a community forest case-study in Tanzania

The current debate on climate change, especially with respect to the role of REDD projects and the push for the recognition of community (participatory) forest management as a carbon mitigation option represents a potential for communities to receive benefits from carbon sequestration. A recent study in Tanzania has estimated that communities can receive financial benefits in thousands of US$ annually from the sale of their forest carbon credits. This notwithstanding, such kind of projects is expected to generate potential social and environmental costs with related risks of conflicts if benefit sharing and governance issues are not well addressed. However the identification and prioritization as well as the economic value of all these benefits and costs are still premature. An understanding of what these expected benefits from sustainable forest management and REDD projects are, how their (total) value can be assessed and who are stakeholders and actors in participatory forest management (PFM) can be useful in formulating equitable benefit sharing mechanisms based on principles of “good governance” that could be adopted in REDD projects implementation. The paper deals with these topics on the basis of empirical results based on a participatory action research carried out in the Angai Village Land Forest Reserve, Liwale District, in Tanzania in 2010. Guidelines for formulating governance mechanisms to reduce risks of negative social consequences and enhance benefits from PFM_REDD projects for local forest resources management are proposed. Equitable benefit sharing in PFM is considered one of the most important issues for community cohesion and conflicts solving/managing and in the avoidance of leakage or other risks in REDD projects

Ecosystem services auctions: the last decade of research

ReviewAuctions offer potential cost-effectiveness improvements over other mechanisms for payments for ecosystem services (PES) contract allocation. However, evidence-based guidance for matching design to application is scarce and research priorities are unclear. To take stock of the current state of the art, we conducted a systematic review and thematic content analysis of 56 peer-reviewed journal articles discussing ES auctions published in the last decade. Auctions were approached from three overlapping perspectives: mechanism design, PES, and policy analysis. Five major themes emerged: (1) performance, including measures like cost-effectiveness and PES criteria like additionality; (2) information dynamics like price discovery and communication effects; (3) design innovations like risk-integrating and spatially coordinated mechanisms; (4) contextual variables like policy context and cultural values; and (5) participation factors. Additional attention from policymakers and continued efforts to coordinate research in this diverse and interdisciplinary subfield may be beneficialinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Criteri di buona governance in Leader: l\u2019autovalutazione dei Gruppi di Azione Locale

l principale obiettivo di questo lavoro \ue8 proporre una metodologia per l\u2019autovalutazione della capacit\ue0 del Gruppi di Azione Locale (Gal) di elaborare e gestire una strategia locale Leader secondo principi di buona governance. L\u2019approccio proposto, inizialmente sviluppato e testato in via preliminare con tecniche di ricerca qualitativa \ue8 qui perfezionato e integrato con il Common Assessment Framework (Caf), un modello di autovalutazione in uso da tempo presso organizzazioni pubbliche in Europa. Il sistema proposto si basa su un set d\u2019indicatori specifici di prestazione (performance) e di percezione del Gal capaci di correlare i principali elementi di una buona governance alle specificit\ue0 dell\u2019approccio Leader. Questo strumento pu\uf2 contribuire a migliorare l\u2019attivit\ue0 di monitoraggio gestionale e indirizzare criticamente le attivit\ue0 del Gal

A relational approach to studying collective action in dairy cooperatives producing mountain cheeses in the Alps: The case of the primiero cooperative in the Eastern Italians Alps

Compared with more productive areas, mountain areas are at risk of being marginalized, particularly in the agri-food sector. To circumvent price competition, local actors in the mountains can develop specialized local products, which depends on their capacity to act collectively. Collective action, however, is complex and needs to be better understood if it is to steer initiatives towards success. This article sets out a relational approach to studying collective action in a dairy cooperative located in a mountain area: The Primiero cooperative in the Italian Alps. The common pool resources and territorial proximity frameworks were combined in a social network analysis of advice interactions among producer members, and an analysis of trust and conflict among members and between members and other actors involved in the value chain. The results show that the success of collective action can be explained by various complementary factors. Firstly, members had dense relationships, with high levels of trust and reciprocity, while the president had the role of prestige-based leader. Nonetheless, the analysis also highlighted conflicts related to the production levels of “traditional” and “intensive” producers, although members demonstrated a high capacity to resolve conflicts by creating their own rules to control further intensification. Socio-economic status did not appear to play a role in advice relationships, showing that the members interact horizontally. However, the results show that the geographical isolation of some members tended to inhibit their commitment to the collective dynamics. At a higher level, trust toward other actors involved in the value chain plays a central role in carrying out joint projects to develop and promote cheese

Evaluation of social innovation in marginalised rural areas: potential, challenges and a methodological proposal based on Italian case studies.

