Subprojects

More profound knowledge about the preconditions, mechanisms and outcomes of learning on the policy- and forest management level is needed to achieve stipulated goals and targets.

SP0: Programme coordination and communication

Researchers in this subproject are responsible for overall program management of NAVIGATE, and for coordinating the interaction between the program’s subprojects SP1-6. Furthermore, SP0 will also be primarily responsible for internal and external communications, as well as for interactions with stakeholders and reference groups for the duration of the program.

For more information about this subproject and the entire NAVIGATE program, contact program manager Professor Simon Matti, Department of Political Science, Luleå University of Technology.

SP1a: Mapping the Strategy Landscape, and SP1b: Synthesis

SP1 is divided into part a, initiating the program, and part b, finalising it.

SP1a, Mapping the strategy landscape, aims to:

1. Provide an overview of present climate and biodiversity strategies, including an description of related governance systems,
2. develop a analytical framework for further characterisation of the strategies and potential overlaps or conflicts between strategies, and
3. identify a limited set of key strategies of particular relevance for Sweden to explore further in SP2-6.

SP1b, Synthesis

Brings together the results from SP1a-SP6 and aims to draw conclusions on how to develop strategies and improve their implementation in order to simultaneously promote public policy goals on climate change and biodiversity. The main result will be a synthesis report with recommendations for policy-makers.

SP2: The Legal Framework

There is broad recognition that legal and associated procedural and administrative frameworks can pose a significant challenge for the transition to an environmentally sustainable society and thus for the achievement of climate and biodiversity objectives.

Against this backdrop, this SP aims to answer the following research questions:

1. Which legal and procedural mechanisms have a direct impact on the implementation of the strategies identified in SP 1a and how can they be characterised and mapped to support the negotiation of goal conflicts and handling of implementation barriers?
2. Which are the most significant legal and procedural obstacles to the effective and coordinated implementation of the identified strategies at different levels?
3. Which legal best practices can be identified for strategy development and implementation to support effective and coordinated achievement of the objectives of existing and future strategies?

SP2 will generate a conceptual map of legal and procedural barriers to the coordinated operationalization of climate and biodiversity related strategies that enable systemic understanding and support remedial action both on a systems level and in relation to specific cases, including the identification and use of implementation synergies. It will furthermore provide detailed analysis of the most significant barriers, together with accessible guidance for how such barriers can be avoided or minimized in the design of policies and policy measures as well as actionable recommendations for how existing, important barriers can best be handled.

SP3: Political Institutions and Administration

Political institutions and administration are key to governing sustainability transitions. Since both climate change and biodiversity loss span different fields and many levels of governance, they involve a range of actors, which adds to the complexity of governing these challenges. This subproject aims to map and analyse the roles of different political institutions and public agencies in advancing the selected strategies from SP1a. The focus will be on their responsibilities and competencies, the governance instruments that are employed, and the complex interactions between political institutions and public agencies.

SP3 will answer the following research questions:

1. For the identified strategies, which are the key political institutions and agencies that address climate and biodiversity goals in Sweden and what are their responsibilities and competencies?
2. How do key political institutions and agencies address climate and biodiversity goals in Sweden, in terms of: a) governance instruments employed; b) their interactions with other institutions?
3. Which institutional barriers exist in implementing the strategies and how can they be overcome?

Expected results include a deeper understanding of how the functional and strategic behaviour of political institutions and public agencies that deal with issues of climate change and biological diversity affects the way in which these topics are addressed. By studying interactions between different institutions, it can be expected that some relations will be synergistic while others are more conflictive. Through this analysis, potential gaps, conflicts and roadblocks will be identified in order to better understand the institutional barriers that exist in realising climate and biological diversity strategies, thereby enabling an investigation into how to potentially overcome these.

Work package 2

WP2 is lead by professor Annica Sandström (LTU Sweden) and co-lead by associate professor Krzysztof Niedziałkowski (IFiS Poland). The objective of WP2 is to identify the preconditions for forest-related policy learning, policy change and policy goal achievement under climate change related stress and disturbance.

