D7.2 Policy Audit and Policy Design Toolkit (Draft version)

The ‘Quick Start’ Policy Design Toolkit is a practical guide designed to help mountain stakeholders craft contextualised demands for effective policy formulation. Often, policies and strategies fail to address the unique challenges faced by mountain areas or are not adapted to the needs and expectations of local stakeholders, reducing their impact and effectiveness. This Toolkit simplifies and compiles proven participatory methods used across 23 mountain regions to ensure that policies are relevant, contribute to building trust, and foster collaboration. By using this Toolkit, mountain stakeholders and policymakers can: • Understand and articulate the issues facing their mountain communities. Gather evidence through data for effective policy demands. Define clear objectives and explore various policy options. Follow a step-by-step process, from identifying problems to designing the strategic policy options. Apply practical techniques for gathering insights and developing strategies at any stage of policy formulation. The Toolkit emphasises the benefits of co-producing policies through science-society-policy (SSP) interfaces, which are especially helpful in the current changing policy environment. It includes participatory methods for identifying territorial assets, such as mountain value chains (MVC). Based on the different conceptual, methodological and practical approaches developed by MOVING, it provides techniques, examples, and tips to collect, condense and interpret the evidence generated in order to perform the various interlinked tasks of policy formulation and implementation within the existing policy mix. The concepts and language have been adapted to facilitate its use by different stakeholders and audiences. The Conceptual and Analytical Framework (CAF) helps stakeholders understand the complex interactions between social and ecological elements in mountain systems, identifying how these interactions lead to different outcomes that either support or threaten sustainability and resilience. This Toolkit also provides methods to conduct vulnerability analyses of mountain assets and creative exercises to forecast and plan feasible policy mixes to achieve future visions of mountain areas. Overall, the MOVING Policy Toolkit aims to empower mountain communities by providing them with the tools to create conducive policy environments tailored to their unique needs, ensuring more resilient and sustainable mountain areas. The Toolkit has been designed for mountain areas, and the methods and examples are linked to MVCs. However, it should be used with a broader approach to consider the different assets existing in mountain areas. Furthermore, it can be used by other rural areas facing similar problems.