Transdisciplinary Quality Analysis of Integrated Ecosystem Assessments

Dorothy J. Dankel
Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen

Societies depend on the ability to understand and respond to dynamic social and natural systems and to translate and include the knowledge into political decision-making. An example from the European Union is its Common Fisheries Policy that “aims to ensure that fishing and aquaculture are environmentally, economically and socially sustainable and that they provide a source of healthy food for EU citizens.”  

A relevant response from academia is to ask: What makes fisheries and aquaculture sustainable? What, by whom and how are fisheries and aquaculture judged or qualified as “sustainable”? The policy goal of “sustainability” has an inherent multi-faceted nature.

The logical response from science is to gather more data of increasingly different types and to attempt to include complimentary disciplines to try to make sense of it all. The current trend of integrated assessments is driven by the need for frameworks where various data sources come together to provide policy advice. Data sets grow in size, and the number of actors (scientists, consultants, expert groups, etc.) and assessments increase.

Decision-makers may or may not receive salient science-based policy recommendations. The policy may fail. The policy is reformed. And science responds. The policy may succeed. And the science continues. The science-policy interface encompasses the dynamics of where knowledge systems and institutions communicate with societal representatives, bureaucrats and policy inscriptions.

Problem: The dynamics of the science-policy interface have underlying complex and entwined connections among different types of actors. There is currently a lack of comprehensive scholarship to identify and describe these dynamics. Because of this, we are currently unable to assess the quality of integrated assessments, the institutions that create and use them, and the policies that are built upon them.

The central thesis of this proposal is that critical analyses fostered in an inter- and transdisciplinary research platform and portfolio can give us relevant scholarly and societally relevant insights to the science-policy interface, its feedbacks as well as its strengths and vulnerabilities. A focus on the quality of integrated assessment models will create a new focus on credibility, legitimacy, saliency and transparency of science for societal planning.

A.1 Research Questions

To achieve this challenge, two institutional case studies provide the foundation for this research:

1) the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) developed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and

2) the formation of Integrated Ecosystem Models developed by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) will be studied.

This project applies a transdisciplinary scholarship of critical analyses of the development of these models, their review, their communication and their uptake to policy and feedbacks along this path. Examining these two case studies from a combined scientific, institutional and policy lens will create a new transdisciplinary narrative of quality of the science-policy interface with clear added impact for other similar cases.