- ➔ Five enabling actions can encourage responsible and inclusive innovation that optimizes forest-based solutions to global challenges: (1) raise awareness of the importance of innovation and create a culture that fosters innovation to bring about positive change; (2) boost skills, capabilities and knowledge to ensure that forest-sector stakeholders have the capacity to manage innovation creation and adoption; (3) encourage transformative partnerships to de-risk forest-sector innovation, provide opportunities for knowledge and technology transfer, and build appropriate safeguards; (4) ensure more and universally accessible financial resources to encourage forest-sector innovations; and (5) provide a policy and regulatory environment that incentivizes forest-sector innovation.
5.1 Five enabling actions can encourage responsible and inclusive innovation that optimizes forest-based solutions to global challenges
Innovations typically emerge as a result of numerous complex interactions among actors within an innovation ecosystem. Note, however, that innovation ecosystems possess unique characteristics depending on context. In addition, the complexity of the global forest sector means that responsible innovations should be created and adopted in ways that are tailored and appropriate for the specific contexts within which they are being created and adopted. Whether at the organizational, jurisdictional or global levels, robust, well-functioning innovation ecosystems require an appreciation for creativity and collaboration; appropriate knowledge and skills, collective learning systems, governance mechanisms and risk management frameworks; and adequate natural, human and financial resources.
Innovations in the forest sector are likely to be most effective when they integrate science and traditional knowledge through inclusive practical approaches. Investment in integrated research and development is needed to drive technological advances, process optimization and the development of adaptive products; build skills and knowledge; and create templates for bridging the disparate frameworks of science and traditional knowledge. Governments are often the main supporters of research and development, but the real-world application of innovations is dependent largely on funding and investment from, collaboration with, and uptake by the private sector and civil society.
Innovation can create winners and losers and, if poorly conceived, can exacerbate existing inequalities and marginalization. To minimize such risks, innovation creation and adoption processes should be inclusive and contextually appropriate, and they should support the participation of all forest stakeholders, thereby helping ensure that innovations are right for the place, people and challenge. Typically underrepresented stakeholder groups that should be empowered and supported in innovation and related processes include the following:
▸ Women. Gender imbalances exist in many segments of the forest sector worldwide,258 yet gender equality in an organization helps harness diverse perspectives and talents for innovation and problem-solving and enhance organizational (including financial) performance.195 Therefore, forest-sector innovation processes must work to ensure gender equality.259
▸ Indigenous Peoples, smallholders and rural communities. Genuine collaboration among researchers, technicians, Indigenous Peoples, smallholders and rural communities will enable the integration of science and traditional and Indigenous knowledge. This can reduce the risk that innovations will be culturally inappropriate and increase their positive impacts.260
▸ Youth. Young people often drive innovation,261 and their inclusion can also help improve forest governance and decision-making processes.262 Efforts to better harness the abilities of young people are crucial for effective innovation processes.
Many groups have essential roles to play in enabling innovation, including the following:
▸ national governments, such as by implementing national standards, incentives and policies for innovation, supporting (including financially) research and development, outreach and promotion, and facilitating collaboration;
▸ international organizations, such as by assisting with standards-setting, innovation knowledge management, outreach and promotion, facilitating collaboration, providing funding, and developing supportive policy guidance;
▸ educational institutions, such as by assisting with innovation research, education, training and outreach;
▸ research and development bodies, such as by creating, testing and sharing evidence-based innovations and related approaches and methodologies;
▸ the private sector, such as by creating and adopting innovative approaches and products, providing training opportunities, contributing to research and development (including financially), and supporting communication and advocacy; and
▸ civil society, such as by creating and adopting innovative approaches and products, advocating for change, raising awareness, fostering collaboration, providing grassroots insights, driving social entrepreneurship and ensuring accountability.
Drawing on existing literature and the case studies in Chapter 4, five key enabling actions are described below for the development of robust forest-sector innovation ecosystems and the creation and adoption of responsible innovations. Specific actions are also suggested, mainly for the consideration of national governments and international organizations.
1. Raise awareness of the importance of innovation and create a culture that fosters innovation to bring about positive change.
Innovation requires a conducive culture that encourages curiosity, creativity, questioning and risk-taking.186 How these cultural elements are harnessed and promoted by an entity (such as a company, institution or country) depends largely on its historical legacies, value systems and beliefs, but the core goal must be to provide a positive context that enables the entity to embrace reflection on its ongoing practices, contemplate change, and identify actions to effect positive change. In many contexts, developing an innovation culture will require awareness-raising – that is, activities that increase understanding of the benefits that innovation can deliver.
