest-Wood. As Eisenwurzen is a region composed of various valleys, which the Innovation Team thought could be better networked, the second CINA workshop was held in a neighbouring valley to also enthuse and involve the forest sector stakeholders there. While the discussions during this workshop were once again constructive and the potential of closer collaboration in the sector was appreciated, the Innovation Team felt that it was time to transfer part of the initiative of developing the forest-wood value chain to some of the local actors. This was achieved by constituting a task force consisting of particularly interested and active participants, which met a couple of months after.

In their efforts of consolidating the progress made in enthusing local actors involved in the supply of various forest ecosystem services, the Innovation Team turned to proposing different collaboration forms as new scenarios expanding on the platform idea for the third CINA workshop. Although this workshop involved the participation of a local high school class as a potential new stakeholder, the Innovation Team could not help but notice the waning excitement for the innovation process as the number of already familiar participants was rather low. Nevertheless, many regional forest owners joined a prototype assessment workshop, targeting the establishment of a beech processing business park that was held around the same time. As those who did participate could still be characterised as the core of motivated actors, the Innovation Team reinforced its efforts to come to future-oriented solutions for the Eisenwurzen forest-value chain. The Covid-19 crisis has obviously put activities to a temporary standstill, but the next meetings to organise the legacy of the innovation process after InnoForESt ends at the end of 2020 are already planned.

I.2.2 Collective forest self-governance, Land Trust Association Čmelak (Liberec region, Czech Republic)

Collective governance can be a way to make the provision of forest ecosystem services more sustainable. In the Czech Liberec region, an association organized as a land trust is exploring the potential this governance structure holds for a more sustainable and efficient management of their collectively-owned forest areas. Since 1994, the association’s main activities comprised the restoration of forests degraded by bark beetle infestations, predominantly by diversifying the forest stand. To be able to continue these activities, the association has begun selling certificates as a kind of share of what was coined a “New Virgin Forest” – a more diverse and resilient forest. The main reason for Čmelak’s land trust to remain a pioneer in innovating its forest protection and conservation practices is their ongoing demand for external funding.

After thorough pre-research, a set of three scenarios was developed and discussed in two workshops. Starting from different types of governance modes, the scenarios revolved around advocacy for compensation through national regulation, a local-market-based scenario and a payment for ecosystem services scheme. In a prototype development workshop, participants agreed that the preferred way to move forward would be by combining state regulatory compensations with a voluntary payment for ecosystem services scheme. This would represent a continuation of the existing activities supported by governmental funding to make these activities cost-neutral. Due to Covid-19 the planned next workshop on developing an implementation strategy is put on hold, but preparations are ongoing.

The experiences of the Liberec-based Čmelak land trust are complemented and contrasted with a similar region in Slovakia: the forest commons in Hybe. Collective governance has an even longer tradition in this area (starting from the 1880s), but is more oriented towards provisioning forest ecosystem services. For example, the members of the forest commons have invested in the construction of their own sawmill.

I.2.3 Habitat Bank of Finland (Finland)

Ecosystem service compensation schemes often target carbon dioxide. Systems of biodiversity compensation are much less developed and have been initiated on much smaller scale. Yet, there has been much academic interest in biodiversity compensations, also in Finland. Since 2015, the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) has studied and developed ways to promote biodiversity compensation, together with academic partners. In InnoForESt, SYKE started collaboration with the Finnish Forest Centre to develop a biodiversity compensation scheme involving forest ecosystems. The “Habitat Bank of Finland” is envisioned to offer biodiverse forest areas to be restored and/or protected by actors whose private or business activities deteriorate biodiversity. The main challenge for this innovation is finding an acceptable and feasible mechanism to gauge the biodiversity value of degraded sites, thus enabling an appraisal of how much compensation area must be acquired. Additionally, it is not clear, yet, how the organization of this mechanism should look, also taking into account neutrality and legitimacy of a potential compensation broker.

The Finnish Innovation Team has organized two CINA workshops, one of which was a Visioning workshop, the other a Prototype assessment workshop. The scenarios discussed during the first workshop covered ways of organizing the compensation mechanism, including an authority-driven mechanism, a voluntary contracting mechanism and a mechanism coordinated by an independent foundation. An important focus of the workshop involved ensuring sufficient incentives for both sides of the compensation transaction. Although participants generally agreed that the Habitat Bank should follow a voluntary contracting mechanism, suggestions of who could take up the role of broker were received cautiously. Another outcome was that the mechanism should be tested in a pilot environment before being implemented as a full-scale compensation scheme. While participants singled out the voluntary contracting mechanism as way forward, some aspects of other scenarios, e.g., an intermediary organization with the role of marketplace, were requested to be included as well. During the second workshop, it became clear that comparisons with carbon compensation cannot be expected to be clear to everyone and needs to be included in pro-active communication. Besides, the discussion about which actor should assume the intermediary role or which actor should be created to do so remained intractable. At the time of writing, the Innovation Team is concretising the compensation mechanism, including defining the intermediary organisation, the negotiation mechanism, the offset-granting authority and future of offset sites. The Innovation Team’s efforts may well fall on fertile ground as ecological compensation are rising on the national political agenda.

