Periodic Report Summary 3 - SPIRAL (SCIENCE-POLICY INTERFACES FOR BIODIVERSITY: RESEARCH, ACTION, AND LEARNING)
Project Context and Objectives:
While there is broad recognition of the importance of biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides for human well-being, biodiversity loss continues due to a range of anthropogenic drivers. A policy shift is urgently needed to address these drivers. This shift will need to build on an enhanced connectivity between research and policy making, on a better grasp of the underpinning role of biodiversity in livelihoods and ecosystem services and on an array of intertwined mechanisms to encourage the necessary shifts in behaviour.
The SPIRAL project built on the concept of science-policy interfaces to enhance the connectivity between biodiversity research and policy-making to improve the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. This concept is set within the broader context of calls for more effective science-policy interfaces in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) initiative, "Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU biodiversity strategy to 2020"; and the development of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Our starting point in SPIRAL was that enhanced connectivity between biodiversity research and policy making for improved biodiversity governance requires more than designing scientific communication strategies or expert processes, but rather calls for in-depth considerations of the ways and means to improve the interfaces between science and policy.
To achieve this aim the project had the following specific objectives:
1. To gain insight into how biodiversity research informs policy-making processes and, via policy instruments, the decision-making processes of individual citizens, civil society organisations, business and other actors;
2. To gain insight into how policy-makers and stakeholders inform biodiversity research;
3. To assess and understand the roles of different mechanisms for encouraging social and political behaviour to reduce negative human impacts on biodiversity (particularly targets and indicators and economic instruments);
4. To assess problems related to existing biodiversity science-policy interfaces, to examine when more effective science-policy interfaces are needed and to identify design criteria for science-policy interfaces resulting in more effective biodiversity governance;
5. To design mechanisms to improve the integration of scientific, ethical, moral and stewardship principles into policy making on issues that have impacts on biodiversity;
6. To experiment with and contribute to the designing, implementation and testing of science-policy interfaces for biodiversity in real-time to improve the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity;
7. To synthesise the results and recommendations emerging from the project and to disseminate these results in appropriate formats to relevant users, within and beyond the domains of biodiversity-related science and policy.
Project Results:
Work Packages 1-3 have contributed greatly to the understanding and theory of science-policy interfaces, providing a much needed understanding of the factors that hinder or facilitate integration of biodiversity research results into policy-making; guidelines on how to improve communication between science and policy at the individual, team and organisational levels; and criteria for designing and assessing SPIs.
In WP1, work focussed initially on the as yet poorly studied mapping of the landscape of existing science-policy interfaces (SPI) on biodiversity. A “Concept Note” underpinning the work of WPs 1-4 was initially developed in January 2011. Following on from this work, generic SPI categories (i.e. interest group involved in science, science project, expert group, state agency or institute) were developed to structure the vast SPI landscape and to get an overview of the range of different organizational approaches. Based on this framework, a mapping exercise was initiated that resulted in a database of over 150 SPIs for biodiversity at different levels (selected EU-member states, the EU and the global level). Following on from this mapping exercise, WP1 focussed on understanding SPIs in a more in-depth manner, using eleven case studies of SPI activities in the context of establishing or revising national biodiversity strategies (NBS), and SPI activities of FP6 and FP7 biodiversity research projects. The analysis of these SPI activities has enabled the identification of factors that hinder or facilitate the effective integration of biodiversity research results into policy-making, and the organisation of SPIs in terms of key features including goals, structures, process, outputs and outcomes.
In parallel to this mapping exercise, WP2 focussed on better understanding the factors constraining and facilitating communication on the role of biodiversity in underpinning livelihoods and ecosystem services. Interviews with scientists and policy-makers related to three case studies (the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and deer management in Scotland) were conducted and analysed to add to a draft framework of factors constraining or facilitating communication developed in WP2. The resulting recommendations for science-policy communication were based on the literature, these WP2 interviews and validated through a workshop with individuals working at the science-policy interface. An important feature of these recommendations is that they were separated by scale (individuals, teams, organisations) in relation to both science and policy sectors. This break-down allows for a much better targeting of recommendations to different audiences, and reflects SPIRAL’s emphasis on moving beyond the ‘traditional’ focus on scientists refining dissemination and knowledge transfer strategies.
