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Innovation in the forest sector is a growing research interest and within this field, there is a growing attention for institutional, policy and societal dimensions and particular when it comes to the question of how to support innovativeness in the sector. This Special Issue therefore focuses on governance aspects, relating to and bridging business and political-institutional-societal levels. This includes social/societal factors, goals and implications that have recently been studied under the label of social innovation. Furthermore, the emergence of bioeconomy as a paradigm and policy goal has become a driver for a variety of innovation processes on company and institutional levels. Our article provides a tentative definition of "innovation governance" and attempts a state-of-art review of innovation governance research in the forest sector. For structuring the research field, we propose to distinguish between organizational/managerial, policy or innovation studies. For the forestry sector, specifically, we suggest to distinguish between studies focusing on (i) innovative governance of forest management and forest goods and services; on (ii) the governance of innovation processes as such, or (iii) on specific (transformational) approaches that may be derived from combined goals such as innovation governance for sustainability, regional development, or a bioeconomy. Studies in the forest sector are picking up new trends from innovation research that increasingly include the role of societal changes and various stakeholders such as civil society organizations and users. They also include public-private partnership models or participatory governance. We finally should not only look in how far research approaches from outside are applied in the sector but we believe that the sector could contribute much more to our general scientific knowledge on ways for a societal transformation to sustainability. ; publishedVersion

Innovation in the forest sector is a growing research interest and within this field, there is a growing attention for institutional, policy and societal dimensions and particular when it comes to the question of how to support innovativeness in the sector. This Special Issue therefore focuses on governance aspects, relating to and bridging business and political-institutional-societal levels. This includes social/societal factors, goals and implications that have recently been studied under the label of social innovation. Furthermore, the emergence of bioeconomy as a paradigm and policy goal has become a driver for a variety of innovation processes on company and institutional levels. Our article provides a tentative definition of & ldquo;innovation governance & rdquo; and attempts a stateof-art review of innovation governance research in the forest sector. For structuring the research field, we propose to distinguish between organizational/managerial, policy or innovation studies. For the forestry sector, specifically, we suggest to distinguish between studies focusing on (i) innovative governance of forest management and forest goods and services; on (ii) the governance of innovation processes as such, or (iii) on specific (transformational) approaches that may be derived from combined goals such as innovation governance for sustainability, regional development, or a bioeconomy. Studies in the forest sector are picking up new trends from innovation research that increasingly include the role of societal changes and various stakeholders such as civil society organizations and users. They also include public-private partnership models or participatory governance. We finally should not only look in how far research approaches from outside are applied in the sector but we believe that the sector could contribute much more to our general scientific knowledge on ways for a societal transformation to sustainability. ; Peer reviewed

The term "social innovation" (SI) is currently applied to denote a broad range of activities connected to explicit goals and supposedly designed to address inherent societal problems. These problems are rooted in current economic and ecological crises, such as poverty, unemployment, forced migration, brain drain, social inequality or environmental destruction. This article focuses on the EU and national policies that have the potential to support Social Innovation in rural areas and maps possible future policy efforts in this regard. However, many of the policies that we find to have potential for possible effective social innovation support do not have much in common concerning their targets. In consequence, the article outlines a threefold typology for categorizing the different policy targets that have impacts on social innovation in rural areas: (i) policies targeting vulnerable social groups, (ii) policies targeting societal challenges at large and (iii) policies targeting the participatory inclusion of civil society. In addition we outline enabling and hindering policy factors for social innovation and we apply the threefold typology to the example of forest policy. The conceptual framework in combination with the forest policy objectives we identify provides a useful basis for further research in this area. ; Typology Policy support Hindering factors Policy mapping Forest policy Policy objectives

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 – Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas (www.simra-h2020.eu) – 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 "the 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" (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' communities, on evidence-based policy and self-evaluation by rural development agencies.