Possible specific actions for governments and international organizations:
▪ Generate and demonstrate the use of approaches to increase organizational innovativeness and support a culture that fosters responsible and inclusive innovation. This could include examples illustrating the power and scope of collaborative innovations and the role that an innovation culture can play in supporting forest conservation, restoration and sustainable use and achievement of the SDGs.
▪ Provide tools for organizations to assess and continuously improve their innovation culture and use of innovations, including for data and information management to guide inclusive and evidence-based decision-making.
▪ Conduct regular stocktakes of innovative activities in the forest sector to identify opportunities and challenges for innovation.
▪ Provide incentives for all forest-sector stakeholders to participate in collaborative efforts seeking innovative solutions to common challenges.
2. Boost skills, capabilities and knowledge to ensure that forest-sector stakeholders have the capacity to manage innovation creation and adoption.
A vibrant forest education sector is essential for developing the skills and knowledge necessary to maximize the contributions of forests and trees to the SDGs and to achieve the Global Forest Goals, and an understanding of innovation is a central component of this.263 The forest education sector will be better able to leverage opportunities in other sectors for scaling up innovation when it is well connected to research and business incubation.
Organizations tend to neglect the need for the “soft” skills that enable effective human interactions, but these are essential components of responsible and inclusive innovation processes.264 In addition to developing technical skills, therefore, the forest sector should cultivate the necessary soft skills for managing innovation processes, techniques and methodologies.
Possible specific actions for governments and international organizations:
▪ Collect and organize information and resources on education programmes, educator networks, partnerships and communities of practice in the broad area of innovation in the forest sector.
▪ Conduct needs assessments to understand which innovation capacities and skills are lacking in the forest sector and prioritize their incorporation in education programmes.
▪ Develop guides for boosting innovation skills, knowledge and capabilities in the forest sector.
▪ Support peer-to-peer learning platforms and integrated field programmes to enable the extension of innovative good practices related to innovation and to test innovative techniques and methodologies.
▪ Support improvements in technical and innovation knowledge in forest-related extension services and encourage communities to develop innovative solutions using delivery methods such as FFSs and other vocational training institutions.
▪ Support research and development to increase the evidence base on all innovation types for making progress in forest conservation, restoration and sustainable use. Learnings could be integrated into forest-sector education and training, including tertiary and other vocational training institutions, to encourage a broader understanding of forest-sector innovation.
Possible specific actions for education and research institutes:
▪ Incorporate innovation (emphasizing responsibility and inclusivity as core elements) into forest education curricula and training materials.
▪ Facilitate integrated innovation research, drawing on science and traditional knowledge.
▪ Develop research on diverse innovation types (and bundles of innovations), which should be collaborative to ensure it is demand-driven, contextually appropriate and capable of generating practical tools.
3. Encourage transformative partnerships to de-risk forest-sector innovation, provide opportunities for knowledge and technology transfer, and build appropriate safeguards.
Transformative partnerships involving governments, the private sector, civil society, research and academia, women and youth, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are needed at all levels to support the creation and uptake of responsible innovations in the forest sector.265 Innovation hubs and other networking modes promote interactions among stakeholders and enable collaboration, the transfer of knowledge and skills, and positive spillovers (i.e. the unintended effects of interactions that support the scaling up of innovations). The partnerships arising from long-term engagement among diverse stakeholders can be transformative: that is, they can deliver system shifts from unsustainable to more sustainable systems.266 The approach taken in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration shows the power of innovative partnerships to enable the creation and uptake of innovations (Box 11).
Box 11Using innovative partnership approaches to help drive progress in the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
FAO and the UN Environment Programme are co-leading implementation of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration worldwide. The two FAO-led taskforces described in Case study 9 have catalysed powerful partnerships among a diverse group of restoration stakeholders to create a shared vision of ecosystem restoration, align collaboratively, address capacity and technological gaps, and drive evidence-based innovation. In three years, the taskforces have created a foundation and enabling environment for the UN Decade, with the following accomplishments (among many others):
▸ a common vision on ecosystem restoration created by publishing Principles for Ecosystem Restoration;
▸ Standards of Practice for Ecosystem Restoration published to guide implementers in developing effective restoration projects that reflect the principles of ecosystem restoration;
▸ the Capacity, Knowledge and Learning Action Plan for the UN Decade developed; and
▸ technological innovation advanced through the development of the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (described in Case study 9).
By enabling strong collaboration among highly diverse actors, the two FAO-led taskforces, and three other taskforces in the UN Decade framework led by the World Bank (Finance Taskforce), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (Science Taskforce) and the UN Major Group for Children and Youth (Youth Taskforce), are helping overcome a lack of alignment on ecosystem restoration, a lack of finance and capacity, and difficulties in providing transparent monitoring and reporting. In this way, they are enabling the dissemination of successful innovations to a global network of practitioners and policymakers and celebrating and supporting country leadership on restoration innovation, thereby helping translate ambitious commitments on restoration into effective action on the ground.
