Communicating Global Change Science to Society: An Assessment and Case Studies

National governments and research scientists may be equally concerned with issues of global environmental change, but their interests-and their timelines-are not the same. Governments are often focused on short-term effects and local impacts of global phenomena. Scientists, on the other hand, are loath to engage in speculation about the specific consequences of large-scale environmental trends.

How then can we translate scientific understanding of these trends into public policy?

Communicating Global Change Science to Society examines the growing number of instances in which governments and scientists have engaged in research projects in which the goal is to inform policy decisions. It assesses these experiences and suggests their implications for future collaborations.

The book begins with a discussion of interactions between science and policy, particularly as they relate to the broad significance of environmental change. It then addresses concerns that emerge from this discussion, including how scientific research results are communicated in democratic societies, the uses (and misuses) of scientific findings, and what the natural and social sciences could learn from each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Sep 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781610911511

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Why This Book? An Introduction and Synthesis

Holm Tiessen

There has always been global change, and global change has always had impacts on human populations. Twelve thousand years ago, hunters migrated out of the drying Sahara region, and northern people colonized the fertile soils left behind by retreating glaciers of the last ice age. Only a hundred years ago, some of these fertile soils were settled by mostly European agriculturalists who had migrated to North America, many of them driven by droughts in the southern part of the Soviet Union. For much of human history, people have reacted to climate change by adapting to or escaping from environmental stresses and exploring opportunities. On today’s more populous and wealthier planet, opportunities for escape have become limited, while increased knowledge and systematic scientific approaches have improved the chances for adaptation. At the same time, humans themselves have become a significant cause of global change. This is the root of an increasing demand for global change science to 1) predict the rate, shape, and extent of global change; 2) provide decision aids for mitigation; and 3) provide guidance toward adaptation.

In response to these demands, science is undergoing transformations toward greater societal and policy relevance, both in its choice of subject matter and in its communication of results. These transformations do not happen in a linear or planned process but occur in an undirected manner as scientists and research institutions respond to changes in science funding, attitudes, and policies. This book presents both a collection of experiences from the Collaborative Research Networks (CRNs) of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and an analysis of the policy interface that has developed in these networks. Researchers prepared background chapters and provided interviews about the policy relevance, links to decision makers, and outreach of their projects. Some projects had no policy component. These typically claimed an intrinsic policy relevance based on the project’s scientific excellence and importance, but no activities were undertaken that might have conveyed this importance to society or policy makers. Most research networks started out without policy agendas but developed them during the course of the five- to six-year projects as opportunities arose. The development of policy relevance was often the result of exposure of the researchers to societal needs during the research. Only one project was fully embedded in government policy; it was based in government administrations and dealt with public health issues due to global change. Despite this integration, the implementation of research findings in public health practice was difficult because practitioners found it difficult to integrate the predictions and probabilities of an epidemic based on climate events into their day-to-day operations.

Both development and economic growth are undermined by global change. Therefore any response to global environmental change requires political, as well as scientific or technical, treatment. Under the realities of global change, societies must ask, Development and growth of what, for whom, and at what cost? Green policies are often challenging to the policy sector because they typically call attention to what should not be done and therefore often emphasize the negative side of positive development and growth. Legitimacy of such policies is founded on the need to harmonize development with the capacity of Earth systems to support societies’ needs; therefore legitimacy is founded on scientific knowledge. The policy dilemma results because democratic decision makers usually arrive at policies by an adversarial process, while on global change issues, they are compelled to exercise persuasion and inducement in a continuous learning process linked to science. In this delicate situation, in order for science to succeed in influencing policy and the decisions or actions of societies, it has to have a number of attributes that go beyond traditional measures of scientific quality. These needed attributes are credibility, acceptability, practicality, usefulness, and accessibility.

Scientific credibility is underpinned by peer reviews of proposals, research methods, and results. Wider credibility is commonly derived from endorsements by sources or authorities trusted by society or its representatives.

Credibility and acceptability are enhanced when policy makers are engaged in the research process, starting with the initial framing of the research questions. Their continued involvement requires that scientists be ready to engage in communication and remain responsive to demands by the policy sector. It is a difficult lesson for many scientists that, to be policy relevant, good science is not enough but a persistent and patient engagement with the appropriate audience for the scientific message is also required. The message may also have to be translated and packaged for different audiences. Such processes have been the hallmark of commissioned work. Yet global environmental change (GEC) science cannot be driven only by articulated needs of societies. Research must also be proactive, ahead of societies’ demands.

The development of policy relevance has enhanced many scientists’ engagement and integrated them into ongoing communication with different stakeholders. This process requires safeguards against biases, as the development of advocacy may undermine the neutrality demanded of the scientific process. One finding of the research on climate risk is that climate stress does not cause human vulnerabilities but only unveils them. Close cooperation between natural and human sciences is required to establish full causal chains between natural events and human conditions. This interdisciplinarity has been one of the most difficult and least successful tasks of the research networks. Where it did occur, interdisciplinarity often meant adding a discipline to the research process, not really integrating it.

If scientists themselves want to influence policy, they have to understand the relationship between policy and politics. One of the most important components of that understanding is an appreciation of who will win and who will lose as a consequence of the results of their science.

To influence policy, scientists have to identify the right person to hear the message at the right time, and in the appropriate language. Often this person is hard to find, the timing is hard to establish, and the language is hard to learn. To ease links to society and policy relevance, several of the projects have found brokers, most often in the form of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs involved in the search for development alternatives or in resource management have a need for scientific information. In turn they have offered scientists access to communities or research sites. They have also carried the knowledge or technical solutions provided by the scientific research back into the communities, using communication and demonstration tools with which scientists are less conversant. The cooperation has often been fruitful and has developed its own momentum, which has frequently continued after project funding ceased. Yet, in the beginning, there were very significant barriers caused by perceptions of different agendas and lack of transparency and understanding of goals and motivations of different actors. Essentially, trust needed to be built before the groups could work together effectively. This took time and effort; it also sometimes required adjustments in research