An agreed and well-consolidated evaluation framework for the assessment of social innovation (SI) and its impacts has not been developed yet, despite initial tentative made by scholars (e.g., Nicholls et al. 2015, Bock 2016). Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas – SIMRA (www.simra-h2020.eu.) is a EU funded H2020 project which aims to conceptualize and propose an evaluation framework, based on qualitative-quantitative methods to evaluate SI in disadvantaged rural areas of Europe and non-EU Mediterranean countries. Within SIMRA, SI is defined as "the 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" (Polman et al., 2017). The aim of this paper is to illustrate the framework and the related tools for data collection and analysis that we propose for evaluating SI and its impacts in rural contexts. 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 to its impacts. The framework envisages several interconnected quantitative and qualitative variables. Eight tools for variables collection have been developed, tested in two pilot cases, and applied in 11 case studies in the target regions. Empirical results allowed to set 166 indicators: 73 indicators describe all the dimensions of SI (e.g., idea, agency, new networks, outputs, outcomes, learning processes); 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 descriptive of the SI SIMRA definition. The approach integrates qualitative-pure methods (e.g., focus group) with quantitative ones (e.g., Social Network Analysis). The empirically tested evaluation framework proposed in this paper would like to contribute to current debates, both within the scientific and practitioners' communities, on evidence-based policy, future strategies to support communities' creativity mobilization, and self-evaluation by rural development agencies.

The study was conducted in the framework of the FP1201 FACESMAP COST Action (Forest Land Ownership Change in Europe: Significance for Management and Policy) which is supported by the EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020. BJT acknowledges the support of the Danish National Research Foundation for the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate (DNRF96). MH and VJ were supported by NAZV (QK1820041) and grant EVA4.0, No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803 financed by OPRDE. ZS and ZD have been supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-15-0715. JN and DN were supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. SPM was financed by the Research Programs P4 – 0059 of the Slovenian Research Agency. DF acknowledges to Rosario Alves (FORESTIS). SKO acknowledges the Croatian Union of Private Forest Owners' Associations. TS acknowledges Mr. Oikonomou, president of the Greek Private Owners' Association. Open Access for this article was provided by the Estonian University of Life Sciences; Forest Research Institute (IBL, Poland); Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; University of Copenhagen; University of Eastern Finland; University of Ljubljana; and University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). ; Peer reviewed ; Publisher PDF

The work on this article was supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) in the framework of the COST Action FP1201 - Forest Land Ownership Changes in Europe: Significance for Management and Policy (FACESMAP). In addition, the authors want to acknowledge all participants of the COST Action for their contributions throughout the Action as well as the very valuable peer reviewer comments. ; Peer reviewed ; Postprint

The establishment of Natura 2000, the European Union's network of protected areas, has been a challenging process and has caused a variety of conflicts.These conflicts are related to contradictory stakeholder interests and perceptions, as well as to procedural issues and feelings of exclusion, especially by concerned local land user groups. To prevent further conflict, local participation has been stressed as an important tool to increase the inclusiveness of Natura 2000 and its acceptance among land users. In this paper, we present an analysis of participation practices related to the Natura 2000 implementation processes in six EU member states.Based on material collected from semi-structured interviews and document analysis, we describe the organisational settings of the participatory processes, focusing, among other things, on the type of participants involved, the level and intensity of their involvement, and the goal of participation. In addition, we also describe the local context in which the participation processes have been embedded. Finally, we assess the outcomes of the participatory processes in terms of their impact on forest and nature conservation management practicesOur results show that local participation practices were shaped not just by the Natura 2000 policy, but also by the history of the area, including, for example, earlier conflicts among the local actors. We also show that although the participation process leads to a greater acceptance of the Natura 2000 policy, this does not relate to significant changes in management practices among local actors. These findings, however, do not suggest that participation is irrelevant. Rather, we conclude that participation involves context-dependent, localised learning processes that can only be understood by taking the historical socio-economic and institutional context in which they are situated into account.

