INCREDIBLE Knowledge Contest on NWFP

A major component of the INCREDIBLE project is sharing contextualized knowledge from research and practice. Project partners collected relevant information on NWFP innovation (research, success stories, good practices, databases, technical reports, policies) that were further elaborated through an interactive knowledge sharing and co-development process.

To capture new ideas, as well as to mobilise the broader community and contribute to a mind-set change on science-practice interaction, the INCREDIBLE Knowledge Contest on NWFP was launched. This contest invited hundreds of stakeholders to share their innovations in the field of NWFP with the wide community reached by the INCREDIBLE project. More than 200 such contributions on NWFP in the Mediterranean were collected and are now available on the INCREDIBLE Knowledge repository.

Among the many valuable contributions, six finalists were selected by our experts to attend the project’s Final Conference (April 2021), where they had the opportunity to present their knowledge, receive international recognition and network with the project consortium and its many stakeholders. Conference participants voted for the best practice or the innovation having the most positive impact.

Alexandros Pantazis of Greece won the contest with the idea for Cooperatively designing and manufacturing tools for small-scale agricultural production. The selected runners up were A new technology of extracting the fixed (non-volatile) oil of Pistacia lentiscus for the benefit of rural women represented by Sondes Fkiri of Tunisia, and New drilling method for resin extraction in Segovia by Santiago Michavila Puente-Villegas of Spain. The authors of all three contributions were each awarded with an EFI grant to support a knowledge exchange visit. The winners could make a physical visit to an INCREDIBLE partner organisation of their choice and other connected entities, allowing them to spend some days of exchange with NWFP professionals.

• Alexandros Pantazis, the community organiser from the Greek organisation Tzoumakers, visited INCREDIBLE’s partner  Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC), Spain, and other three connected organisations: Parc De Les Olors,  Col·lectiu Eixarcolant, and  L’Era. Espai de Recursos Agroecològics, to network and support the further development of his project.
• Sondes Fkiri, a Tunisian researcher from National Research Institute of Rural Engineering, Water and Forests (INRGREF), had the opportunity to meet not only researchers from INCREDIBLE’s partner the Spanish National Institute for Agricultural and Food research and Technology (INIA) but also PiñonSol, Coop and private forest owners.
• Santiago Michavila Puente-Villegas, a Spanish PhD student from INIA and ETSI de Montes of UPM, went to Sardinia to visit INCREDIBLE’s partner FORESTAS.

Read more on INCREDIBLE’s blog on how these visits strengthened INCREDIBLE's knowledge-sharing community and gave the winners the opportunity to discuss their NWFP innovation with stakeholders in the field.