Working closely with WPs 1 and 2, WP3 developed a comprehensive literature review of the existing knowledge on the use of various mechanisms for encouraging social behaviour to reduce negative human impacts on biodiversity. It also assessed the ways in which research addresses its own role in supporting different mechanisms in affecting social behaviour. Following this literature review, work in WP3 focussed on how SPIs can influence behaviour in more or less successful ways, and how this can be better understood. Based on workshops and interviews, a set of fourteen key attributes or features were developed by WP3. The attributes, and lessons learned for each, can be used for a range of different purposes, including designing, developing, and assessing SPIs. These attributes are therefore suitable for different audiences, including decision-makers, funders, evaluators, and knowledge users and holders. As an example of close collaboration between work packages, WP3 used the categories developed in WP1 (goals, structures, process, outputs and outcomes) to address the attributes. In addition, WP3 has also carried out extensive work on trade-offs between the criteria, and expanded on a new feature: iterativity.
WP4, running in parallel with the rest of the project, focused on the design, implementation and assessment of real-life biodiversity science-policy interfaces with the aim of improving their effectiveness. The WP worked with a number of real-life ‘test cases’, in which the project team directly interacted with a number of science-policy interfaces, feeding in results from SPIRAL (from WPs 1-3), and gaining experience which, in turn, fed into SPIRAL. WP4 was involved in exploring nine test cases and studied five SPIs originally listed as test cases as case studies in WP1. The very nature of the support part of SPIRAL (see DoW page 8) and of the test case approach required flexibility, as real life SPIs and access to them necessarily evolved in the time between finalising the DoW and the work itself being undertaken under the contract. The final list of test cases in WP4 was therefore as follows:
• the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES),
• the AfriBES Network,
• the EU Mechanism of expertise on biodiversity,
• the Water Framework Directive (WFD) implementation in Romania,
• NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research,
• Het Instituut voor Natuur- en Bosonderzoek (INBO),
• the Science for EU Environment Policy Interface (SEPI),
• the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity – TEEB,
• the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) - European Chapter.
SPIRAL’s WP4 was involved in exploring nine test cases and studied five SPIs originally listed as test cases as case studies in WP1. The very nature of the support part of SPIRAL (see DoW page 8) and of the test case approach required flexibility, as real life SPIs and access to them necessarily evolved in the time between finalising the DoW and the work itself being undertaken under the contract. WP4’s approach was to work towards SPIRAL’s strategic aim of improving the way in which SPIs operate in real world settings. As such, WP4’s work here was very much a social science (anthropological) exploration of the ‘common sense’ of how SPIs function. Thus in order to capture and explore the likely diversity and maddening inconsistency of how real world SPIs might work, it is expected that some of the findings of WP4 might, indeed, seem ‘obvious’, particularly to individuals already heavily involved in SPI activities. Yet, such obviousness is linked with the concept of tacit knowledge – meaning knowledge that is understood without being openly expressed and, hence, may appear ‘obvious’ when it is expressed. From a practical point of view, in order to understand SPIs with an aim of contributing recommendations on how to improve SPIs in practice, it can thus be important to deal with ‘the obvious’ and helpful to identify and articulate it and use it to the benefit of these social processes. Similarly, from a theoretical point of view, it can also be important to deal with ‘the obvious’ because SPIRAL was aimed at a much broader audience than SPI researchers alone. What is obvious to one audience may not be to another, and so great care has been taken to distil and communicate the specifics of WP4’s findings in ways appropriate to a broad audience including policy-makers and implementers, knowledge holders and translators to help them improve their understanding and practice of SPIs (see work carried out in WP5 for more information on SPIRAL’s communication strategy).
