Lessons Learned per Normative: Democratic responsibility to engage citizens: "Creating new opportunities"

RRI Roadmap Milestone 1

• Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) can help to overcome the current marine and societal challenges and unlock the potential for Blue Growth.

RRI Roadmap Milestone 2

• Develop messages that make the problem tangible for everybody for instance by translating facts and figures into something simple and impactful;
• Explain the challenge in an inclusive, strategic and broad manner for involving all types of participants;
• Promote the involvement of public authorities on local, national and European levels;
• Explain RRI and innovation tools and how to embed them in policy agendas as participants find it useful;
• Be aware of the motivational factor that workshop participants may feel because they like the fact that an interdisciplinary group representing all society's niches is invited to brainstorming for resolving the problem;
• Consider societal challenges (as defined by the EC) during the participative events, in order for the results to be easily related to them.

RRI Roadmap Milestone 3

• Allocate sufficient time for discussions and to involve all participants interests and ideas;
• Continue to engage the stakeholders for knowledge exchange after the workshop;
• Adapt the presentation of projects information to the specific needs of respective stakeholders groups;
• Consider carefully legislation and cultural differences between project participants in the discussion prior to the project proposal to avoid possible understanding of feasability barriers;
• Help participants become active in the workshop by helping them understand the importance of the Marine Hot Topic;
• Remember that apart from being scientists, teachers, policy-makers, they are all citizens of coastal cities who want to care for the environment as a private person;
• Mobilize stakeholders for active involvement;
• Provide as much information as possible to the subject before the workshop;
• Ask participants' to state their workshop expectations because experience shows that some find the workshop and its participatory method intriguing, others were interested In how to develop a shared vision, some had an interest in being inspired and build networks;
• Enable workshops participants to create networks and communities of interest to further research and identify solutions for the studied issue;
• The education of young people and the use of exchange programs between schools will lead to active citizenship respectful of the environment;
• Raise awareness among pupils and students about environmental protection through informational programs as well as promote the specific sector as a means of employability;
• Use new participatory methodologies to attract participants;
• Take into consideration that despite participants' willingness to participate, often practical barriers impede their attendance in participative workshops;
• Consider having virtual discussions to help some stakeholder groups (e.g. citizens) to attend participatory workshops and events;
• Identify or create a unique Body entrusted with the control of a process to ensure coordination and synergy of all stakeholders involved;
• Increase awareness in the youngest about the (local) marine issues to create a new generation of people that are aware of the problems and want to engage themselves, to take action also through a political career;
• Define the length of the workshop according with your foreseen audience and local habits.

RRI Roadmap Milestone 4

• Enable each group to take the floor to present their results;
• Put in place a multi-stakeholder dialogue to efficiently reduce plastic pollution;
• Establish cooperation among diverse stakeholders (researchers, innovative businesses, politicians and citizens) even when it's challenging;
• Joined stakeholder involvement produces ideas with integrated and holistic focus based on synergy and collaboration;
• The absence of gender equality reveals a critical gap in access to opportunities and resources and decision-making power for women and men;
• Actively introduce Gender Equality into discussions and ideas, as most often is a non considered aspect.

RRI Roadmap Milestone 5

• Use the SMART action format to ease the follow up of the workshop;
• Develop a stakeholder engagement plan;
• Empower citizens beyond data collection through involvement in decision-making and governance;
• Provide a quality framework in which all stakeholders can work toward a solution thanks to a good governance;
• Consider ethics when dealing with the legal frameworks to assure marine biotechnologies sustainability and social awareness;
• Identify easy-to-implement solutions to attract people and harbour-related businesses in innovative harbour development;
• Develop new methods of governance for engaging citizens through public awareness and politics;
• Develop case studies on how municipalities work with climate change projects and community driven innovation;
• Develop tools for engaging citizens in urban development and communicate them broadly to inspire local communities;
• Develop new capacities for studying and a performing monitoring;
• Develop and implement awareness and educational campaigns and engage local communities;
• Push participants to move beyond exchanging ideas and to start co-creating a vision;
• Allocate a good part of the workshop for creating a clear common action plan;
• Claim for an alignment between legislation and the changing scientific situation and technological innovations;
• Promote local communities and their traditions for societal relevance of the scientific outputs.

