Transcript Transferable resources and project impacts.

Work Package 4
Knowledge Exchange with
academic and policy
communities:
long term project stewardship
Dr Geoff Whitman and Professor
Stuart Lane, University of Durham
Core Work Package 4 aims
• To provide a long-term web-based
‘civic resource’ that draws upon the
project’s wider findings
• To broaden the empirical focus on
flooding to other science areas
The web-based Civic Resource
• Objectives:
1. Introduce and explore the nature of Environmental
Knowledge Controversies in general, and with reference to
the specific case of flooding.
2. Demonstrate the possibility of a radical repositioning of
science in environmental and other forms of research,
where the purpose of science is to redistribute expertise in
ways that allow new forms of political intervention.
3. Document and differentiate the Environmental Competency
Group methodology so as to provide a framework that
others can experiment with.
4. Use innovative forms of communication for the purpose of
(1), (2) and (3), whilst also providing a long-term archive
of the project’s findings.
Exemplars
• From ‘linear’ ordering as defined by the
creator to interactive ordering centred on
the user
• Exemplars
– Prezi: visualising and archiving project
information
– Living with flooding: transcending the personal
accounts of ‘the self’ with the systematic
accounts that emerge from across the many.
– Debategraph: an experiment in on-line debate
Broadening the focus:1
• The position and role of ecological knowledge in public policy
– 1980’s ‘revolution’ in medicine leading to the establishment of the
Cochrane Collaboration (CC) (1993)- establishment of systematic
reviews of the doctor-patient relationship.
– Suggestion by some that ecology needs a similar ‘revolution’ to move
it away from a base in which,
• “…the majority of conservation actions are experience-based, in that they
are based on the personal experience…rather than evidence-based, or based
on scientific experimentation indicating that they are effective” [Pullin and
Knight, 2001, p. 51]
• A tension between:
– those who advocate the restriction of admissible ecological knowledge
to that grounded in formal scientific practices and those trained in
those practices
– Recognising the potential of ‘local ecological knowledges’ (e.g. BTO,
RSPB, Springwatch, UK Phrenology Society)
• Aims: How do tensions emerge in decision-making (e.g. the
planning process)? How might our approach contribute to a rethink of whose knowledges are relevant to conservation?
Broadening the focus: 2
• Broadening engagement with climate change models through a
focus on: validation and verification
• Climate models are considered to be the ‘core tools’ in the study
of climatic processes and have have become “…synonymous in the
public mind” (Watson, 2008, p. 37) with attempts to predict how
climate will change in the future.
• However, there is a tension that exists between people’s localised
experiences of climate changes (i.e. weather) and the ‘objective’
modelling of these changes at a global scale
• In anthropology it has been noted that,
– “...in talking about weather we seek to understand lived worlds,
symbolic forms and human well-being...how climate change is
apparent in local weather patterns, how rain and wind feel on one’s
face, how snow feels differently underfoot than it did in one’s
childhood” (Crate and Nuttall, 2009, p. 394)
• Climate “…has always carried a deeper, precarious and more
ambiguous meaning” (Hulme, 2009, p. 12) for humans than that
developed through models and statistics.
Broadening the focus:2
• There is recognition from within the climate modelling community
of a need to engage with and communicate uncertainties as a
prerequisite for scientific credibility. As Stainforth et al note,
– “Effective communication of the underlying assumptions and sources of forecast
uncertainty is critical in the interaction between climate science, the impacts on
communities and society in general... (these)may prove critical for maintaining
credibility in the future as model-based information improves” (2007, p. 2146)
• However, there is less engagement with the idea that other
knowledges may be important in both the validating and
credibility of such models. Following Shackley and Wynne (1995)
we want to engage with the idea that
– “…in order to enhance broader based policy learning and engagement with the
issues, it is conceivable that …model validation is needed, in which for example,
those who are usually bracketed off as the ‘objects’ of research, such as farmers,
local communities and industrialists, are involved in testing model assumptions
and interface negotiations” (Shackley and Wynne, 1995, p. 126)
Participating Institutions
Funding Body
http://knowledge-controversies.ouce.ox.ac.uk/