Work in WPs 1-4 have benefitted greatly from a strong and active dissemination and communication strategy, developed in WP5 with close collaboration from WP6. This strategy resulted in the development early on in the project of a 40-strong group of experts in science-policy interfaces, suggested and invited by all SPIRAL partners: our Regular, and Dynamic, Networks of Advisers (RNA/DNA).
WP5 has also ensured the development of a dynamic public website http://www.spiral-project.eu and a space for all internal project communication (our SPIRAL project ‘wiki’). Regular newsletters and updated flyers have ensured that all SPIRAL partners, DNA and interested projects and individual are kept abreast of SPIRAL progress. In addition, we have developed a new interactive “brief map” for all visitors to the website (http://www.spiral-project.eu/content/documents).
Visitors can plug in who they are, and what they need to know about SPIs or biodiversity, and a menu-type schematic allows them to gain personalised information to address their specific needs. A total of 34 briefs were produced over the course of the project, over 15 in the third year alone.
Briefs cover a range of topics, under the following categories: Understanding science-policy interfaces, Understanding biodiversity, Improving communication, Strengthening science-policy interfaces, Integrating credibility, relevance, legitimacy and iterativity, Learning from existing SPIs and Moving from interfaces to alliances.
They were developed for a wide range of audiences including policy-makers, research policy-makers and funders, research institutions, scientists and the academic community, businesses and business organisations and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
Finally, through their involvement in test cases but also in other SPIs, SPIRAL partners have been able to disseminate results from the project in conferences, workshops and numerous face to face discussions. The aim is to make the results of SPIRAL research as accessible as possible, to improve science-policy interfaces on biodiversity and ecosystem services for a more sustainable future.
Potential Impact:
The SPIRAL project will contribute to enhancing the connectivity between biodiversity research and policy by generating a series of outcomes and physical products. With many science-policy interfaces currently being designed and implemented from the national to the international level in response to a wide recognition of a series of gaps in biodiversity governance, SPIRAL was a unique opportunity to get involved in these interfaces, and make a practical difference in the integration of biodiversity research into policy.
Main outcomes of SPIRAL:
1. Direct contribution to the improvement of biodiversity research into policy:
• by acting as a resource group for the design and implementation of practical science-policy interfaces;
• by acting as a resource group for other science-policy interfaces on an ad hoc, flexible, demand-oriented basis;
2. Capacity building and networking in Europe and elsewhere on linkages between science and policy :
• by contributing to the development of a critical mass of practical and theoretical expertise on interfacing science with policy within the consortium and amongst its Dynamic Network of Associated Stakeholders;
• by providing an opportunity for the main actual or potential policy actors and stakeholders in biodiversity science-policy interfaces to learn, share experience, network and critically analyse their successes and difficulties.
Main products of SPIRAL, targeted to the science, policy, and stakeholder communities:
• A handbook on good practices for understanding, developing and assessing effective science-policy interfaces;
• A series of 34 briefs, available as individual briefs, and compiled as a synthesis report, targeted at specific audiences in the policy and science communities with key recommendations emerging from the project;
• A collaborative Internet pilot platform for the AfriSEB Network;
• A website and regular newsletters, providing updated information about the evolution and results of the project and about key news relevant to the relation between biodiversity science and policy;
• A series of peer-reviewed scientific papers.
These outcomes and products will contribute to achieving the overall aim of SPIRAL as they allow scientists, policy-makers and other stakeholders both at the individual and organisational level to capitalise on a better understanding of science-policy interfaces and better practices resulting from the dynamics created by the project. This is also relevant to science-policy interfaces in other environmental fields, beyond biodiversity.
It is in this manner that SPIRAL contributes to increasing the use of research in sustainable development – specifically biodiversity and ecosystems research – in line with the policy guiding principles of the renewed EU Sustainable Development Strategy.