Social innovation is an emerging topic, identified in the EU Strategy 2020 as one of the crucial, intangible factors required to promote smart, inclusive and sustainable growth. It provides society with a renovated role by considering it \u2013 in a time of major public budgetary constraints - an effective way of responding to social challenges through the mobilisation of people\u2019s creativity, the promotion of an innovative and learning society and the creation of the social dynamics behind technological innovations (BEPA, 2011: 7). Although it initially focused on addressing social disadvantage and exclusion in a wide range of contexts, urban more often than rural, an unambiguous definition of social innovation has not been agreed on yet (Moulaert et al. 2005; MacCallum et al. 2009). Likewise, so far only a few scholars have proposed how to interpret the concept in the rural arena (e.g. Neumeier, 2012; Bosworth et al. 2016; Bock et al. 2016). A recent proposed definition of social innovation in relation to rural areas with specific limitations in terms of geographical location and/or socio-economic conditions, comes from a 4-year research project named SIMRA (Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas) and funded under the EU Horizon2020 Programme. Such proposed definition by Polman et al. (2017) states that social innovation is \u201cthe reconfiguring of social practices, in response to societal challenges, which seeks to enhance outcomes on societal well-being and necessarily includes the engagement of civil society actors\u201d. To date, a catalogue of more than 50 examples of social innovation that have been identified according to this definition, in the sectors of agriculture, forestry and rural development in marginalised rural areas in EU and extra-EU Mediterranean countries (Bryce et al. 2017), has been compiled and published online. The catalogue is neither fix nor comprehensive, rather it provides an initial overview on how large the variety of social innovation cases already implemented can be. On the one hand, social innovation is probably more widespread than reported by scientific literature and perceived by practitioners today. This may be because the concept refers de facto to a wide range of initiatives dealing with different societal challenges: from the new social uses of agricultural and forestry activities (e.g., social horticulture or social farming, nursery services in forests, forest therapy), to the creation of new networks based on public-private partnerships for the production, transformation and commercialisation of new agricultural products and services, to the involvement of migrants and refugees in the management of peri-urban green areas, to several others. On the other hand, our knowledge and understanding of social innovation and related socio-economic dynamics remains very limited. It has been already stated that a commonly accepted definition and theoretical conceptualisation are under construction. Besides, specific policy instruments are still lacking, and a method to comprehensively evaluate social innovation in terms of its effectiveness, efficiency, relevance and impacts on society, economy, environment and institutions is also not available yet. According to the SIMRA project proposal, key elements of social innovation to be evaluated are: the \u201ctrigger\u201d; the \u201cperceived context\u201d; the \u201cagency/actors\u201d acting for change; the \u201creconfiguring\u201d process of social practices (included networks, governance arrangements and attitudes); the \u201creconfigured\u201d new situation that brings about a social innovation project; the \u201cactivities\u201d, \u201coutputs\u201d and \u201coutcomes/impacts\u201d of the social innovation project; the feedback loops interpreted as \u201clearning processes\u201d. Information on these complex and multifaceted aspects can be collected at the local level by means of semi-structured and structured interviews and participatory-based events (focus groups). Both quantitative and qualitative approaches and instruments are hence combined, and this is applicable for data collection as well as for the analysis of results and reporting of findings. Accordingly, the data can then be analysed and interpreted through indicators and other advanced instruments like the Social Network Analysis. Our proposed SIMRA evaluation method is currently being tested in 10 different case studies in various EU and extra-EU Mediterranean countries. Preliminary results in terms of calculated indicators for social innovation elements are expected by January 2019. Given the current stage of the study within SIMRA, this contribution intends to stimulate the scientific discourse and the debate between the world of science and that of the stakeholders. It does this by providing ideas and opportunity for discussion, alongside possible practical solutions for an evaluation approach and a specific evaluation framework for the capturing of the multifaceted aspects of social innovation. The latter two will be explained by directly applying them to a few/three selected Italian examples that most probably will be chosen among \u201cCooperativa Cadore\u201d, with its SIMBIorti project (Belluno); the national network \u201cMontagnaterapia\u201d, with its activities with disabled people; \u201cCooperativa di Comunit\ue0 Briganti del Cerreto\u201d (Reggio Emilia), with its multiple services to slow and rural tourism; \u201cRural Hub\u201d (Frosinone), with its activity of migrants\u2019 inclusion. Despite the various methodological challenges and the high diversification and complexity of the topics to be evaluated (social innovation\u2019s process, project and impacts), we believe that our scheme paves the way for building an innovative set of methods that considers \u201csocial factors\u201d important role in EU\u2019s future \u2018Rural Development Programs\u2019 and \u2018Agricultural research and Innovation Agenda\u2019

