Tomas Lundmark, the new dean of the faculty, highlighted the good position of the faculty: It works with a renewable resource that is an important basis for a sustainable society, research is of a generally high class according to an evaluation of SLU, and its economy is favourable – the faculty has, in competition, been awarded many prestigious large research grants.
Forests are politics
The vice chancellor of SLU, Lisa Sennerby Forsse, touched on global challenges such as climate and energy issues. She emphasised that the forest is important as a source of income, not least for a large proportion of the poorest population of the world. SLU is working on a PGU (Program for Global Development) strategy and has commenced organisational collaboration with CGIAR (Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research). Competition for land and the role of the forest in the international climatic negotiations are some of the challenges where SLU has an important part to play.
- Forests are politics, concluded Lisa Sennerby Forsse. Anna Jöborn from IVL read a fascinating paper on interdisciplinary work. She has her own experience of this from e.g. Mistra's strategic water programme VASTRA.
The three large and clearly interdisciplinary research programmes of the Faculty, Future Forests, Heureka and Forests and Wildlife, were presented. Some major inputs of a more disciplinary nature were also described, inter alia Forest and other plants (Government strategic funding) and the work of the Berzelii Centre on the spruce genome.
Framework programme for research
The Umeå regional office for support for researchers in Framework Programme 7 also took the opportunity to reject a number of prejudices against working in this as researcher. It was asserted that the framework programme is not so cumbersome and political as many believe. There are also opportunities to modify its contents.
In addition, the framework programme is growing all the time, so it would be silly not to make use of this opportunity to receive finance for important research.
Panel discussion
A final panel discussion with 10 invited guests from silviculture and the forest industry, nature conservancy and research funding agencies was chaired by Anders Esselin, communicator in Future Forests.
The discussion had been preceded by an ambitious telephone interview concerning the opportunities of, and threats to, research, and concentrated on four thought provoking claims concerning the Faculty's research: Too large a focus on problems and too little on solutions, poor internal and external communication, far too close cooperation with the forestry industry, and shortcomings in keeping developments under observation.
One conclusion of the discussion may be said to be that the Faculty is doing good work that fits in well with current issues concerning sustainable global development. But it can be better still at taking on more of the opportunities, inter alia in the international arena.
Author
:
Hans-Örjan Nohrstedt
is Director of International Affairs, Formas