The establishment of Natura 2000, the European Union's network of protected areas, has been a challenging process and has caused a variety of conflicts.These conflicts are related to contradictory stakeholder interests and perceptions, as well as to procedural issues and feelings of exclusion, especially by concerned local land user groups. To prevent further conflict, local participation has been stressed as an important tool to increase the inclusiveness of Natura 2000 and its acceptance among land users. In this paper, we present an analysis of participation practices related to the Natura 2000 implementation processes in six EU member states.Based on material collected from semi-structured interviews and document analysis, we describe the organisational settings of the participatory processes, focusing, among other things, on the type of participants involved, the level and intensity of their involvement, and the goal of participation. In addition, we also describe the local context in which the participation processes have been embedded. Finally, we assess the outcomes of the participatory processes in terms of their impact on forest and nature conservation management practicesOur results show that local participation practices were shaped not just by the Natura 2000 policy, but also by the history of the area, including, for example, earlier conflicts among the local actors. We also show that although the participation process leads to a greater acceptance of the Natura 2000 policy, this does not relate to significant changes in management practices among local actors. These findings, however, do not suggest that participation is irrelevant. Rather, we conclude that participation involves context-dependent, localised learning processes that can only be understood by taking the historical socio-economic and institutional context in which they are situated into account.

The establishment of Natura 2000, the European Union's network of protected areas, has been a challenging process and has caused a variety of conflicts.These conflicts are related to contradictory stakeholder interests and perceptions, as well as to procedural issues and feelings of exclusion, especially by concerned local land user groups. To prevent further conflict, local participation has been stressed as an important tool to increase the inclusiveness of Natura 2000 and its acceptance among land users. In this paper, we present an analysis of participation practices related to the Natura 2000 implementation processes in six EU member states.Based on material collected from semi-structured interviews and document analysis, we describe the organisational settings of the participatory processes, focusing, among other things, on the type of participants involved, the level and intensity of their involvement, and the goal of participation. In addition, we also describe the local context in which the participation processes have been embedded. Finally, we assess the outcomes of the participatory processes in terms of their impact on forest and nature conservation management practicesOur results show that local participation practices were shaped not just by the Natura 2000 policy, but also by the history of the area, including, for example, earlier conflicts among the local actors. We also show that although the participation process leads to a greater acceptance of the Natura 2000 policy, this does not relate to significant changes in management practices among local actors. These findings, however, do not suggest that participation is irrelevant. Rather, we conclude that participation involves context-dependent, localised learning processes that can only be understood by taking the historical socio-economic and institutional context in which they are situated into account.

The establishment of Natura 2000, the European Union's network of protected areas, has been a challenging process and has caused a variety of conflicts.These conflicts are related to contradictory stakeholder interests and perceptions, as well as to procedural issues and feelings of exclusion, especially by concerned local land user groups. To prevent further conflict, local participation has been stressed as an important tool to increase the inclusiveness of Natura 2000 and its acceptance among land users. In this paper, we present an analysis of participation practices related to the Natura 2000 implementation processes in six EU member states.Based on material collected from semi-structured interviews and document analysis, we describe the organisational settings of the participatory processes, focusing, among other things, on the type of participants involved, the level and intensity of their involvement, and the goal of participation. In addition, we also describe the local context in which the participation processes have been embedded. Finally, we assess the outcomes of the participatory processes in terms of their impact on forest and nature conservation management practicesOur results show that local participation practices were shaped not just by the Natura 2000 policy, but also by the history of the area, including, for example, earlier conflicts among the local actors. We also show that although the participation process leads to a greater acceptance of the Natura 2000 policy, this does not relate to significant changes in management practices among local actors. These findings, however, do not suggest that participation is irrelevant. Rather, we conclude that participation involves context-dependent, localised learning processes that can only be understood by taking the historical socio-economic and institutional context in which they are situated into account.