The forest sector increasingly seeks to collaborate across sectors (including within and between governments and organizations),267 in part to gain access to the knowledge and skills of other sectors. Such collaboration (e.g. to share data and to jointly define problems and design programmes) can lead to the development of innovations that otherwise might not arise.
Possible specific actions for governments and international organizations:
▪ Assess existing platforms for science–policy–practice knowledge exchange with a view to ensuring that the knowledge arising is accessible to all.
▪ Optimize the use of existing regional and global forums, such as regional forestry commissions and multistakeholder platforms, to identify needs and opportunities for nurturing and scaling up responsible and inclusive innovation in the forest sector.
4. Ensure more and universally accessible financial resources to encourage forest-sector innovations.
The risks associated with innovation creation and adoption can be high. This is especially so in the Global South, where trade-offs among competing objectives are often also substantial, thus limiting the investment available.268 Increasing access to funding and finance – including to small producers and rural communities – is a prerequisite for robust innovation ecosystems and to enable the scaling up of forest-sector innovation. Increasing finance availability can help address systemic issues that are holding back the scaling-up process (e.g. by addressing externalities in sustainable forest management) and incentivize virtuous cycles of investment that reinforce further innovation.
Possible specific actions for governments and international organizations:
▪ Help countries access finance for innovations that directly support forest conservation, restoration and sustainable use.
▪ Provide financial incentives for the development of innovations that generate public goods and particularly benefit Indigenous Peoples, women, youth and small producers.
▪ Reduce the risks associated with innovation by encouraging organizations and universities to work together in teams through the partial funding of collaborative research and development processes.269
5. Provide a policy and regulatory environment that incentivizes forest-sector innovation.
Complementary and coherent sets of policies can help stakeholders navigate complexities and path dependencies within an innovation ecosystem by building their capabilities. There is a need to establish policies that help de-risk innovation processes and minimize the potential disparities and unequal benefits of innovation. Cirera and Maloney (2017)270 described a “capabilities escalator”, in which an innovation ecosystem evolves to increasingly support higher-level capabilities within the ecosystem. This concept offers a basis for guiding the development of robust and supportive policies. The three stages of the escalator comprise the development of science, technology, engineering and mathematic skills, managerial and organizational capabilities, and basic infrastructure (stage 1); increasing the quality of research and innovation, building technological capabilities and incentivizing research and development (stage 2); and long-term research and development, technological programmes and collaborative innovation projects (stage 3). The right policy mix supports moving from stage 1 to stage 3.
Possible specific actions for governments and international organizations:
▪ Provide best-practice advice on policy, regulatory and legal frameworks for optimizing the enabling environment of innovation ecosystems, maximizing positive intended outcomes, minimizing trade-offs and putting in place safeguards where major risks exist.
▪ Adopt socioculturally appropriate, evidence-based, best-practice policy and regulatory practices that support the development of responsive and inclusive innovation in the forest sector while ensuring safeguards are in place to minimize disparities and the unequal distribution of benefits.
Unlocking the power of innovation
Billions of people already have a stake in forests and trees because of the benefits they bring, from wood products and NWFPs, to ecosystem services such as climate regulation and habitat provision, to their positive roles in human health and well-being. Evidence suggests that the world is on the brink of major environmental changes, with consequent potentially highly negative implications for poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. Solutions are needed quickly and at scale, and forests and trees have a clear role to play through conservation, restoration and sustainable use. To realize the potential of forests and trees, the power of responsible, inclusive innovations needs to be emphasized and invested in.
The enabling actions listed above offer a starting point for work to minimize the barriers to and maximize the positive impacts of responsible and inclusive innovations. They are designed to be mutually reinforcing and not implemented in isolation. For example, skill and knowledge development hinges on financial resources and targeted policies, which, in turn, can foster collaboration that leads to cultural change towards a better appreciation of responsible and inclusive innovation.
Opportunities for innovations in the forest sector are vast, with exciting prospects for improvement across all five innovation types. More research is required to provide the evidence base to increase knowledge on the impacts of, and priorities for, innovation in the forest sector.
The adoption of any forest-sector innovation should be accompanied by robust monitoring and evaluation and adaptive management based on learning. Emerging technologies and advances in behavioural science increase the options for understanding the impacts of innovation.
Embracing the potential of forest-sector innovation requires safeguards to ensure it is done responsibly and inclusively. Ultimately, this will mean that the right innovation is adopted in the right place for the right reasons. Innovations must reflect and be sensitive to the needs, aspirations and unique circumstances of end users and other beneficiaries. Unlocking the power of innovation offers a means for more-rapid progress on meeting our collective forest goals and embracing a more sustainable future.
