Rick F on communicating with policymakers

Irene:

Below is the information that my new intern found on efforts by the scientific community to better communicate with policy makers. The second one looks like a good starting point.

I’ve started making a little list of ideas, which might eventually result in an outline.

Rick

There are several articles and papers regarding the scientist/policymaker communication issue. There is a lot of information from individual authors if that is what you would like me to look into. However, I was trying to find conferences or studies that brought together several people from the scientific and public communities. Here are a few things that I found:

(1) Aldo Leopold Leadership Program (ALLP) http://leopoldleadership.stanford.edu/

I believe this program might be what we were aiming for. The Program was created in 1998 and holds several conferences or trainings per year for researchers whom specialize in environmental science. Policy specialists, leading researchers, and business leaders participate in sessions in which the researchers are taught methods to engage with and communicate to decision makers and opinion shapers. One major focus has been to build relationships between scientists and policymakers.

This is a link to the June 2008 Conference Presentation. http://woods.stanford.edu/leopold/ct/index.html The topics and speakers are listed. If you click on the topic, the link will expand on the topic issue. Other conference agendas are also on the website.

(2) http://homepage.mac.com/mcolyvan/papers/ecomanagement.pdf

This article presents recommendations from a conference held by environmental scientists in Australia in February 2008. The group included researchers from Australia ’s Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities (CERF) research hub for Applied Environmental Decision Analysis (AEDA), policymakers and managers from the Australian Government’s Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) and other practitioners. The article presents ways to improve engagement between policymakers and researchers at an individual and organizational level.

(3) http://www.sip.ucar.edu/wasis/norman/pdf/Role_of_Scientists_in_Policy_Decisions.pdf

This was a study done by the Oklahoma Climatological Survey that involved research scientists and state directors from several states that were engaged in state drought planning. It discussed key findings for methods of communication and interaction between scientists and policymakers.