Science knowledge brokering in collaborative environmental partnerships

• In Event: Networking for Environmental Quality: Carbon, Water, and Collaboration

Abstract

Collaborative partnerships engage multiple stakeholders representing government agencies, industries, interest groups, landowners, and more.  Collaborative environmental partnerships integrate diverse knowledge and perspectives to recommend, and sometimes carry out, environmental management at local and regional levels. Such partnerships frequently draw on scientific information to inform their management plans and actions, but the inclusion of many non-scientists in partnerships complicates the uptake of scientific findings.  Moreover, non-scientists bring additional forms of knowledge to the table, raising the question of how scientific information is incorporated into collaborative governance partnerships and policy processes.

Partnership members may act as knowledge brokers, navigating between objective scientific findings and policy advocacy.  They may distribute science, as is, to practitioners, or they may translate scientific information for practitioners, or even use science to advocate for a specific policy.  While a vast literature examines the science-policy interface, less is known about the science-collaboration interface.

This study examines how collaborative partnerships undertake science knowledge brokering in the Puget Sound Basin, USA. Data from a survey sent to members of 54 ecosystem recovery partnerships indicate members most frequently engage in using science to recommend specific actions.  Members also actively engage in brokering scientific information through distribution, translation, and developing a menu of options.  These trends are widespread across diverse deliberative process characteristics and partnership types.  However, brokering activities vary with individual expertise, as members whose primary expertise is science are more likely to distribute, translate, and develop a menu of options, while those with non-scientific primary expertise are less likely to do these three kinds of brokering.  Thus scientific expertise brings influence not only through the information itself, but also by scientific experts undertaking brokering activities more frequently.

Author

• Tom Koontz, University of Washington
  Presenting Author