I.2.4 Forest Share payment scheme (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany)

For more than 10 years already, there is an established payments-for-ecosystem-services-scheme in Germany’s North-eastern federal state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern called the ‘Waldaktie’ or ‘Forest Share’. Overall, the scheme has two target groups. First, it aims at tourists voluntarily compensating the CO₂ emissions arising from their travels to holiday destinations in the federal state. Second, companies can invest in the scheme to improve their climate footprint. Compensation is achieved by afforesting government-owned forest areas. For making this compensation process tangible, the Waldaktie organisation frequently arranged tree planting events, in which tourists could participate right from the beginning of the scheme. During InnoForESt, the Waldaktie Innovation Team aims for an overhaul of the PES scheme. First, there is the opportunity to expand the range of ecosystem services included in the scheme, as there are related schemes targeting other ecosystems in the region, too. This option refers to the success of two other ecological securities in the innovation region: (a) the “MoorFutures”, a voluntary payment scheme for re-wetting peatlands and (b) the “Streuobstgenussschein”, a voluntary payment scheme for the re-cultivation of old orchard meadows. Second, the Innovation Team concluded that an overhauled version of the forest share scheme should include incentives for tourists and businesses to reduce CO2 emission before resorting to CO₂ compensation through payment schemes, such as the Waldaktie.

Besides frequent bilateral talks, the Innovation Team has organized two CINA workshops, one on innovation visioning and one on innovation prototype assessment. In the visioning workshop, participants discussed two scenarios. The first scenario added full cost accounting to the existing scheme. The second expanded the ecosystem services range targeted and aimed for a more educational approach. The discussion resulted in the rejection of the first scenario, as full cost accounting would not lead to a satisfactory increase of the payment scheme’s profile. Rather, a combination of the two scenarios should result in a scheme incorporating a more ecosystem aware educational approach that reflects the transformation in public opinion about climate compensation, while the revenue from the scheme should even exceed full cost accounting. Besides these conclusions from the CINA workshop, other developments on the regime and landscape level influenced the further specification of the scenarios. First, as CO2 accounting climbed the political agenda in Germany, there was an opportunity to discuss the Waldaktie as a mandatory scheme for climate compensation. Additionally, the governmental forest areas available for afforestation began to deplete reducing the availability of forest shares to be sold.

During the second CINA workshop, the cost accounting method became a central issue once more, however to no avail. The issue was postponed to a future workshop to be organised, while political urgency increases and an introduction of the revamped payment scheme is pushed for. The InnoForESt CINA process has recently come to a standstill due to organizational and financial uncertainties. Support from the state government for the forest shares may be revoked. The Innovation Team is feverishly looking for ways of getting back on track and creating a situation in which the promising development can be picked up again.

I.2.5 Fiera di Primiero forest-pasture management (Autonomous Province Trentino, Italy)

Primiero is a mountainous, forest-rich area in the Trento region in North-Eastern Italy. Forest management in this area traditionally involved a combination of forestry and grazing, captured in the term ‘forest-pasture management’. In the past few decades this traditional way of managing agriculture and silviculture has somewhat gone out of fashion due to outmigration. As a result, the uncontrolled growth of forest reduced the open areas and it became increasingly hard to find the traditional cultural landscape of forest pastures. The InnoForESt Innovation Team of the Trentino Provincial Forest Management Agency took up this tradition and attempts to re-establish forest-pasture management as a landscape management method. As a potentially more biodiverse management method, it figures as an interesting innovation for forest ecosystem services. Modernisation of forest-pasture management would also entail maximizing sustainability benefits and possibly a stronger integration of the increasing tourism pressure into the innovation process.

At the time of writing, two large-scale CINA workshops were organized by the Trentino Innovation Team. The orientation of the first CINA workshop involved scenarios discussing the restoration of neglected mid-elevation forest-pastures and different forms of public and private shared management of those areas. Main outcomes of the workshop were an activation of relevant stakeholders and ways forward in further developing the governance innovation scenarios.

