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In this paper, we explore how social innovation can provide a range of ecosystem services to local people while supporting public policies and private sector initiatives in delivering successful and innovative food distribution channels. In the Mediterranean basin, the status of commercial fish stocks is critical. In this sense, small-scale, lowimpact fishing is a way to sustainably utilise socially innovative practices in the use of natural assets and to provide support to rural livelihoods while having minimal impacts on the marine environment. We use an innovative evaluation method, based on the integration of qualitative information with quantitative indicators, to assess social innovation initiatives and their impacts. The use of the methodology is demonstrated on the example of the project A Box of Sea, Greece. The results obtained show that this social initiative provides a novel food consumption and distribution model aiming at making low impact fishing more economically viable, and therefore achieving a triple sustainability for the sector (environmental, social, and economic). We identify third sector social innovation schemes as key tools to develop novel distribution systems supporting local communities (providing employment, fostering new networks and collaborations across fishers), while improving governance practices of the current fishing sector by creating a fairer market that protects the marine environment. Our findings provide a foundation upon which future evaluations of similar projects can build and compare. Such comparisons are crucial in determining patterns related to the innovation transfer processes.

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The looming climate crisis requires an immediate response, in which organizations, as major contributors, should play a central role. However, these organizations need appropriate tools to measure and mitigate their climate impacts. One commonly applied method is carbon footprint analysis. Carbon footprint analyses have been conducted for various types of organizations, but knowledge organizations, such as universities and research institutes, have received far less attention, because their carbon footprint is often less visible and can be easily underestimated. This study is based on the carbon footprint analysis of one multinational knowledge organization. This analysis then helped identify the major sources of climate impacts in other such knowledge organizations. These are mainly indirect emissions (Scope 3) and to a large extent (79%) travel-related emissions. Based on these findings, three scenarios for a post-COVID-19 world were developed and analyzed. The results from the first two scenarios showed that despite a reduction in business travel and employees working from home, Scope 3 and travel-related emissions would remain the largest contributor. Only in the unlikely case of the third, non-recovery scenario did the share of travel-related emissions drop, turning heating into the largest contributor. In addition to measuring the carbon footprint, the study discusses potential mitigation strategies knowledge organizations could apply to reduce their carbon footprint. The focus is on how to avoid and reduce emissions, but new forms of carbon offsetting are also addressed. Based on the findings, a mitigation policy framework and recommendations for further research are proposed.

In a context of highly fragmented woodlands' ownership, joint forest management implies a reduction of transaction costs for its members and improves the coherence of forestry actions at the landscape scale. Increasing the size of the management unit improves market positioning, permits a more technical management, and improves environmental sustainability in aspects that require spatial coordination. A review of relevant literature on forest owners' groupings and the lessons learned from case studies in Navarra (Spain) have been analysed from a social capital perspective. Twelve challenges are identified, for which technical recommendations are offered. We navigate through decision-making procedures, geographical cohesion, legitimacy and trust building, transparency and internal communication, trade-offs in efficiency and equity, local idiosyncrasy, management committee dynamics, risk aversion vs. flexibility, legal aspects, joint motivations and long-term vision, and intermediary's efficiency. Existing policy tools help in overcoming some of the economic and technical aspects. However, internal governance challenges require a concerted effort from participating forest owners.

Social innovation (SI) impacts are long-term changes that affect different dimensions of territorial capital (i.e., economy, society, environment, governance) for the territory in which SI occurs. Yet, systematic empirical evidence and theoretically sound assessments of the impacts of SI are scarce. This paper aims to fill the gap and assess the different aspects of SI���s impacts in European and Mediterranean areas that are characterized by marginalization processes. To assess the impacts of SI in marginalized areas, we use the evaluation framework developed within the Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas (SIMRA) Horizon 2020 project and apply it to nine SI initiatives related to the fields of agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and rural development. Our findings show that SI produces cross-sectoral (societal, economic, environmental, and governmental) and multi-level impacts (on individuals, community, and society), which have improved the societal well-being, and contributed to the reduction of certain forms of marginality, mainly inside the territory in which SI occurred. View Full-Text Keywords: social innovation; socio-economic impacts; institutional impacts; environmental impacts; societal well-being; European societal challenges; marginalization; sustainability challenges; local level

