WP6 – Stakeholder interactions

In a world facing both an increasing need for food and large-scale biodiversity loss, agricultural development represents both a threat to and opportunity for conservation of biodiversity and provisioning of ecosystem services and public goods. These are issues of broad societal interest and thus present an opportunity for public involvement in the research.  It also makes an active promotion of the public understanding of research results desirable. However, it generally takes a long time before research results reach stakeholders and society, and consequently before they are transferred into action. To engage relevant societal actors into the research process and thereby reduce the gap between science and society, as well as between knowledge and action, it is crucial to put deliberate communication, collaboration and dissemination programs into practice.

This trans-disciplinary project rests on mutual learning between researchers and stakeholders throughout the project. To affect rural development, the project will interact with stakeholders ranging from policy-makers at the European level to individual farmers. In practice, we will arrange conferences and workshops (European/national) with key stakeholders where we identify the specific research needs of the stakeholders, as well as present and discuss research plans and results. We will also develop recommendations on rural land-use management to support sustainable development (in Policy Briefs, Synthesis paper and Final report) that are based on the scientific results of the project.

Objectives

• Ensure high quality and efficient management of MULTAGRI, including monitoring of partner progress and meeting reporting responsibilities to RURAGRI
• Develop and implement an internal and external dissemination strategy to support dialogue within project and mutual learning with stakeholders, other RURAGRI-projects and the general public
• Promote the science-policy dialogue through interaction among researchers and stakeholders based on the principle of mutual learning
• Promote the exchange of national and regional experiences with innovative agri-environmental schemes among policy-makers across Europe
• Synthesize research results from all WPs for dissemination both across the scientific community and to key stakeholders: policy makers and farmers
• Increase and ensure long term institutional competence by training PhD students and postdocs