Scientific Cafe as a Tool to Involve Civil Society in the Forestry Sector: Methodological Approach

Abstract

In recent decades, the social demand for the involvement of civil society in decision-making processes on environmental issues has been growing worldwide. Among the techniques for involving civil society, the Scientific Cafés are new and flexible tools aimed at ensuring effective communication between scientists, practitioners, civil society, and decision-makers on scientific topics in an informal and inclusive way. From 2004 to today, the Scientific Cafés are increasingly spreading in several scientific fields including forestry. The aim of this article is to analyze the state-of-the-art of Scientific Cafés at an international level and to propose a novel procedure for organizing Scientific Cafés to be adopted in the forestry sector. The literature review show that the first publication on "science cafés" dates back to 2004, while 73 peer-reviewed articles have been published to date (on average just under four articles per year). These publications consider the Scientific Cafés in four senses: science education; science communication; public engagement; and cultural investigation of science. The present study describes the approach followed in a public engagement activity carried out in the framework of ForestValue2 (Horizon Europe project). The approach is developed in five