Who influences the EU’s green infrastructure strategy?

It’s not just about information flow and regulations: Social pressure considerably influences biodiversity governance in Europe.

It is my pleasure to share more Net-Map work done by capable colleagues. Jennifer Hauck, Jenny Schmidt and Anja Werner analyzed the key actors that influence the implementation of the European Commission’s green infrastructure strategy.

Using social network analysis to identify key stakeholders in agricultural biodiversity governance and related land-use decisions at regional and local level

Ecology and Society
Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun 2016) (16 pages)

ABSTRACT:

” In 2013 the European Commission launched its new green infrastructure strategy to make another attempt to stop and possibly reverse the loss of biodiversity until 2020, by connecting habitats in the wider landscape. This means that conservation would go beyond current practices to include landscapes that are dominated by conventional agriculture, where biodiversity conservation plays a minor role at best. The green infrastructure strategy aims at bottom-up rather than top-down implementation, and suggests including local and regional stakeholders. Therefore, it is important to know which stakeholders influence land-use decisions concerning green infrastructure at the local and regional level. The research presented in this paper served to select stakeholders in preparation for a participatory scenario development process to analyze consequences of different implementation options of the European green infrastructure strategy. We used a mix of qualitative and quantitative social network analysis (SNA) methods to combine actors’ attributes, especially concerning their perceived influence, with structural and relational measures. Further, our analysis provides information on institutional backgrounds and governance settings for green infrastructure and agricultural policy. The investigation started with key informant interviews at the regional level in administrative units responsible for relevant policies and procedures such as regional planners, representatives of federal ministries, and continued at the local level with farmers and other members of the community. The analysis revealed the importance of information flows and regulations but also of social pressure, considerably influencing biodiversity governance with respect to green infrastructure and biodiversity.”

Join us: Largest international Net-Mapper meeting ever!

Wouldn’t it be great if Net-Mappers from all over the world could share their experience, learn from each other, build a common knowledge-base and just hang out and enjoy each other’s company? You might be working with Net-Map in your university, organization, consulting practice and maybe you are the only one excited by the participatory drawing of networks. Or, maybe a lot of your colleagues are excited, but they all have no clue how it really works, so you always have to be (or look like) the expert who knows everything. I am sure you have some great stories, lessons and results to share and together we might find the answers to your questions.

We (that’s Eva Schiffer, Jennifer Hauck, Amit Nag, Paolo Brunello and our Net-Mapping friends) are planning to have the biggest international meeting of Net-Mappers at the next Sunbelt Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis in Brighton, UK (June 23rd to 28th, 2015). In addition to hosting one (or two) sessions which will be dedicated to applying network knowledge, we are planning to host a Net-Mapper get-together as informal side-event of the conference so that we can all get to know each other and each other’s work and start working together more closely.

We will discuss whatever questions are at the forefront of our minds. For me there are three things I am really curious about:

• Learning more about all the great applications of the method to start having an extensive case collection.
• Strategies for working together to make Net-Map interventions happen and grow the community of practice. This could lead to developing a database of international Net-Map consultants so if any of us wants to implement something that is bigger than one person, we know where to go.
• Asking and answering questions about how to use and analyze Net-Map, moving the method forward and understanding it better.

To make this happen we need you. And you. And your net-mapping colleague too. If you are interested, please contact me directly. And submit an abstract for the Sunbelt Conference session on applying network knowledge.

Oh, and did I say that this is just the side-event? The main event is also pretty amazing. Sunbelt is the largest Social Network Analysis conference and it’s an great mix of the old gurus, the young geniuses, master’s students getting feedback for their half-done thesis, and everything in-between. Also, they have great hands-on introductory workshops on most of the common SNA software and approaches (including a Net-Map training) during the first two days of the conference. If you have never submitted an abstract to a conference and the task intimidates you, I am happy to talk you through it. And, surey, you can also come just as a participant, without presentation… but we would all be missing out, if you didn’t share your work. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Session on “Applying Network Knowledge” at the Sunbelt XXXV

by Jennifer Hauck at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research – UFZ / Department of Environmental Politics

Would you be interested in presenting your Net-Map work at the at the Sunbelt XXXV, Brighton, UK, June 23– June 28, 2015, the largest annual conference of Social Network Analysis, organized by the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA)?

Our proposal for a session on “Applying Network Knowledge” during the Sunbelt XXXV has been accepted and we are encouraging people with interesting presentations on the subject to submit their abstracts (see conference website for details).

A bit more about the theme of the session:
Governance approaches for example in public health, education or policy making typically involve many actors from different domains who are not all connected by hierarchy and whose behavior cannot easily be mandated. Thus, successful governance approaches rely on networks of actors who collaborate and on the quality of their collaboration. To understand success factors or governance failures and to improve existing structures it is thus crucial to understand the underlying formal and informal social networks. In many cases Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been used to provide answers to these questions. This session contains presentations of cases that made use of SNA knowledge in divers situations, using participatory, learning oriented network mapping exercises.

If you are interested:

Contact Jennifer directly (jennifer.hauck@ufz.de) and tell her about your possible session.

Check the Sunbelt website for their call for abstracts, submit your abstract and indicate that you want to be part of the “Applying Network Knowledge” session.