Improving knowledge exchange among scientists and decision-makers to enable the adaptive governance of marine resources
Date
2015
Authors
Cvitanovic, Christopher
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A critical factor underpinning the success of adaptive governance arrangements is the generation and sharing of new information, as well as the capacity of management organisations to learn from new information. To date, however, this remains a significant challenge which continues to undermine the long term sustainable management of ecological goods and services. In this thesis, using Australian coral reef systems as a case study, I provide one of the first quantitative analyses of the current state of knowledge exchange among environmental scientists and decision-makers, and the barriers preventing efficient and effective knowledge exchange. In doing so, I find that while decision-makers consider science as a critical source of information for informing the decision-making process, they are largely unaware of the breadth of existing scientific information that they could use to inform the decision-making process. As a result I find that marine resource decision-makers continue to rely on secondary sources of information in isolation from scientific evidence when formulating management decisions, undermining their potential success and threatening the sustainable management of natural resources. I conclude that this is likely to be symptomatic of several significant and ongoing barriers to knowledge exchange. These include serious structural impediments to science accessibility, such as long publication times for articles (average 40.2 plus or minus 1.8 months), subscription-only access to international journals (up to 56% of articles behind paywalls) and/or poor articulation of management implications (only 19% of articles provided clear outcomes relevant to management). I also find that a range of institutional impediments prevent scientists from engaging with environmental decision-makers, such as inadequate measures of science impact that do not account for engagement activities, a lack of organisational support for engagement activities, insufficient time to conduct engagement activities in addition to other responsibilities and a lack of funding to support engagement activities. Accordingly, I identify the need for institutional invitation by science publishers, research institutions, research funders and decision-making agencies alike, to develop a culture whereby knowledge exchange activities are legitimised as core business for research scientists and decision-makers, and recognised and rewarded appropriately. These include, but are not limited to, the establishment of formal mentoring programs by research organisations that provide training and guidance on knowledge exchange, the establishment of new criteria by research funders which include measures of stakeholder engagement, and commitment by decision-making agencies to provide their staff with the means and mechanisms necessary to move beyond their typical focus on day-to-day operation, to long-term strategic reflection on research and development investment. Although difficulties exist in implementing such institutional innovations, doing so will inevitably improve two-way knowledge exchange among scientists and decision-makers and improve the sustainable governance of natural resources.
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