Tertúlias are made with and by their participants. Each person brings something different. A Tertúlia would not be the same if another person had been there. As such each Tertúlia is unique and cannot be replicated.

As promoters, the most amazing story was of one Montado landowner that overcame a limitative shyness and started interacting with key players that she wouldn't before. This is just an example of a general observation that in Tertúlias participants evolve, and what at the beginning was a challenge is overcome and understood differently.

Yet, it is also delightful to read how the participants see the initiative:

“The architect Ribeiro Telles once said: “Do you know what the Montado mystery is? It's us going in, not knowing the paths, and only seeing trees ahead. Everything is possible, and everything happens all the time. There is always a mystery ahead of us." In Tertúlias do Montado's we learn to understand the Montado mysteries through the complementary visions of its participants: scientists and empiricists. Science does not give us absolute answers because reality is richer than any vision announced in a theory... and that's why, despite all the limitations, the Tertúlias do Montado have no end in sight.”
“In Tertúlias I broadened my view of the Montado, I was able to open up the spirit of the importance of the Montado and got motivated to try to improve the system.”

We learned the importance of face to face interactions.
Knowledge is not just what we say, it's how we say it, so the transfer, the incorporation and the clarity is much higher when people meet.

To deal with misinformation we need socialization of knowledge where understanding and trust building occurs.
Misinformation and fake news are recurrent and impacts enlarged by the fast pace of dissemination. The world is presented to us in a few clicks. Understanding and trust are fundamental to establish a genuine dialogue that, nurtured with critical thinking, motivates participants to change and take action.

Co-construction does not imply consensus. We can agree that we disagree and the most important aspect is not agreement but the sharing.

Co-construction means looking at the world together, sharing interpretations and creating meaning. So for those interested in transdisciplinarity and stakeholder engagement our advice is to promote long-term processes, think ahead and define a broader horizon while promoting dialogue between science and society. The focus should be on supporting engagement structures with liberty to evolve at their own pace, with a co-created agendas with sufficient flexibility to adapt. And of course, work with integration experts and expertise. Creating dialogue is much more than getting people together.

The initiative is centered on solving problems, so the actions discussed in Tertúlias have consequences i,e, a multiplier effect), for example:

Managers of the Montado are working with soil scientists to improve the Montado soil health.

This year the 4th edition of a training for farmers about how to improve the health of the Montado will happen.

We coordinate the implementation of a results-based payment for the Montado, under Pillar II of the Common Agriculture Policy. The start of this process goes back to 2017 where, in Tertúlias, we started discussing what policy could contribute to the Montado resilience.

This year, the coordinator of the initiative became member of the leadership board of the International Alliance of Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD); so the learning from Tertúlia can contribute to a worldwide discussion of how to implement more and better ITD.

In the future of the initiative we have three main goals:
1- To create new synergies between the participants of Tertúlias and improve their own leadership capacity in implementing collective actions.
2- The spreading of Tertúlias in other contexts. Many other issues related to the way we manage natural resources need dialogue platforms that follow the transferable procedures of Tertúlias do Montado
3- Many topics are yet to be tackled in Tertúlias, so in the future we will continue to design events where knowledge is exchanged, questions are raised, some are answered while others will be picked up in the near future.