Despite the growing interest in social innovation (SI) in agriculture, the literature lacks validated tools for evaluating such initiatives. This paper provides an empirical application of the evaluation approach developed within the H2020 SIMRA project to a pilot experience conducted in a rural area of Southern Italy. The value added by this case study is the application of the five types of criteria used by the OECD for the evaluation of development programs, which are commonly referred to as REEIS: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. This experiment demonstrates the adequacy of the evaluation framework in identifying strengths and weaknesses of the initiative, according to a multifaceted perspective. The overall evaluation proves that most indicators fall under the high (48%) and medium categories (36%), and only few indicators are low (16%). The usefulness of the evaluation results is manifold. First, this evaluation highlights relevant arguments to support the communication strategy addressed at civil society, therefore reinforcing the civic engagement of the initiative, which is the distinctive feature of SI. Second, it supports project managers in addressing interventions to face emerging weaknesses. Finally, the evaluation provides factual evidence to policy makers to perform cost-effective analysis of rural development policies.

Sacred Natural Sites are integrated-coupled systems with mutual social and natural interactions, and they exist within a variety of local cultures and regions of the world. In Europe and especially in the Mediterranean basin, changing land use patterns and population decline since World War II have had a dramatic impact on the socio-ecological structure and management practices of many of such sites. At the same time, old beliefs and taboos are often neglected due to modernization, rural depopulation, and change in community's structure, norms, and codes. Understanding how social, ecological, and policy processes changed through time becomes thus relevant to identify the main criteria for effective collective action and sustainability of the studied systems. In this paper, we applied Ostrom's social–ecological systems framework to model the main socio-ecological processes acting upon a sacred forest in Epirus (Greece) over a 300 years' period. The multidisciplinary approach included collection of archival and ecological data and ethnographic research (semi-structured interviews). Results indicate that significant changes have occurred in social, economic, political, and institutional terms since the creation of the settlement (17th century). However, the sacred grove has been of major importance to the adjacent local community that acts as its custodian guardian even nowadays. Collective action for the preservation of the forest has been achieved under various governance regimes that transformed through time traditional religious taboos into modern conservation approaches. This analysis revealed that local traditional management practices of commons can serve as successful socio-ecological conservation examples.

Innovation actions within European Horizon 2020 (H2020) projects aim at testing research results in practice. When supporting social innovations in rural areas, such testing requires the alignment of several rural actors in order to entail behavioral changes beyond the individual level. Recently, social innovation has been recognized as an important tool for rural areas, developing new solutions to respond to wicked problems for improving local living conditions at the grassroots level. In this study, we analyzed the use of an operational framework to support the early governance of social innovation actions. This framework was applied to co-construct seven innovation actions across Europe and the Mediterranean basin applied to forestry, agriculture, and rural development. Our results showed that supporting social innovators and local actors at the early stage of social innovation processes is key for efficiently addressing and tackling challenges and opportunities. Additionally, we showed that the process of defining a social innovation is complex and requires recursive engagement, which might lead to evolution through time, especially in the first phases of the process. Lastly, conducting the feasibility assessment enabled strategic thinking on crucial dimensions for designing a promising social innovation action, such as social networks management, financial sustainability, and know-how. Such findings helped us to draw general lessons for the development and governance of social innovation actions in rural areas, potentially applicable to any rural sector.

Wild mushroom picking is a growing recreational and commercial activity. In Spain, wild mushrooms legally belong to the landowner, who seldom benefits from trade in mushrooms or from their recreational value. Cultural aspects (tradition, picker-related harms) and economic aspects (costly forestry works, income opportunities) constitute elements of the debate on how to deal with mushroom picking. Through a survey of private forest owners in Catalonia (north-eastern Spain), this paper examines their experiences with mushroom pickers, the factors shaping their related policy preferences and their willingness to engage in mushroom reserves. The results show broad support for introducing mushroom picking norms. A regulation would allow outsider pickers to enter private land, but only under certain conditions, i.e. to comply with socio-ecological rules of the area. Among respondents who support the regulation, active land owners who report instances of picker-related harm (both tangible and intangible) tend to support the establishment of a fee system which could be reinvested into forest management. That is also the position of the respondents who perceive mushrooms as a private right, i.e. they believe to have a legitimate right to exclude outsider pickers and, eventually, to raise revenues from that asset. On the contrary, forest owners who conceive mushroom picking as a free-access activity prefer neither to regulate it nor to charge fees. The option to establish a mushroom picking reserve depends on the landholder being a fee-supporter and perceiving instances of harm. Harm, instead, is mainly determined by the perception of congestion of pickers, which in turn is determined by the mushroom productivity of their forest, their level of privacy protection and their involvement to the primary sector. These findings help policymakers to better understand the logic and sensitivities of forest owners in view of designing mushroom picking policies that can effectively solve picker-landowner conflicts.

