Co-creating evidence-based business roadmaps and policy solutions for enhancing coastal-rural collaboration and synergies

Second round of multi-actor workshop in MAL6

The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the lead partner for MAL6, organized the second round of multi-actor workshops where local partners and stakeholders from rural and coastal sectors discussed the pilot system dynamics model, the business roadmap and policy solutions to promote more sustainable development in the region building on coastal-rural collaboration and synergies.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop was held online via the CSIC-Conecta platform. It lasted two and a half hours with ten stakeholders and three listeners attending, so a total of 15 people, including the CSIC team. The workshop started with an update on project progress, including an explanation of the System Dynamics model development, the model sectors, the business roadmaps (BRM) and the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, and followed by three main sessions:

(i) Model validation and confidence building, where participants actively provided their feedback and suggestions for model structure and interactions as well as scenarios for further testing the model via an online questionnaire;

(ii) Business roadmap development, with the active contribution of participants on assessing the timing and potential impact of the set of solutions already included in the model.

(iii) Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, where participants provided a preliminary list of external drivers that could affect the BRM through an online questionnaire and later discussed in plenary.

The last 1.5 hour of the workshop were dedicated to a final discussion on the model structure and interactions and BRM, and stakeholders were informed about the next MAL and the international multi-actor workshop during 2021 as part of WP1. The model was well received, and we had many constructive comments, especially in relation to data, coming from the workshop as well as from the ongoing expert interviews. Participants started to contribute to the development of the BRM during the workshop and will continue doing so via an online questionnaire in early 2021.