On 6-7 October, Keerthi Bandru, Ryan McGuire (MACSUR SciPol) and several members of the FACCE Secretariat attended an Advanced Training Course on Science-Based Policy Advice in the fields of agriculture and environment in Ghent. The aims were to give training to already experienced experts active in the field of policy advice and build on their experience with tools, concepts and shared experiences.

Programme

As the interface between science and policy becomes increasingly relevant for experts working in the field of agriculture, FACCE-JPI attended this course to give training to its experts and become more active at the science-policy interface. Some key issues discussed were:

• the types of science-policy models that exist (e.g.the lineral model, the interactive model and the political model)
• principles of integrity and quality when engaging in policy advice
• concepts, methods and competenences for policy-making
• communication of scientific advice in the media

The attendants will continue on as a network of experts to build on the momentum created in Ghent.

We asked one of the attendants, Keerthi Bandru, to tell us about his experience attending the course:

What work do you do at the science-policy interface?

I will work at science-policy interface within the PREPSOIL project and understand the governance of science-policy interactions at the living labs level.

What’s your role in MACSUR SciPol?

I am co-ordinating the MACSUR SciPol pilot. That involves:

• conceptualisation of SciPol activities together with the core group researchers and policy representatives.
• communication and reporting with FACCE JPI and researchers, policy representatives
• conceptualising and organising the SciPol Pilot events
• synthesising the scientific evidence into policy briefs, publications

What motivated you to take this course? What made you want to accept our offer?

The main motivation was to network and learn about the experiences of science-policy activities in Europe.

Did this course help your work at the science-policy interface?

Yes. The conceptual frameworks is quite useful to adopt for the future projects and event for our closing event.

What key messages or insights to you take from these two days?

It was quite reassuring to know that other experts face similar challenges in their science-policy activities.