KNEU

Developing a Knowledge Network for EUropean expertise on biodiversity and ecosystem services to inform policy making economic sectors

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Knowledge about biodiversity and ecosystem services is well advanced in the European scientific community, as demonstrated by many excellent projects and their scientific impact. However, on the global as well as the European scale, there is a failure to communicate the knowledge gained into the policy-making process and society as a whole. Such communication efforts, must ensure that all relevant knowledge is accessible and that all existing biodiversity research communities and other knowledge holders are involved in a network structure that is linked to decision making bodies. The overall objective of the project is thus to develop a recommended design for a scientific biodiversity Network of Knowledge (NoK) to inform policy-makers and other societal actors. This network shall be open, transparent, flexible, equally accessible to all, independent, be scientifically- and evidence-based and have a robust structure. It will develop links to relevant clients to support the science-society interface in Europe and beyond. To achieve this, the project brings together expertise from all major biodiversity research fields (in the consortium and beyond). Beginning with mapping the biodiversity knowledge landscape in Europe (WP1), the project will develop a prototype NoK, involving a wide number of institutions and networks in biodiversity research and policy (WP2). This prototype will then be used as a vehicle to carry out case studies in relevant policy fields (agriculture, biodiversity conservation, marine issues) in order to test and trial its functioning and effectiveness (WP3). The experience gained will be evaluated by an additional expert group within the project (WP4) in order to provide input for developing a recommended design for a potential future Network of Knowledge (WP5). WP6 takes care of project management, and will ensure international cooperation and the proper communication with potential clients of the network and the research community.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

An EU-funded project developed an innovative approach to link the environmental knowledge and expertise held separately by various stakeholders. The project yielded a design for a Network of Knowledge aiming to gather and unify the knowledge in support of environmental policy decisions in Europe.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

In recent years, Europeans have recognised the need for better-informed decision making concerning environmental issues. Yet, most of the needed information is inaccessible, held separately by various experts and organisations, and the way it is provided to decision makers is not tailored to their needs.

The http://www.biodiversityknowledge.eu (KNEU) project designed a Network of Knowledge approach (NoK) aiming at better bridging biodiversity knowledge and decision making in Europe. For this purpose the project mapped existing knowledge holders and potential users, identified obstacles to knowledge flow and developed procedures to identify and access expertise ready to answer policy-relevant questions. These procedures were tested in three practical cases: biodiversity conservation, agriculture and biodiversity and a marine biodiversity case.

Based on all the lessons learned and on the contribution of more than 300 active stakeholders, the final NoK design represents a concrete model on how the biodiversity and ecosystems services knowledge community could organize itself to access expertise and better integrate other forms of knowledge in order to improve the capacity to respond to knowledge demands from policy.

The NoK is designed in a way that it is opened to all users, transparent and independent, and produces evidence-based knowledge tailored to the needs of decision makers. The 18-members consortium ran between November 2010 and April 2014 and promoted its work at numerous workshops and conferences, including one day conference at the EU Parliament. An animated http://vimeo.com/81720304 (video) presenting the NoK was produced and translated in four additional languages.

KNEU achieved its goals. The project primarily yielded a http://biodiversityknowledge.eu/images/PDF/WhitePaper_web.pdf (white paper) and its http://biodiversityknowledge.eu/images/PDF/BDK_ExecSum_prefinal.pdf (executive summary) detailing the recommended design features of the NoK and documenting the major steps necessary to implement it.