Conflicting demands and shifts between policy and intra-scientific orientation during conservation research programmes

Abstract

Conservation scientists must meet the sometimes conflicting demands of policy and science, but not necessarily at the same time. We analysed the policy and intra-scientific orientations of research projects on effects of stump extraction on biodiversity, and found shifts over time associated with these demands. Our results indicate that uncertainties related to both factual issues and human decisions are often ignored in policy-oriented reports and syntheses, which could give misleading indications of the reliability or feasibility of any conclusions. The policy versus intra-scientific orientation of the scientific papers generated from the surveyed projects varied substantially, although we argue that in applied research, societal relevance is generally more important than intra-scientific relevance. To make conservation science more socially relevant, there is a need for giving societal relevance higher priority, paying attention to uncertainties and increasing the awareness of the value of cross-disciplinary research considering human decisions and values.

Keywords

Conservation biology; Forest biofuels; Policy-science interface; Synthesis; Uncertainties

Published in

AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment
2017, Volume: 46, number: 6, pages: 621-629 Publisher: SPRINGER

SLU Authors

• Ranius, Thomas

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Sjögren, Jörgen

  • Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

SLU Future Forests


Sustainable Development Goals

SDG13 Climate action


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-017-0913-y

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/91614