Prioritising stakeholder engagement for forest health, across spatial, temporal and governance scales, in an era of austerity

Abstract

Tree health is a major concern for forest managers as well as others who enjoy the benefits of trees, woods and forests. We know that stakeholder engagement can help define what people find important about forests and woodlands, assist in the development of better management approaches, enhance buy-in of strategies proposed and create a stronger democratic dialogue. However, tree health offers particular challenges for stakeholder engagement because of the wide range of stakeholders potentially involved and budget tightening under economic austerity. Stakeholders are present at different spatial scales (local, place specific; regional; national and international) and need to be engaged cyclically and over different temporal scales, sometimes in immediate decision making but also in Highlights  Stakeholder mapping reveals a complex layering of hybrid roles and spatial variation  Stakeholder engagement occurs across a convoluted research and practice projectscape  Interactive engagement, especially experiential, dialogic or fun, is preferred  A lack of personnel, time, resource and knowledge limits stakeholder capacity  Investment is required to support relationships and networks for effective engagement

Are We Defending the Indefensible? Reflecting on Policy and Practice Around ‘the Border’ in Plant Biosecurity for Tree Health

“…This study emerged out of an association with a large, interdisciplinary research project focused on the development of new technologies for the early detection of pests and pathogens within the UK, along with an exploration of how technologies can best be deployed and knowledge exchanged [16,17]. The five technologies explored were (1) volatile organic compounds, to identify chemical changes in the air triggered by disease; (2) spectral imaging techniques, to detect visual changes in plants caused by disease and stress that are beyond the range of human vision; (3) new pheromone traps to capture insects; and molecular genetics approaches using novel techniques such as (4) water borne disease transfer and (5) fungal spore analysis.…”

“…We developed a database of relevant actors, held annual interactive one day workshops with all of these actors, invited the use of novel communication techniques to engage different groups and developed socio-technological learning labs (SLLs) to encourage engagement within particular contexts (e.g., with inspectors at an airport and a port inspection facility) as well as a learning platform [16,17]. Project meetings included focus group discussions within the wider project team.…”

“…Border performance can be perceived as formal regulations enacted by and conferring authority [29], or as the day-to-day activities of those involved (Salter in [25]), and this performance can occur in relation to different concepts of the border (as discussed above). A variety of state and non-state actors are involved in tree health [16][17][18][19] and many of these actors were identified as being involved in border performance.…”

“…This section has revealed that not only is the notion of the border complex and varied, but also that the actors and actor roles involved in border performance are multiple and diverse. Because the differentiation of state and non-state actors is important in border literature (e.g., [26]), we began to organize our tree health actors in this way, but the recent shift to more hybrid forms of organizations involved in tree health (see [16]) led to a further categorization. A summary of the state and non-state actors, and those now belonging to hybrid organizations along with their main roles in early detection of tree pests and pathogens, is shown in Table 1.…”

“…The shift from government to governance in environmental management, with increasing devolved powers to non-state groups (e.g., [15]) implies that greater non-state control of and responsibility for the border may occur for biosecurity, and the era of austerity can place greater pressures on individual actors [16]. Tree health involves a complex network of actors, including government and government agencies, inspectors, academics, forest practitioners, landscape architects, commercial technology companies, horticultural producers and gardeners and participants in woodland recreation [16][17][18][19]. Understanding how these actors interact in order to protect organisms, ecosystems and human health at vulnerable entry points and through control processes is thus essential for biosecurity.…”