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IUFRO Regional Congress for Asia and Oceania 2016 in Beijing, China

TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND CONGRESS PARTICIPATION


Pre-Congress Training Workshop

"Systematic Review in Forest Science - Learning from Traditional Forest Knowledge"

Beijing Forestry University,
Beijing, China

October 21-23, 2016

Have a look at the Workshop Report !

The IUFRO Special Programme for Development of Capacities (SPDC), the Long-term Ecology & Resource Stewardship Laboratory, University of Oxford, U.K. in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Forestry and the Beijing Forestry University organized a 3-day training workshop on systematic review in forest science with focus in traditional forest knowledge.


Rationale
The need for quantitative and qualitative scientific evidence for policy and management has significantly risen in recent years as the world is becoming increasingly interlinked with complex problems awaiting adequate policy and management decisions at all levels. This holds also true for the land use sector where forests and trees play key roles in the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of landscapes, particularly against the backdrop of the most pressing problems in the 21st century such as poverty, food security and sustainable development. In this context, it is important that sufficient evidence is generated from the body of globally available scientific research for the purpose of informing policy decisions and actions about forests and forest-related land-uses.


Objectives of the Workshop
This Training Workshop presented tools for systematic reviews which aim to support good decision-making. Using a participatory approach, participants learned how to prepare systematic reviews that assess the evidence base for priority policy and practice questions. Special focus was placed on using traditional forest knowledge and its role and relevance in contributing to solutions of today’s forest-related problems.

The course introduced participants to the skills and methods required for systematic reviews of forest-related science, including framing answerable questions that address policy and practice concerns; finding the best available evidence to answer the question; recognizing the limitations of available studies and the problem of bias; critically appraising the evidence for its validity and usefulness; planning a systematic review process; and devising active dissemination strategies to publicize the review results.


Trainers and Resource Persons
The workshop was conducted by Dr.  Gillian Petrokofsky, Biodiversity Institute, University of Oxford, UK.  Dr. Petrokofsky has explored the systematic review process for forest science as part of her research on the quality of evidence for science-policy dialogue and for constructing relevant research agendas.  She also worked with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) on their Evidence-Based Forestry initiative.
In addition, the following three experts on traditional forest knowledge in Asia provided scientific input and thematic guidance to the systematic review process:

•    Professor Jinlong Liu, Remin University, China
•    Professor Ryo Kohsaka, Kanazawa University, Japan;  and
•    Professor Yeochang Youn, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea.


Who was to participate?

Early and mid-career scientists, working in forest and tree-related research from developing countries in Asia and Oceania, were encouraged to submit their expression of interest for participating in this workshop.



Sponsorship
Sponsorship for selected participants was available from IUFRO-SPDC covering the costs of the pre-congress training workshop, travel, accommodation and subsistence during the workshop (21-23 October 2016) as well as the full support package to attend the IUFRO Regional Congress for Asia and Oceania  (24-27 October 2016). For more information on the criteria for participation under the Scientist Assistance Programme please go to http://www.iufro.org/science/special/spdc/sap/.