Voicing interests and concerns: institutional framework and agencies for forest policy research in Europe

Communication between forest scientists and forest policy-makers in Europe — A survey on both sides of the science/policy interface

“…Birot et al (2002) state that improving the knowledge on forest policy matters should proceed through forums between scientists and decision-makers. This opinion is shared by Mayer and Rametsteiner (2004) who mention that joint and coordinated efforts of the scientific community as demonstrated in the Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue of the 4th Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) could further strengthen the role of science in the work of the MCPFE.…”

“…This opinion is shared by Mayer and Rametsteiner (2004) who mention that joint and coordinated efforts of the scientific community as demonstrated in the Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue of the 4th Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) could further strengthen the role of science in the work of the MCPFE. Birot et al (2002) also emphasize that at each step in the process of decision making, the balance between communication and expertise in defining the actions may be different. It is usually stated that principles and framework conditions, together with technical tools and procedures, are drawn from expertise, although the actions themselves, and the way to carry them out, are mainly driven by communication with the interested people.…”

Government science in forestry: Characteristics and policy utilization

“…Although the survey results suggest that both groups relied heavily on publications for knowledge transfer and knowledge uptake purposes, in the interviews respondents often mentioned that the most effective mechanism to ensure research uptake was through face-to-face conversations. This highlights the importance of facilitating in-person communication between scientists and decision-makers, a widely recognized and recommended measure in the literature (Birot et al, 2002;Mayer and Rametsteiner, 2004;Janse, 2008).…”

E-Learning & Environmental Policy: The case of a politico-administrative GIS

“…spatial planning, agriculture, tourism, water management etc), a minimization of conflicts is feasible [6]. This holistic approach of policy-making is enabled through the complete analysis of policy networks, which is an operational form of system theory [8,10]. In other words, a new systemic analysis of classical forest policy is the basis of this e-learning system.…”

“…Figure 1 depicts the interactions between these five GIS components [4,18]. The selection of learning content (in this case, the region-specific formal and informal hierarchies) is based on policy-research criteria depending on complex and heterogeneous cognitive styles [3,8,15] which may be characterized as "region-" and "administrative-based" (Archimedes findings). In this way, a wide range of learner expectations is satisfied [9,10,12].…”