After the first workshop, the region was hit by a natural disaster – the storm Vaia – which derailed the innovation process for a while. At the time, priorities of the Provincial Forest Management Agency rightly lay with restoring forest infrastructures, mapping damages and clearing deadwood left behind by the storm. Due to this incisive landscape event, the Innovation Team had to temporarily stop their efforts of platform building for the governance innovation. Fortunately, the storm has increased the urgency of rethinking the provincial forest management practice. Once the Team was able to pick up the work on forest-pasture management, one of the first things was contacting the regional tourism marketing organization to explore collaboration potentials. These talks to involve the regional tourism marketing organization failed due to different priorities. It also turned out that wood processing businesses had become much less interested in participating in the innovation process of the Provincial Forest Management Agency due to the consequences and shifts of priorities in the aftermath of storm Vaia.

Discussion and results of the first CINA workshop were the foundation for two scenarios presented to stakeholders in a second workshop dedicated to further develop the governance innovation prototype. It was now clear, that it made sense to focus on pasture restoration in one scenario and on tourism development in the other scenario. Based on this workshop the Innovation Team has chosen to focus on discussing the scenarios and possible implementation in sub-groups, as it seemed not yet useful to continue elaboration in a larger workshop. The Innovation Team will remain supportive and facilitative where possible for these sub-groups.

This Innovation Region is a case in point of the InnoForESt approach to FES governance innovation, seeing innovations as journeys embedded in and influenced by changes or events in their external environment. Consequentially, time is not a suitable dimension for measuring progress of an innovation, as it is without question that there was quite some progress in the redevelopment/reestablishment of the forest-pasture management system. Rather, a more flexible approach is called for that takes into account changes of orientation and other process categories of an innovation process.

I.2.6 Älska Skog educational competition (Gothenburg, Sweden)

Gothenburg-based educational institute Universeum is running annual design competitions on forest topics for primary school pupils, starting in 2016. Based on various activities in which pupils gain knowledge about forest-related challenges and opportunities as well as forestry, they would design plans to deal with those problems. After a first setup which ended in 2018, an evaluation and potential redesign of the competition was desired. This is where the InnoForESt approach came in to structure and guide the innovation process of this educational programme. The aim of the innovation process was to update the competition programme to contemporary complexities and explore new actor and contributor constellations.

At the time of writing, the Innovation Team has organized four workshops of different kinds, differing in distribution and number of stakeholders participating. A first CINA workshop discussed a wide variety of scenarios which took up current topics of sustainability/climate and using forests as a means of integration. This meant a potential broadening of the previous range of topics which revolved specifically around forest management topics. However, this potential broadening was not without risk. Private forestry actors were strongly tied into the previous institutional arrangement of the educational competition and a critical view on climate activities in forests could result in their withdrawal from cooperation. Hence, any scenario that would involve climate change would need to be formulated very carefully.

Nevertheless, during a second workshop the Team focused more on climate as a topic and presented the participants with three further developed scenarios fleshing out the contents of climate-focused educational competitions. The choice to intensify work on climate as a topic for the educational programme was reaffirmed by an increased awareness for climate change following the 2018 extreme drought and heatwave, which in turn spurred Greta Thunberg, the Swedish high school student turned global climate champion. Interest of high school students in the problematic surged along with Greta’s impact on global environmental policy and media. Afterwards, the Team planned to present the new direction to the private forestry actors. This was not yet successful, partly because they could not participate in subsequent workshops. In lieu of developments on that front, the Team picked up the further didactical development of the programme and met up with the Universeum in-house pedagogues. They discussed how the eventually chosen climate scenario could be implemented from a didactical perspective.

In what has been the last workshop for now the Team convened teachers to discuss the current scenario and hear their opinions on different possibilities regarding the didactical setup of the programme now targeting the older age group of high school students. In InnoForESt terms, the Team has reached far into the prototype development process and is already on the verge of mapping the road ahead. It seems that the governance innovation is heading towards a new content and a new target group.

Part II – CINA Reports

II.1 Innovation Region Austria

II.2 Innovation Region Czechia/Slovakia

II.3 Innovation Region Finland

II.4 Innovation Region Germany

II.5 Innovation Region Italy

II.6 Innovation Region Sweden

References

Aukes, Ewert; Stegmaier, Peter; Hernández-Morcillo, Mónica (2019) Interim Ecosystem Services Governance Navigator & Manual for its Use. InnoForESt Deliverable 5.1.

Kluvánková, Tatiana; Špaček, Martin; Sorge, Stefan; Mann, Carsten; Schleyer, Christian (2020) Application Summary of Prototypes for Ecosystem Service Governance Modes – Demonstrator. InnoForESt Deliverable 3.2.

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