Living lab organization and practices as useful tools to stimulate innovation in forestry practices
Abstract
Living labs are defined by the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) as user-led open innovation ecosystems, which engage all stakeholders in the form of a public-private partnership (PPPP) to cocreate products, services, social innovations... in a real context. Over the last few years, they have been developed mainly around urban themes (e.g. Lorraine Smart Cities Living Lab LFLL, in France), digital technologies (e.g. Botnia Living lab in Sweden) and health (e.g. Care Innovation Center West-Brabant in the Netherlands). Forest management or policies as well as forest-wood chain sustainable development have always required a high level of cooperation between stakeholders - forest owners, wood industries, forest policies, local authorities and local inhabitants as recipients of a diversity of forest services as well as actors involved in forest care -, formalized into concepts as multifunctional forestry, community forestry, or forest-based bioeconomy. Nowadays, new forest-related challenges, as balance and conflicts between ecosystem services, climate change adaptation and mitigation, etc., stimulate not only participatory processes but also and mainly innovation, in order to find consensus between the different sustainability dimensions and to design adaptive and resilient forest systems in a rapidly changing world. Living lab vision and organization seem adapted to address such challenges through co-creating, usercentered
and collective intelligence processes, multi-stakeholder and multi-challenges approaches, short-term and long-term visions and participatory actions. However, no living lab associated with territorial forest management has been formalized up to now. Within the framework of an ambitious territorial project (“Des Hommes et des Arbres”), we implement a living lab approach, supported by LFLL know-how. The first results are presented in a pioneer PhD project, specifically focused on the design of innovation systems to improve wood mobilization in small private forests while conciliating all ecosystem services. These results concern especially co-created practical tools (Swoted “PESTEL”, forest owners personas, etc.) useful for project facilitators. Living lab approach should complement or support existing schemes designed by French forest policies as “Plans de Développement de Massif” (Massif Development Plan), “Chartes Forestières de Territoires” (Territorial Forest Charters) or “Groupements d'Intérêt Economique et Environnemental Forestier” (Forest Economic and Environmental Interest Grouping).