List of Websites:
http://www.spiral-project.eu/
While there is broad recognition of the importance of biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides for human well-being, biodiversity loss continues due to a range of anthropogenic drivers. A policy shift is urgently needed to address these drivers. This shift will need to build on an enhanced connectivity between research and policy making, on a better grasp of the underpinning role of biodiversity in livelihoods and ecosystem services and on an array of intertwined mechanisms to encourage the necessary shifts in behaviour.
The SPIRAL project built on the concept of science-policy interfaces to enhance the connectivity between biodiversity research and policy-making to improve the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. This concept is set within the broader context of calls for more effective science-policy interfaces in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) initiative, "Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU biodiversity strategy to 2020"; and the development of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Our starting point in SPIRAL was that enhanced connectivity between biodiversity research and policy making for improved biodiversity governance requires more than designing scientific communication strategies or expert processes, but rather calls for in-depth considerations of the ways and means to improve the interfaces between science and policy.
To achieve this aim the project had the following specific objectives:
1. To gain insight into how biodiversity research informs policy-making processes and, via policy instruments, the decision-making processes of individual citizens, civil society organisations, business and other actors;
2. To gain insight into how policy-makers and stakeholders inform biodiversity research;
3. To assess and understand the roles of different mechanisms for encouraging social and political behaviour to reduce negative human impacts on biodiversity (particularly targets and indicators and economic instruments);
4. To assess problems related to existing biodiversity science-policy interfaces, to examine when more effective science-policy interfaces are needed and to identify design criteria for science-policy interfaces resulting in more effective biodiversity governance;
5. To design mechanisms to improve the integration of scientific, ethical, moral and stewardship principles into policy making on issues that have impacts on biodiversity;
6. To experiment with and contribute to the designing, implementation and testing of science-policy interfaces for biodiversity in real-time to improve the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity;
7. To synthesise the results and recommendations emerging from the project and to disseminate these results in appropriate formats to relevant users, within and beyond the domains of biodiversity-related science and policy.
Project Results:
Work Packages 1-3 have contributed greatly to the understanding and theory of science-policy interfaces, providing a much needed understanding of the factors that hinder or facilitate integration of biodiversity research results into policy-making; guidelines on how to improve communication between science and policy at the individual, team and organisational levels; and criteria for designing and assessing SPIs.
In WP1, work focussed initially on the as yet poorly studied mapping of the landscape of existing science-policy interfaces (SPI) on biodiversity. A “Concept Note” underpinning the work of WPs 1-4 was initially developed in January 2011. Following on from this work, generic SPI categories (i.e. interest group involved in science, science project, expert group, state agency or institute) were developed to structure the vast SPI landscape and to get an overview of the range of different organizational approaches. Based on this framework, a mapping exercise was initiated that resulted in a database of over 150 SPIs for biodiversity at different levels (selected EU-member states, the EU and the global level). Following on from this mapping exercise, WP1 focussed on understanding SPIs in a more in-depth manner, using eleven case studies of SPI activities in the context of establishing or revising national biodiversity strategies (NBS), and SPI activities of FP6 and FP7 biodiversity research projects. The analysis of these SPI activities has enabled the identification of factors that hinder or facilitate the effective integration of biodiversity research results into policy-making, and the organisation of SPIs in terms of key features including goals, structures, process, outputs and outcomes.
In parallel to this mapping exercise, WP2 focussed on better understanding the factors constraining and facilitating communication on the role of biodiversity in underpinning livelihoods and ecosystem services. Interviews with scientists and policy-makers related to three case studies (the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and deer management in Scotland) were conducted and analysed to add to a draft framework of factors constraining or facilitating communication developed in WP2. The resulting recommendations for science-policy communication were based on the literature, these WP2 interviews and validated through a workshop with individuals working at the science-policy interface. An important feature of these recommendations is that they were separated by scale (individuals, teams, organisations) in relation to both science and policy sectors. This break-down allows for a much better targeting of recommendations to different audiences, and reflects SPIRAL’s emphasis on moving beyond the ‘traditional’ focus on scientists refining dissemination and knowledge transfer strategies.
