Gonzalo Méndez and Nerea Piñeiro added their experience to that of thirty experts to include scientific knowledge in the decision-making of the Lower House
“The Science and Technology Office of the Congress of Deputies (Office C) is an initiative that aims to bring together or link the scientific community with deputies, facilitating access to scientific knowledge and its inclusion in the decision-making of Congress, all with the support of FECYT, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.” In these terms, Gonzalo Méndez, professor and researcher at the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo, explains the objective of Office C of the Congress of Deputies for which he, and researcher Juan de la Cierva at the CIM Nerea Piñeiro, prepared, together with national and international scientists, a report on the sustainable management of coastal zones.
The so-called Report C: Sustainable Management of Coastal Areas was recently presented, together with other studies on topics such as active suicide prevention, artificial intelligence, and critical materials in the energy transition, during a roundtable held at the Spanish Congress of Deputies, in which the CIM-UVigo researcher took part alongside other authors of the report. “It is a very good opportunity to participate in an experience of clear knowledge transfer, of collective work with experts from related professional fields, and of engagement with decision-making at the highest level,” says the UVigo lecturer and researcher, who also acknowledges the professional satisfaction of having been selected for the panel of experts who prepared the report.
UVigo, the only one that participated with two experts
A dozen researchers from Office C itself and twenty scientific experts from various universities and research centers, mostly Spanish, but also from Singapore, Japan and the United Kingdom, led by Rüdiger Ortiz-Álvarez, from Office C, took part in writing the study. “The only institution that participated with two experts was the University of Vigo,” Méndez details.
The C Reports are prepared following a methodology established by the C Office, once the Congress Bureau chooses the topics, from that moment, a team led by a member of the office is formed and a complete bibliographic review and personalized interviews with all the chosen scientific experts begin. Next, a first version of the report is written, which will be revised several times until reaching the final version. In the case of the UVigo researchers, Nerea Piñeiro joined the work last February, while Gonzalo Méndez did so at the beginning of June.
The research activity of the CIM is co-financed by the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union through the European Funds (ERDF).
Source: DUVI