Social innovation and its impacts in disadvantaged rural areas: a new evaluation framework

An agreed and well-consolidated evaluation framework for the assessment of social innovation (SI) and its impacts has not been developed yet, despite tentative made by scholars (e.g., Nicholls et al. 2015). The EU funded H2020 project SIMRA \u2013 Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas (www.simra-h2020.eu) \u2013 aims to conceptualize an evaluation framework for SI initiatives in disadvantaged rural areas of Europe and non-EU Mediterranean countries. Within SIMRA, SI is defined as \u201cthe reconfiguring of social practices, in response to societal challenges, which seeks to enhance outcomes on societal well-being and necessarily includes the engagement of civil society actors\u201d (Polman et al., 2017). The evaluation framework has been co-constructed with project partners and a panel of international stakeholders in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development (Nijnik et al. 2019). It is structured into dimensions and sub-dimensions. It follows the phases of a SI initiative, from the trigger that generates the idea, to the reconfiguring process, and to its impacts. Eight tools for data collection have been developed, tested in pilot cases, and applied in 11 case studies. Empirical results allowed to set 166 indicators: 73 indicators describe the SI dimensions; 63 indicators analyse the process, the project and the whole SI initiative by following relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability evaluation criteria (OECD, 1991 and 2010); 30 indicators focus on the key aspects of the SI SIMRA definition. Social Network Analysis helps in visualizing the increasing collaborative network of actors involved in the SI process, from core group composed by innovators and followers, to the reconfigured network with new project partners. The approach integrates qualitative-pure methods (e.g., focus group) with quantitative ones. The proposed evaluation framework would like to contribute to current debates, both within the scientific and practitioners\u2019 communities, on evidence-based policy and self-evaluation by rural development agencies

SIparte: soft coaching and a rural hackathon to support socio-entrepreneurial innovative businesses in rural areas

This paper presents the results of the Siparte Innovation Action implemented in Valbelluna to tackle the challenges of local youth unemployment and growing outmigration rates. The innovation action has created new local networks, supported sustainable business ideas related to social innovation among local young people, and financially supported the initial start-up phase of one selected initiative

Tourists and Local Stakeholders’ Perception of Ecosystem Services Provided by Summer Farms in the Eastern Italian Alps

In the Alps, summer farms are temporary units, where cattle are moved during summer to graze on Alpine pastures, which provide multiple ecosystem services (ESs), many of which do not have a market value. This study aimed at understanding and comparing the perceptions of summer farms and of the associated ESs by local stakeholders and tourists in a study area of the province of Trento in the eastern Italian Alps. Thirty-five online questionnaires and two focus groups were realized with local stakeholders involved in the dairy value-chain. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 405 tourists in two representative summer farms. The perceptions of summer farms diered between local stakeholders, who mainly focused on provisioning ESs, and tourists, who mainly focused on cultural and regulating ESs. Both categories of actors rated positively eight dierent ESs associated with summer farms, but demonstrated a lack of knowledge of specific regulating ESs. This study showed that discussion among the dierent actors is required to increase mutual knowledge and to grasp the diversity of links between summer farms and ESs, in order to support public policies and private initiatives for promoting summer farm products and the sustainable development of mountain regions

Capitale sociale e approccio LEADER: dalla teoria all’applicazione

Intangible resources like social capital (SC), if supported by proper governance mechanisms, can positively influence rural development processes. Within the EU LEADER Approach, through the stakeholders’ cooperation and the creation of networks, Local Action Groups (LAGs) should generate SC. This paper, on the basis of empirical evidences collected through questionnaires to 9 LAGs (case-studies) in 4 Italian regions, provides a set of 96 innovative indicators for understanding how the structural and cognitive SC contribute to increasing LEADER performance. Results consist of analytical descriptions of indicators’ values for different LAGs and comparisons among indicators, which allow stressing causes of excellence in each explored dimension of SC

Social Innovation in the Mediterranean and how it can help to manage Mediterranean forests

This presentation specifies how social innovation initiatives can be promoted in Mediterranean forests. Furthermore, it presents the evaluation methodology proposed for analyzing these initiatives. Preliminary results are also identified and some concluding remarks proposed