In fire-prone areas such the Mediterranean basin, wildfire risk means a societal challenge. Governments inmodern welfare states have generally addressed it through a “zero fire policy”, focusing on suppression andprofessionalization. Such approach provides security to local populations, who in turn may detach from thesocio-ecologic phenomenon of wildfire and become passive actors. In the face of increasingly virulent wildfires,local communities are often not prepared with consequent damages and casualties.Yet, some regions show pro-active locals organizing their efforts to tackle wildfires. These fire volunteergroups suppose a social innovation in rural communities that help in their adaptation to climate change. Going beyond homeowners' preparedness, the actions of volunteers range from supporting firefighters' efforts, firstattack and/or year-round prevention. The investigation of these communities is in its infancy despite its practitionerand policy interest. In this study, we shed light on this civil society engagement across different Mediterranean forest settings,namely from predominantly public forest ownership in Greece, to predominantly private in Catalonia (Spain)and virtually entirely private in Portugal. Collecting data through a survey, the type of activities of these volunteergroups, their relations with fire and local actors (i.e. social capital) and trajectory have been analysed tofind possible trends.Statistical results show that their portfolio of activities relates to their group size (i.e. available human resources)and their structural and relational social capital. Preliminary insights show an improvement in trustwith fire and forest actors owing to the fire volunteer group establishment. No evidence has been found of forestarea covered by fire volunteers, recent fire experience or variety in members' profile to affect the type of activities.The results are discussed in the frame of social capital theory and suggestions for further research are putforward.

Mushroom picking is a growing recreational activity in Europe. Since the institutional environment moves towards regulating mycological resources, estimating the value of this ecosystem service becomes a key tool for policy-makers and rural entrepreneurs. This paper applies the Travel Cost (TC) method to estimate the value of mushroom picking in three forest areas in the region of Catalonia, Spain. In particular, the main objective is to contrast different sampling strategies (online vs. onsite data collection) when used to build zonal Travel Cost models. This intends to guide practitioners towards choosing the best sampling strategy according to existing time, monetary and accuracy constraints. Eight TC models were derived using as regressors the zonal travel cost and selected picking and socio-economic variables. The resulting demand curves produce an estimate of the average site value per trip that ranges from 9 to 22€/visit considering the onsite data, and from 21 to 47 €/visit for zonal TC implemented on the online data. These results reveal estimate differences across the approaches, and especially evident for one picking ground (Els Ports). Our results point out that onsite surveys would be better suited when exploring the sample for an initial set up of permit fees, to set the permit boundaries and initial applications. On the other hand, the online data collection presents the problem of self-selection and self-reporting bias. We recommend practitioners to always perform a proper assessment of the effects of the context, chosen sampling strategy, and validity of assumptions when adopting valuation estimates for establishing a recreational price of ecosystem services. info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

Cities are major contributors to global emissions, producers of waste and consumers of resources such as energy, water and food: implementing green development strategies is hence a core challenge of modern city-planning. The attention of research has been focusing on the development of energy efficient, low carbon strategies, yet city decision-makers need truly integrated approaches, as the one proposed by the water-energy-food Nexus. The purpose of our paper is to investigate whether it is possible to take one step in this direction by extending existing approaches to energy efficiency strategies to progressively include other priority resources, in particular water. To test this hypothesis we have taken a robust and well accepted methodology, the ELCC (Economics of Low Carbon development strategies for Cities) developed by SEI and CCCEP, and we have extended it to the case of demand side water efficiency strategies for cities. We have then applied the adapted ELCC framework to the case study of the domestic sector of the city of Bologna (Italy), identifying and prioritizing several efficiency measures. Measures were evaluated through their capital investment, annual values of savings, payback period and reduction in consumption, and then aggregated in different scenarios in order to highlight potential urban investments and to showcase a possible approach to the prioritization of demand side water efficiency measures. The results show that, with an upfront investment of € 17 million, a feasible subset of Bologna’s households could be equipped with five selected cost-effective measures, generating annual savings of € 10.2 million and reducing the total domestic water consumption of 34% by 2020 compared to the 2012 initial value. With additional € 28.5 million, households could be equipped with more costly appliances reaching an overall water reduction of 37% by 2020. Our findings confirm that it is possible to successfully extend current approaches to urban energy efficiency strategies to include demand side water efficiency, adding an important building block to the construction of an integrated Nexus-based approach to green development strategies at the city-level. We encourage further tests to confirm the robustness of the methodology.