Science - action interface

We often hear the phrase “trust the science” as if science were an objective truth able to adjudicate among policy alternatives and show the best way forward. In reality, scientific information is just one small part of what goes into determining policy or collective action. In this area of research, I am focused specifically on how social-environmental science is produced and used in contexts of environmental governance.

Environmental data and models can be incredibly powerful tools for helping explain or predict the world around us. For planners, models can help identify causal relationships for environmental changes, and help predict what the impacts of certain policies or plans for development might be on the environment. In environmental decision-making contexts, where values and interests of many diverse stakeholders influence outcomes, we must use criteria beyond how precise, accurate, or reliable a model is. The model must also be evaluated on how useful it is to stakeholders, how understandable it is, and how well it facilitates communication. The advance of scientific understanding has resulted in increasingly sophisticated modeling, but, gaps have developed between state-of-the-art science and what kinds of models are used in action-based planning and policy. In this area of research, I am exploring how to best bridge this gap.