Working closely with WPs 1 and 2, WP3 developed a comprehensive literature review of the existing knowledge on the use of various mechanisms for encouraging social behaviour to reduce negative human impacts on biodiversity. It also assessed the ways in which research addresses its own role in supporting different mechanisms in affecting social behaviour. Following this literature review, work in WP3 focussed on how SPIs can influence behaviour in more or less successful ways, and how this can be better understood. Based on workshops and interviews, a set of fourteen key attributes or features were developed by WP3. The attributes, and lessons learned for each, can be used for a range of different purposes, including designing, developing, and assessing SPIs. These attributes are therefore suitable for different audiences, including decision-makers, funders, evaluators, and knowledge users and holders. As an example of close collaboration between work packages, WP3 used the categories developed in WP1 (goals, structures, process, outputs and outcomes) to address the attributes. In addition, WP3 has also carried out extensive work on trade-offs between the criteria, and expanded on a new feature: iterativity.
WP4, running in parallel with the rest of the project, focused on the design, implementation and assessment of real-life biodiversity science-policy interfaces with the aim of improving their effectiveness. The WP worked with a number of real-life ‘test cases’, in which the project team directly interacted with a number of science-policy interfaces, feeding in results from SPIRAL (from WPs 1-3), and gaining experience which, in turn, fed into SPIRAL. WP4 was involved in exploring nine test cases and studied five SPIs originally listed as test cases as case studies in WP1. The very nature of the support part of SPIRAL (see DoW page 8) and of the test case approach required flexibility, as real life SPIs and access to them necessarily evolved in the time between finalising the DoW and the work itself being undertaken under the contract. The final list of test cases in WP4 was therefore as follows:
• the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES),
• the AfriBES Network,
• the EU Mechanism of expertise on biodiversity,
• the Water Framework Directive (WFD) implementation in Romania,
• NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research,
• Het Instituut voor Natuur- en Bosonderzoek (INBO),
• the Science for EU Environment Policy Interface (SEPI),
• the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity – TEEB,
• the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) - European Chapter.
SPIRAL’s WP4 was involved in exploring nine test cases and studied five SPIs originally listed as test cases as case studies in WP1. The very nature of the support part of SPIRAL (see DoW page 8) and of the test case approach required flexibility, as real life SPIs and access to them necessarily evolved in the time between finalising the DoW and the work itself being undertaken under the contract. WP4’s approach was to work towards SPIRAL’s strategic aim of improving the way in which SPIs operate in real world settings. As such, WP4’s work here was very much a social science (anthropological) exploration of the ‘common sense’ of how SPIs function. Thus in order to capture and explore the likely diversity and maddening inconsistency of how real world SPIs might work, it is expected that some of the findings of WP4 might, indeed, seem ‘obvious’, particularly to individuals already heavily involved in SPI activities. Yet, such obviousness is linked with the concept of tacit knowledge – meaning knowledge that is understood without being openly expressed and, hence, may appear ‘obvious’ when it is expressed. From a practical point of view, in order to understand SPIs with an aim of contributing recommendations on how to improve SPIs in practice, it can thus be important to deal with ‘the obvious’ and helpful to identify and articulate it and use it to the benefit of these social processes. Similarly, from a theoretical point of view, it can also be important to deal with ‘the obvious’ because SPIRAL was aimed at a much broader audience than SPI researchers alone. What is obvious to one audience may not be to another, and so great care has been taken to distil and communicate the specifics of WP4’s findings in ways appropriate to a broad audience including policy-makers and implementers, knowledge holders and translators to help them improve their understanding and practice of SPIs (see work carried out in WP5 for more information on SPIRAL’s communication strategy).
