Step 6. Build a common culture - Participatory Assessment

Summary

At this stage of the process, a broader group of stakeholders is engaged and common culture activities are key to bring together a shared diagnostic.

BGIN issues are complex and involve a very broad panel of activities and governance. Just considering the scientific sector, it calls for very different academia from natural to economic and social sciences and thus demands a strong transdisciplinarity. To ensure fruitful discussion and co-construction, the people brought together by the project – each with different backgrounds – have to build a common language and culture of the discussed items.

Depending on how wide is the panel of the stakeholder forum, different common culture activities can be considered such as stakeholder common culture workshop, focus groups meetings, putting together a glossary.

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The project

Date: November 2017-2020

This work has been funded through the ALICE project. ALICE is a project funded in 75% by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the umbrella of INTERREG Atlantic Area with the application code: EAPA_261/2016. The 11 partners involved in the project are from Portugal, Spain, Northern Ireland, France, The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. The three-year project started in November 2017 has cost 3 million euros with 25% covered by the beneficiary partners.

Credits

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Case study: Management of seagrassbeds in the Gulf of Morbihan

During the Interreg VALMER project, we tested how an ecosystem services assessment could support effective and informed management of seagrass beds in the Gulf of Morbihan, France. Seagrass beds are supposedly among the most studied coastal ecosystems. The Gulf of Morbihan seagrass beds are the 2nd largest in France (metropolitan), however recent mapping of the extent of the seagrass beds was not available, as well as the condition of the beds. In particular, the potential impacts of human activities like moorings, oyster farming or shell seeking has little been assessed.

Faced with practical management issues in an area with numerous marine and coastal activities, the existing knowledge was not sufficient for management decisions. Knowledge acquired and developed while answering a specific question might not be adapted to inform a different issue.

To answer the questions raised by the project, 30 scientists from all over France were invited to share their knowledge about seagrass. The core team was careful to invite to this focus group a number of environmental managers and state officers to keep the scientific discussion centered on management issues.
Six other focus group meetings were held with each of the main activities interacting with the seagrass beds.