The EEB partner of NenuPhar project has been joined in its offices in Brussels by project’s colleagues from CIRCE, ZSA and UVIC-BETA and partners from other EU projects for a networking afternoon with various format and a Governance Workshop.
- Project Showcase
Thanks to our colleagues from BioSoilutions, Greenhood, P2Green, Renu2Cycle and EU-Farmbook for your insights and the great discussions!
- Networking speed-dating, which sparked lively and meaningful conversations – feedback highlighted how much participants appreciated the opportunity to connect
- Last but not least, the Governance Workshop, where we tackled key questions around governance practices in the context of systemic change.
Governance Workshop – Key Takeaways
We tried to address two questions that might seem pretty basic but are usually in our minds when we need to work with governance (either we want it or not)
🔹 What is Governance?
Beginner perspective
- Governance means gathering interested people around a topic requiring collective decisions and establish pathways
- OR the guidelines for the management of resources
Expert lens: Governance involves co-decision and co-creation processes, sustainable systemic change, stakeholder and context mapping (including non-human stakeholders like climate variations), and navigating power and knowledge asymmetries.
- Democratic participation is essential but understanding and roles often vary across contexts and countries.
🔹 Main Struggles in Understanding and/or Communicating Governance
- Often, the need isn’t to communicate about governance itself, but about the specific issue at hand.
- Roles and representation in decision-making are frequently unclear.
- Messages around governance are complex and often don’t clearly show personal or group impact.
- Challenges include identifying stakeholder needs, linking shared goals, and ensuring that governance models are replicable (where possible) and inclusive.
Participants emphasized the need for:
- Clear objectives, practical and feasible pathways,
- Clear benefits and incentives,
- Strong stakeholder participation and empowerment,
- Targeting those with decision-making power.
We are aiming at developing a handy and concise toolkit on governance to be released in Autumn this year. It should allow everyone (independent of your level of understanding and engagement with this concept) to work with other stakeholders in an understandable and constructive manner. Stay tuned!
Pictures are available here.
Slides are available upon request to athenais.georges@eeb.org
Read our Press Release here.
