Coordinator’s summer greetings
The first year of Precilience is now behind us and we are filled with excitement and anticipation for a busy and productive summer field season. It has been my great pleasure to observe the warming of the spring and the active planning of our Precilience work! I also greatly enjoyed meeting many of our Precilience coworkers in our consortium meeting in Tartu, Estonia this April. I want to start by saying a big thanks to each project participant and all of our collaborators for a successful first year!
Consortium field trip in the forests of Põlva County, Estonia. Photo credit: Loreta Tale
Many of us will be actively working in the field during the summer and I really look forward to learning all about the project’s practical demonstrations from our experts. The demonstrations will produce concrete examples of climate resilience solutions in practice — in agriculture and forestry in local contexts — leading to deeper understandings and empowering communities to take initiative in climate adaptation work.
While our work is scientifically compelling, real-world impact can only happen when human behaviour changes, when our various stakeholders buy into our ideas and solutions and start implementing them independently. Our project has raised notable interest among various stakeholder groups from practitioners to business, academia, and governance. One example of this vital interaction between science and practice is the national Stakeholder Steering Groups that are providing selected stakeholders with the opportunity to follow the project more closely and give feedback to us. This way, our work can ensure that it stays relevant and connected to the challenges being faced on the ground.
One of the Precilience demonstration sites in Øsaker, Norway. Photo credit: Work Package 3
Besides the demonstrations, we are also doing dozens of stakeholder interviews and in the autumn, co-creation workshops. We are studying how climate change is experienced and seen in various groups of practitioners and other stakeholders, and aiming our messages to where they have most positive impact.
We are also a part of the wider climate adaptation mission of the EU. Our focus is on agriculture and forestry in the North, but we have three sister projects working simultaneously on different regions. TRANSFORM focuses on crop rotations in the Atlantic region (INRAE, David Bohan), DRYAD on Mediterranean agro-silvo-pastoral systems (University of A Coruña, Javier Samper Calvete), and ClimaPannonia on agriculture in the Pannonian region (University of Novi Sad, Velimir Mladenov). We have shared interests and even share partners and we plan to organise collaborative activities later in the project. Stay tuned!
A lot is happening on the climate adaptation front everywhere around us. As always, you can learn more about the Precilience project via our website , sign up for the newsletter, and watch our webinars. We are also active at various thematic events where you might get to meet us. Come of these include the Land Use and Water Quality conference in Aarhus in June, and the Finnish farm fair OKRA in July 2025.
Wherever you are and however you are interested in our project, we look forward to connecting with you and I wish you all the very best summer and suitable weather for whatever you plan!
Petteri Karisto,
Research Scientist and Project Coordinator, Precilience