Knowledge Cumulation at Science-Policy Interfaces: Opportunities for Environmental Governance Research

IF 3 3区社会学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Environmental Policy and Governance Pub Date : 2025-03-13 DOI:10.1002/eet.2155

Benjamin Hofmann, Manuel Fischer, Karin Ingold, Eva Lieberherr, Sabine Hoffmann

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

To increase the societal impact of environmental governance research, scholars have called for knowledge cumulation, meaning that scientific evidence builds more systematically on previous findings. Our article develops the perspective that such knowledge cumulation takes place not only within academia but also at science-policy interfaces (SPIs). Drawing on literature on knowledge integration, synthesis, and use as well as science-policy literature, we outline five opportunities for knowledge cumulation at SPIs: (1) proximity to democratic discourse and decision-making; (2) suitability for inter- and transdisciplinary integration; (3) combined problem and solution focus; (4) potential to increase the generality of scientific findings; and (5) creation of targeted synthesis products. We illustrate their respective benefits and challenges with empirical examples from SPIs for climate change, biodiversity and natural resources, and food systems. We conclude that SPIs are an important locus for cumulating knowledge used in complex environmental governance and that future research could explore how this interacts with knowledge cumulation in the academic realm.

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科学-政策界面的知识积累：环境治理研究的机遇

为了增加环境治理研究的社会影响，学者们呼吁知识积累，这意味着科学证据更系统地建立在以前的发现之上。我们的文章发展了这样一种观点，即这种知识积累不仅发生在学术界，也发生在科学-政策界面（spi）。借鉴有关知识整合、综合和使用的文献以及科学政策文献，我们概述了spi知识积累的五个机会：(1)接近民主话语和决策；(2)适合跨、跨学科整合；(3)问题与解决相结合；(4)提高科学发现普遍性的潜力；(5)目标合成产物的生成。我们通过气候变化、生物多样性和自然资源以及粮食系统的spi的经验例子说明了它们各自的好处和挑战。我们的结论是，spi是复杂环境治理中积累知识的重要场所，未来的研究可以探索它如何与学术领域的知识积累相互作用。

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来源期刊

Environmental Policy and Governance ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES-

CiteScore

6.10

自引率

13.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Environmental Policy and Governance is an international, inter-disciplinary journal affiliated with the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE). The journal seeks to advance interdisciplinary environmental research and its use to support novel solutions in environmental policy and governance. The journal publishes innovative, high quality articles which examine, or are relevant to, the environmental policies that are introduced by governments or the diverse forms of environmental governance that emerge in markets and civil society. The journal includes papers that examine how different forms of policy and governance emerge and exert influence at scales ranging from local to global and in diverse developmental and environmental contexts.