RRI Roadmap Milestone 6

• Consider Governance as a common responsibility of citizens and decision makers;
• Identify common working initiatives between municipalities and the civil societies, so that citizens may be actively involved;
• Develop sustainable and long-term solutions even if they do not entirely focus on technical and/or economic aspects, but add lifestyle qualities and/or facilities;
• Put in place a policy-oriented, holistic and integrated approach to tackle complex issues;
• Follow up with the participants with periodic workshops using the same methodology;
• Make restaurants aware restaurants and the public about the potential offered by the blue biotechnologies;
• Educate children to environmental issues as well as renewable energy profits to create a new wiser society;
• Involve senior/retired scientific experts to communicate on marine biotechnologies in layman's terms to ensure that the general public becomes familiar with the topic;
• Develop new model of governance for marine biotechnology development including the engagement of the society;
• Push for broad vision for industrial harbour development by local governments inviting non-harbour stakeholders to contribute in new ways;
• Adapt local policies and strategies in order to be in agreement with research outcomes;
• Plan local actions in agreement with its local circumstances instead of promoting larger-scale policies;
• Create a common DATABASE – for centralizing all the data and studies regarding biodiversity;
• Develop partnership between different stakeholders;
• Use of the outcomes of the national monitoring programme as part of a targeted national awareness raising campaign;
• Push governmental bodies for high-tier governance on local initiatives to have the biggest impact;
• Make urban planning and tourism development collaborative and democratic by involving citizens and business in envisioning urban futures and resolve negative environmental impacts;
• Follow-up on motivated participants of how that used the knowledge obtained in workshops for third private and professional projects;
• Changing customer demand requires attractive and sustainable products that provide unique and customised experiences;
• Action and follow-up the co-defined action plan;
• Business stakeholders are mostly interested on the policy agendas;
• Each initiative on sustainable tourism products requires the right expertise (knowledge and skills) and institutional participatory processes that will support stakeholders' successful involvement;
• Use citizen observatories through mobile phones to report pollution sites and inappropriate environmental behaviour;
• Implement innovative and responsive policies to face climate change effects and assure a balanced competitiveness, growth and sustainability.

RRI Roadmap Milestone 7

• Use Open access to boost innovation and increase the use of scientific results by all societal actors as well as to develop public trust and engagement;
• Follow-up with all participants and monitor results regularly and engage them in post-workshop knowledge sharing and networking through an online platform;
• Make regulations for developers and investors for securing more liveable areas in harbour transformations;
• Be aware that only about half of the participants are likely to use the knowledge gained at the workshop;
• Try to engage volunteer groups/stakeholders who use the specific environment on a regular basis;
• Create innovative tools to guide the consumers, thus inducing public and private stakeholders (including NGOs) to invest in more sustainable directions.

RRI Roadmap Milestone 8

• Focus on good enforcement of already existing legislation mechanisms rather than reinventing others from scratch and adjust legislation as necessary;
• Train policymakers through communication tools and adapt legislation to facilitate the creation of a dynamic knowledge-sharing mechanism;
• Organise regular follow-up workshops by involving more decision makers to anchor change;
• Provide tax reductions or other benefits to businesses for massively applying environmental protection legislature and procedures and for making use of innovative technologies;
• Create funding mechanisms to promote RRI in research and innovation in the innovative sectors;
• Promote a greater participation of general public in projects financed by European funds to help filling the gap between science and society;
• Equip urban open areas for open debates where local communities can meet frequently in order to exercise the rights guaranteed by the Aarhus convention to develop sustainable decisions in a collective and legal manner;
• Promote education, training and more equal incomes for fishermen in the Azores;
• Consider opportunities of synergies between the fisheries and aquaculture sectors in the Azores;
• Beware that the high level of qualification needed in aquaculture and the small scale of the region market are two constraints of the synergies between the fisheries and aquaculture sectors in the Azores;
• Implement program of innovative research in relation to the effectiveness of the constructions of towers and generators to ensure sustainable development of renewable energy;
• Create of a one-stop shop for the Institute of blue bio-technologies with short and long-term strategies;
• Create an award for the best blue bio-technologies innovation or product to make maritime biotechnologies a sustainable economic opportunity;
• Start a regional programme and raise awareness of tourism actors to ensure that the general public becomes familiar with marine biotechnologies;
• Put in place a certification label of projects to draw guidelines for the sustainable development of marine biotechnologies;
• Promote the reinforcement of policies and adoption of coherent legislative frameworks to develop marine biotechnology;
• Establish policies that are favourable for ecological investments in sustainable development;
• Train and convince policymakers, implementers, and investors to develop biotechnologies;
• Add marine biotechnologies in school programmes to ensure that the general public becomes familiar with marine biotechnologies;
• Engage all interested stakeholders in harbour development;
• Make environmental impact assessment mandatory for Deep Sea Mining within the EU;
• Involve citizens in public consultations and decision–making processes for local and national/ EU regulations;
• Promote Sustainable Tourism policies to improve coastal and marine ecosystems, minimise pollution and create economic growth by combining efforts at national, regional and local levels and creating green funding schemes and incentives;
• Create a seafood producers organisation in France to reduce the gap between the producers and consumers;
• Ensure a ministerial umbrella to facilitate the educative process in school by scientists or scientific mediators;
• Invest in communication campaign by professionals, work with marketing societies to translate the scientific results into clear messages that can reach in particular young people;
• Involve a multitude of stakeholders and implement actions as widely as possible, even globally, in order for adopted policies and solutions to be as relevant as possible, resulting in more support to implement the changes by all sides.

See also...

Stakeholder Motivation