COLLABORATIVE APPROACHES THAT BRIDGE SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY: A ROLE FOR GEOSCIENTISTS

Collaborative approaches to the resolution of natural resource management and environmental issues hold the promise of achieving longer term consensus around critical societal decisions. Collaboratively framing and addressing the science issues, through a process of continuous interaction with decision makers and stakeholders, provides an effective way to bring science into the public policy arena. For these efforts to be successful, however, scientists must answer the call to participate. Geoscientists are well suited to engage in collaborative efforts at the local, state, and federal levels because we bring an integrative perspective to a study of the earth that would be welcomed in these efforts.

The transformation in societal decision-making toward a more decentralized and collaborative approach overcomes many of the concerns about public engagement that have led many scientists to be reluctant to participate in the public policy arena. Scientists who engage in collaborative efforts need to act within the guidelines of the best scientific practices and also within the principles of collaborative approaches. In collaborative efforts, scientific findings with all the attendant assumptions, methodologies, and uncertainties must be aired in an understandable, transparent, non-advocacy manner, in the spirit of mutual learning and establishing trust. Scientists serve to inform the decision process by providing knowledge and insight that allows decision makers/stakeholders to evaluate potential consequences and tradeoffs of different choices, but scientists do not mandate any particular choice.

The opportunities for the integration of science into decision-making carry with them certain expectations of scientists and thus we need to acquire the skills to work within collaborative environments. There are various ways for geoscientists to acquire these skills. Geoscience departments in academia can work with social science departments and with institutes engaged in collaborative approaches to develop courses. Agencies can provide similar training for their employees. For geoscientists, the opportunity is enormous to affect societal decisions within a truly democratic process of engagement.