Our work

Find out more about the work of the Policy Support Facility

The Policy Support Facility is the main EFI flagship initiative aiming at enhancing the science-policy dialogue in Europe on forest related questions. We bring evidence-based, reliable and robust information from the scientific community and EFI’s network of 120 member organisations. We use scientific facts and expert analysis grounded in interdisciplinary science to create synthesis studies which are understandable and helpful for informing decision-making processes.

Connecting science and policy 

We act as an honest broker between science and policy. We do this by: 

  • Bridging science to policy. We contextualise and synthesise scientific knowledge, facilitate communication, and support networking at the science-policy interface. Our goal is to foster knowledge uptake by policy makers, their advisors, stakeholders and the media on forest related issues, including foresight information.
  • Bringing policy needs to science. We identify policy makers’ knowledge gaps and information needs which helps the scientific community better understand and address pressing, policy-relevant questions.
  • Horizon screening. We continuously follow the EUs decision-making process within all institutions and here in particular the European Commission, the Council and the European Parliament. Our goal is to monitor the current and future decision-making process to be able to provide scientific input and facilitate dialogue at the best moment in time.

 

Bridging knowledge and policy in practice

Our work at EFI’s Policy Support Facility includes synthesising research results, policy analysis, as well as networking and communication activities for better informed science-policy dialogue on forest related questions that are relevant for Europe. In practice this means that we:

  • provide insights into EU forest-related policy developments
  • carry out collective scientific assessments and foresight studies published under EFI science-policy series, and/or as policy briefs and videos.
  • organise ThinkForest events, and other targeted events such as roundtable discussions, exchange events with scientists and diplomats and field excursions.
  • create a wide range of communication products and engage with media to amplify the impact of our science-policy work.
  • work on policy analysis, including comparative studies on the impacts and implementation practices of European policies.
  • brokering activities to better understand and contextualise different scientific views on forest related questions. 

 

Five principles guide our work:

  1. Generating and maintaining trust between the science community, policymakers, politicians, stakeholder groups (e.g. NGOs, private sector) with different interests, the public and the media is based on the independence from political decision-making and implementation processes (=withstanding political pressures/influence) now and in the future. We do not lobby (=execution of power and interests), but aim to inform all in a transparent and open manner.  
  2. Using multi/trans-disciplinary co-production & co-creation approaches to perform policy support allows to analyse the problem at hand from different scientific/expert/practitioners viewpoints and generate a more comprehensive policy support function.
  3. Promoting a diversity of viewpoints in policy-support work. This also includes keeping attention on geographic, gender and diversity aspects in scientific and expert-driven work.
  4. Promoting dialogue and networking with policymakers, stakeholders and scientists/experts based on scientific evidence and expert knowledge to build an understanding of complex problems and possible solutions.
  5. Engaging in science diplomacy to create interactions and networks with scientists and diplomats is increasingly seen as essential to tackling complex, cross-border problems in a coordinated, evidence-informed way. 

 

Funding

EFI's work is financed by the Trust Fund for policy support, which is supported by the Governments of Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.