CORPUS: Enhancing Connectivity Between Research and Policymaking in Sustainable Consumption

26 January 2010, Berlin
Copenhagen Ressource Institute allied with 10 other European organizations is participating a new FP7 research project co-financed by DG Research.
The consortium is lead by the Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH (IÖW) headquartered in Berlin.

The project “CORPUS - Enhancing Connectivity Between Research and Policymaking in Sustainable consumption” aims to develop novel approaches to knowledge brokering (KB) between policy-making and research. It will foster evidence-based policy-making at the example of sustainable consumption by applying and testing a combination of online and offline KB methods. It will stimulate community-building across the involved researchers and policy-makers to arrive at a self-sustaining process of knowledge management in sustainable con-sumption policies. The CORPUS Web Platform is to become a central reference point for high quality information and networking among European professionals working with sustainable consumption. It will provide a space for incubating and nurturing knowledge to be shared among researchers and policymakers through private domain, and scientific results to be disseminated in the public domain, and a transparent, effective interaction (dialogue) between scientists and policy-makers. The Interaction Exercises in three priority areas of sustainable consumption (food, mo-bility, housing) will explore novel modalities of knowledge brokerage through different forms of face-to-face dialogues. They provide specifically tailored arenas for personal exchange, infor-mation provision, and offline community-building. Since community-building is crucial for successful and ongoing knowledge exchange, a separate work package is dedicated to building of relationships, governing the network, and stimulat-ing engagement of participants. Another work package provides resources for initial fine-tuning and recurrent adaptations of the process and ensures the transferability of the projects results by systematically reflecting the empirical experiences against the background of knowledge management theory. Related to that, a built-in evaluation further enhances continued learning on the knowledge brokerage approach taken within CORPUS.