Abstract
Decision support has become a popular concept, especially in the context of climate change. Government agencies and researchers increasingly recognize that they should provide it, and resource managers and policy-makers increasingly need and demand it. This demand will only grow as climate change progresses. Those who will attempt to meet this growing demand will need to demonstrate “effectiveness”. This editorial raises a number of critical questions that need to be answered in the course of evaluating whether decision support is effective. The answers, if carefully considered early on, may help to design processes that may in fact produce more useable products, facilitate their use, and ultimately create intended and desirable outcomes.
References
Arnstein SR (1969) A ladder of citizen participation. JAIP 35:216–225
Beierle TC (1998) Public participation in environmental decisions: an evaluation framework using social goals. Resources for the Future. Washington, DC
Beierle TC (2004) The benefits and costs of disclosing information about risks: what do we know about right-to-know? Risk Anal 24:335–346
Berkes F (1999) Sacred ecology: traditional ecological knowledge and management systems. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia
Callon M (1999) The role of lay people in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Sci Technol Soc 4:81–94
Cash DW, Clark WC, Alcock F, Dickson NM, Eckley N, Guston DH, Jäger J, Mitchell RB (2003) Knowledge systems for sustainable development. PNAS 100:8086–8091
Clark WC, Crutzen PJ, Schellnhuber H-J (2004) Science for global sustainability. In: Schnellnhuber HJ (ed) Earth system analysis for sustainability. MIT, Cambridge, pp 1–28
Clark WC, Mitchell RB, Cash DW (2006) Evaluating the influence of global environmental assessments. In: Mitchell RB, Clark WC, Cash DW, Dickson N (eds) Global environmental assessments: information and influence. MIT, Cambridge, pp 1–28
Climate Change Science Program, Subcommittee on Global Change Research (2003) Strategic plan for the U.S. climate change science program. CCSP, Washington, DC
Cooke B, Kothari U (eds) (2001) Participation: the new tyranny? Zed Books, London
Creighton JL (2005) The public participation handbook: making better decisions through citizen involvement. Wiley, San Francisco
Ewing MK (2003) Public participation in environmental decision-making. GDRC, Koyto
Farrell A, Jäger J (eds) (2006) Assessments of regional and global environmental risks. Resources for the Future, Washington, DC
Fiorino DJ (1990) Citizen participation and environmental risk: a survey of institutional mechanisms. Sci Technol Human Values 15:226–243
Folke C (2004) Traditional knowledge in social-ecological systems. Ecology & Society 9:7. Available at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss3/art7/
Gethmann CF (2005) Participation als Modus sozialer Selbstorganisation? Einige kritische Fragen. [Participation as a form of social self organization? Some critical questions]. Gaia 14:32–33
Gibbons M (1999) Science’s new social contract with society. Nature 402:C81–C84
Gibbons M, Limoges C, Nowotny H, Schwartzman S, Scott P, Trow M (1994) The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. Sage, London
Guston DH (2001) Boundary organizations in environmental policy and science: an introduction. Sci Technol Human Values 26:87–112
Heinrichs H (2005) Partizipationsforschung und nachhaltige Entwicklung. [Research on participation and sustainable development]. Gaia 14:30–31
Hickey S, Mohan G (eds) (2005) Participation–from tyranny to transformation? Exploring new approaches to participation in development. Zed Books, London
Jasanoff S (1990) The fifth branch: science advisors as policymakers. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Jasanoff S (ed) (2004) States of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order. Routledge, New York
Kasperson RE (2006) Rerouting the stakeholder express. Glob Environ Change 16:320–322
Krimsky S, Golding D (eds) (1992) Social theories of risk. Praeger, Westport
Lee KN (1993) Compass and gyroscope: integrating science and politics for the environment. Island, Washington, DC
Lubchenco J (1998) Entering the century of the environment: a new social contract for science. Science 279:491–497
Markus GB, Chess C, Shannon MA (2005) Political perspectives on public participation in environmental assessment and decision making. Discussion paper prepared for the NRC public participation in environmental assessments and decision-making panel meeting, Washington, DC, February 2005. NRC, Washington, DC
Mayoux L (2007) Participatory Development. Available at http://www.lindaswebs.org.uk/Page1_Development/Participation/Participation.htm
McNie EC (2007) Reconciling the supply of scientific information with user demands: an analysis of the problem and review of the literature. Environ Sci Policy 10:17–38
Miles EL, Snover AK, Whitely Binder LC, Sarachik ES, Mote PW, Mantua N (2006) An approach to designing a national climate service. PNAS 103:19616–19623
Mitchell RB, Clark WC, Cash DW, Dickson N (eds) (2006) Global environmental assessments: information, and influence. MIT, Cambridge
Moser SC (2005) Stakeholder involvement in the first U.S. national assessment of the potential consequences of climate variability and change: an evaluation, finally. Research report prepared for National Research Council, Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change. NCAR, Boulder, CO
Moser SC (2006) Climate change and sea-level rise in Maine and Hawai’i: the changing tides of an issue domain. In: Mitchell RB, Clark WC, Cash DW, Dickson N (eds) Global environmental assessments: information, and influence. MIT, Cambridge, pp 201–239
Moser SC, Dilling L (2004) Making climate hot: communicating the urgency and challenge of global climate change. Environment 46:32–46
Moser SC, Dilling L (eds) (2007) Creating a climate for change: communicating climate change and facilitating social change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
National Research Council (NRC) (1996) Understanding risk: informing decisions in a democratic society. National Academies Press, Washington, DC
National Research Council (NRC) (2007) Evaluating progress of the U.S. climate change science program: methods and preliminary results. National Academies Press, Washington, DC
National Research Council (NRC) (2008) Public participation in environmental assessment and decision making. National Academies Press, Washington, DC
Newig J (2007) Does public participation in environmental decisions lead to improved environmental quality?. CCP (Communication, Cooperation, Participation. Research and Practice for a sustainable Future) 1:51–71
Nowotny H, Scott P, Gibbons M (2001) Rethinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Polity, Cambridge
Oliver P (2002) Natural resource and environmental management partnerships: panacea, placebo or palliative? In: National Coastal Management ‘Coast to Coast’ Conference. Tweed Heads, Australia
Pielke RA Jr (2007) The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Pohl C (2005) Transdisciplinary collaboration in environmental research. Futures 37:1159–1178
Rayner S, Lach D, Ingram H (2005) Weather forecasts are for wimps: why water resource managers do not use climate forecasts. Clim Change 69:197–227
Rowe G, Frewer LJ (2000) Public participation methods: a framework for evaluation. Sci Technol Human Values 25:3–29
Slaughter S, Rhoades G (2005) From “endless frontier” to “basic science for use”: social contracts between science and society. Sci Technol Human Values 30:536–572
Stringer LC et al (2006) Unpacking “participation” in the adaptive management of social–ecological systems: a critical review. Ecology & Society 11:39. Available at: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss32/art39/
van Kerkhoff L (2005) Integrated research: concepts of connection in environmental science and policy. Environ Sci Policy 8:452–463
van Kerkhoff L, Lebel L (2006) Linking knowledge and action for sustainable development. Ann Rev Environ Res 31:12.11–12.33
Visbeck M (2007) From climate assessment to climate services. Nat Geosci 1:2–3
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
About this article
Cite this article
Moser, S. Making a difference on the ground: the challenge of demonstrating the effectiveness of decision support. Climatic Change 95, 11–21 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-008-9539-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-008-9539-1
Keywords
- Decision Support
- Public Participation
- Provide Decision Support
- Future Research Agenda
- Decision Support Process