Work in WPs 1-4 have benefitted greatly from a strong and active dissemination and communication strategy, developed in WP5 with close collaboration from WP6. This strategy resulted in the development early on in the project of a 40-strong group of experts in science-policy interfaces, suggested and invited by all SPIRAL partners: our Regular, and Dynamic, Networks of Advisers (RNA/DNA).
WP5 has also ensured the development of a dynamic public website http://www.spiral-project.eu and a space for all internal project communication (our SPIRAL project ‘wiki’). Regular newsletters and updated flyers have ensured that all SPIRAL partners, DNA and interested projects and individual are kept abreast of SPIRAL progress. In addition, we have developed a new interactive “brief map” for all visitors to the website (http://www.spiral-project.eu/content/documents).
Visitors can plug in who they are, and what they need to know about SPIs or biodiversity, and a menu-type schematic allows them to gain personalised information to address their specific needs. A total of 34 briefs were produced over the course of the project, over 15 in the third year alone.
Briefs cover a range of topics, under the following categories: Understanding science-policy interfaces, Understanding biodiversity, Improving communication, Strengthening science-policy interfaces, Integrating credibility, relevance, legitimacy and iterativity, Learning from existing SPIs and Moving from interfaces to alliances.
They were developed for a wide range of audiences including policy-makers, research policy-makers and funders, research institutions, scientists and the academic community, businesses and business organisations and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
Finally, through their involvement in test cases but also in other SPIs, SPIRAL partners have been able to disseminate results from the project in conferences, workshops and numerous face to face discussions. The aim is to make the results of SPIRAL research as accessible as possible, to improve science-policy interfaces on biodiversity and ecosystem services for a more sustainable future.
Potential Impact:
The SPIRAL project will contribute to enhancing the connectivity between biodiversity research and policy by generating a series of outcomes and physical products. With many science-policy interfaces currently being designed and implemented from the national to the international level in response to a wide recognition of a series of gaps in biodiversity governance, SPIRAL was a unique opportunity to get involved in these interfaces, and make a practical difference in the integration of biodiversity research into policy.
Main outcomes of SPIRAL:
1. Direct contribution to the improvement of biodiversity research into policy:
• by acting as a resource group for the design and implementation of practical science-policy interfaces;
• by acting as a resource group for other science-policy interfaces on an ad hoc, flexible, demand-oriented basis;
2. Capacity building and networking in Europe and elsewhere on linkages between science and policy :
• by contributing to the development of a critical mass of practical and theoretical expertise on interfacing science with policy within the consortium and amongst its Dynamic Network of Associated Stakeholders;
• by providing an opportunity for the main actual or potential policy actors and stakeholders in biodiversity science-policy interfaces to learn, share experience, network and critically analyse their successes and difficulties.
Main products of SPIRAL, targeted to the science, policy, and stakeholder communities:
• A handbook on good practices for understanding, developing and assessing effective science-policy interfaces;
• A series of 34 briefs, available as individual briefs, and compiled as a synthesis report, targeted at specific audiences in the policy and science communities with key recommendations emerging from the project;
• A collaborative Internet pilot platform for the AfriSEB Network;
• A website and regular newsletters, providing updated information about the evolution and results of the project and about key news relevant to the relation between biodiversity science and policy;
• A series of peer-reviewed scientific papers.
These outcomes and products will contribute to achieving the overall aim of SPIRAL as they allow scientists, policy-makers and other stakeholders both at the individual and organisational level to capitalise on a better understanding of science-policy interfaces and better practices resulting from the dynamics created by the project. This is also relevant to science-policy interfaces in other environmental fields, beyond biodiversity.
It is in this manner that SPIRAL contributes to increasing the use of research in sustainable development – specifically biodiversity and ecosystems research – in line with the policy guiding principles of the renewed EU Sustainable Development Strategy.
List of Websites:
http://www.spiral-project.eu/