ForPeat - Managing Forest Peatsoils

The objective of this WP is to analyse policies to protect, restore and sustainably manage forested peat soils in Europe, leading to the co-production of an impact plan underpinned by evidence synthesis to identify opportunities for changes in peatland policy and practice. To do this, SRUC in collaboration with UNEP’s Global Peatlands Initiative and the Institute for Methods Innovation, will perform the following tasks:

Task 6.1: Stakeholder analysis. We will use an interest-influence-impact (3i) approach (Reed et al., under review) to ensure inclusive identification of relevant policy bodies, groups who may be impacted by new policies, and others who may be able to influence policies and their outcomes. This will be done via a survey instrument developed in the WET HORIZONS project that is designed to ensure the identification of marginalised and vulnerable groups who might otherwise be excluded.

Task 6.2: Policy analysis. We will review relevant policies and identify policy opportunities and evidence gaps in each of the RePeat study countries (including regional/state policies where relevant). This will be done using a survey instrument to identify relevant policies and related documentation, with the results supplemented by additional grey literature searches and semi-structured interviews with policy officials, as needed, in collaboration with IMI and GPI to cover the necessary languages. This will provide a basis for informed policy engagement in each study country in the next task, and will enable policy recommendations from other WPs to be adapted to a range of different national policy contexts. The analysis will also enable sharing of good practice between countries, analyzing and integrating existing policy innovations to develop new policy options.

Task 6.3: Impact planning. A co-produced impact plan will be developed, drawing on Reed et al.’s (2018) logic model approach, including both policy and practice, working with those identified in the 3i analysis, prioritising EU level impacts and specific countries where significant policy opportunities are identified with willing partners who can facilitate change. This includes the development of a monitoring strategy to track and report impacts arising from the work, leading to an applied paper integrating findings from each of the first three tasks in this WP.

Task 6.4: Training. Training for consortium members, sister projects and the wider peatland research community in collaboration with IMI and GPI in policy engagement and evidence synthesis, including training on:
•Rapid evidence synthesis methods, targeting evidence gaps identified in task 6.2, leading to the production of evidence synthesis papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals and policy briefs for relevant policy teams
•Engagement and impact, providing definitions, tools and approaches to efficiently and effective generate impact from research, based on Reed’s (2018) The Research Impact Handbook.
•Informing and influencing policy, taking a Responsible Research and Innovation approach to policy engagement that manages complexity, relationships and power, based on Reed’s (2024) book, The Researcher’s Guide to Influencing Policy.