The research will identify relevant national policy objectives and instruments, explore and explain policy learning among national advocacy coalitions, and analyse how their learning affects integration of policy objectives and goal achievement including the SDGs. Using a comparative and longitudinal approach, advocacy coalitions' and national policies’ responses to climate related stress and disturbances will be analysed in all participating countries (DE, PL, SE, SI).

Particular attention is paid to the enabling and disabling factors of governance system characteristics, including: i) conflict and collaboration between advocacy coalitions; ii) venues for interaction and knowledge exchange; iii) access and quality of scientific information; and iv) behaviour of key actors/organisations, i.e. policy brokers, facilitating integrated solutions to multifunctional forest governance.

Work package 3

WP3 is led by prof. Špela Pezdevšek Malovrh, PhD UL(BF) and co-led by Bernhard Wolfslehner, PhD (EFI). It has two main objectives. The first objective is to investigate how forest owners' and managers understand and respond to policy, multiple ecosystem services demands, and climate related forest stress and disturbances.

The second objective is to explore opportunities to support forest management adaptation and the achievement of multiple policy objectives through social and policy learning in selected regions affected by climate induced disturbances in all participating countries. WP3 will seek to answer two questions: 1) How do forest owners and managers understand and respond to multiple policy objectives, instruments, and ecosystem services demands, and climate related stress and disturbances? 2) How can policies support forest owners and managers’ learning to adapt to climate related stress and disturbances and to achieve multiple forest related objectives?

WP3 consists of three different tasks. The first task identifies key drivers shaping forest management and explaining behavioural responses of private forest owners and managers under the combined influence of major forest stress and disturbances and multiple policy demands.

The second task conducts a survey of forest owners’ and managers’ perceptions and behavioural responses to the combined influence of climate related stress and disturbance and multiple policy demands.

The third task conducts an in-depth qualitative case study analysis to “zoom in” on selected regions in all participating countries. In-depth focus group discussions and interviews with representatives of the identified forest owner types will be used to explore how forest owners and managers deal with multiple policy- and ecosystem services demands and simultaneous climate related forest stress and disturbances; and how public policies can enhance learning, adaptation and goal achievement.

Work package 4

WP4 aims at projecting forest ecosystem services and essential biodiversity parameters (i.e. timber, carbon storage, water provisioning, deadwood, broadleaved tree abundance, etc. for habitat quality) in the participating countries, based on forest management scenarios (developed in WP3) reflecting owners/managers’ responses to different policy and disturbance scenarios.

Furthermore, WP4 quantifies trade-offs and synergies between biodiversity, forest ecosystem services provision and forest related policy objectives. The results will be synthesised for decision/policy support and policy recommendations in WP5.

How forests are managed is critical to the realisation of synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as between different ecosystem services (Gamfeldt et al., 2013; Verkerk et al., 2014; Van der Plas et al., 2016). WP4 will thus generate science based knowledge that is urgently needed to support policy- and social learning to realise the best use of forests in a climate neutral society.

Work package 5

Work Package (WP) 5 of LEARNFORCLIMATE facilitates collaborative social learning among relevant actors through joint science-practice-policy communicative action. It conducts cutting edge social science research and offers a policy-science-practice interface to promote mutual understanding of sustainable and multifunctional forest management under climate related stress and disturbances.

The collaborative learning processes will involve academic (natural and social scientists) and non-academic actors such as forest owners and managers, forest industries, public authorities and policy makers, environmental and other relevant non-governmental organisations at the EU level as well as at the national and regional levels in Germany, Poland, Slovenia, and Sweden. Main research questions of WP5:

1. What are the main drivers of and barriers to social learning between non-academic and academic actors?
2. What knowledge and policy goals/instruments are perceived as legitimate and effective to achieve multiple forest related policy objectives (e.g., timber production for construction, pulp and paper and bio-energy vs. biodiversity conservation and restoration vs. climate mitigation and adaptation) under climate change related forest stress and disturbances (e.g., drought, storms, fire, bark beetles)?
3. What innovative participatory practices and policy-science-interface methods have the greatest potential to support collaborative social learning promoting sustainable and multifunctional forest management to achieve different forest policy goals under climate change related forest stress and disturbances?