Forest Research Management in an Era of Globalization

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Forest Research Management in an Era of
Globalization

• World Forestry Week,
• 16 18 March 2009, Rome, Italy
• Societal needs and research reality the future
  of public foresty research
• Konstantin von Teuffel,
• Forest Research Institute Baden-Württemberg,
  Freiburg, Germany
• IUFRO Group 6/06 Directors Forum

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Structure

• Why public forestry research?
• Setting the agenda
• Ensuring quality and efficiency
• Funding and financing
• Hot topics and emerging challenges

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Why public forestry research?(in comparison with
universities)

• Quick reaction to emerging topics
• Unbiased information
• State of the art knowledge for policy advice
• Long term monitoring data
• Solutions for relevant and applied problems

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Setting the agenda

• Two major aspects Who and How
• Who?
• do not let scientists set the agenda alone!
• but prevent politicians from doing alone also!
• involve stakeholders (beyond disciplines and
  sectors gt challenge!)

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Setting the agenda

• Who?
• interaction between politicians and scientists
• (push AND pull!!)
• scientists anticipate future topics
• politicians give some freedom (foresight!)

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Setting the agenda

• How?
• structured processes inevitable (vs. freestyle)
• increasingly scarce resources gt
• strategy processes (e.g. IUFRO, EFI, CIFOR,
  national institutions) useful
• area of conflict for public research institutes
  assigned tasks vs. research
• universities increasingly challenged
• do not loose innovation!!

applied research vs. breaking new ground
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Setting the agenda

• How? (ctd.)
• foresight studies as instruments to anticipate
  upcoming issues

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Ensuring quality and efficiency

• Internal and external
• External classical instruments
• reviewed publications (citation indices )
• be aware of limitations! (citation circles)
• share of soft money
• etc.
• international performance indicators for
  benchmarking useful

dont be too mechanistic
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Ensuring quality and efficiency

• Internal
• written ethical standards (consequences for your
  institution organisation, structures,
  documentation!)
• effective science controlling systems (by when,
  with how many resources, which objective)
• clear allocation personnel and money

dont strangulate your scientists
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Funding and financing

• Stable core funding inevitable
• (50 plus!!)
• Competitive third party funds, i.e. soft money
  (important also for quality assurance)
• Recent trends
• general cuts in core funding (forestry no hot
  issue)
• more competitive funding, restricted to
  projects
• problem shift from expertise to money?

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Funding and financing

• Recent trends (ctd.)
• more problem-oriented, integrated programs, less
  single research projects
• gt more integration
• gt loss of disciplinary focus
• more cross sector cross disciplinary programs
• challenge how to find excellent partners?
• more participatory research!

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Hot topics and emerging challenges

• Many sources of information
• IUFRO Directors Forum, Washington DC 2007
  (excerpt)
• IUFRO Division 6 proposals
• USFS main challenges
• European Forest Institute (EFI) strategy
• Forest Technology Platform (FTP) strategic
  research agenda
• National Forest Research Institutions

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Hot topics and emerging challenges

• Topics
• Climate change
• Sustainability of forests forest management
• Biodiversity
• Economic viability of forests,
• Valuation of non commercial forest products
• Bioenergy
• Forests and water

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Hot topics and emerging challenges

• Topics
• Climate change
• Genetics and breeding
• Poverty alleviation
• Forest ecosystem services
• Urbanisation
• Invasive species
• Forest fires
• etc.

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Thank you for your attention!