Elsevier

Environmental Science & Policy

Volume 38, April 2014, Pages 107-119
Environmental Science & Policy

Science into policy? Discourse, coastal management and knowledge

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2013.10.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Effective coastal management requires integration of science into policy, but at present there is an implementation gap in this area.

  • We investigate the role knowledge plays in addressing this gap to enable the facilitation of science into policy.

  • Using historical and discourse analysis we find two discourses about knowledge in coastal management exist: (i) science as knowledge and (ii) community knowledge.

  • This creates barriers to incorporation of all kinds of knowledge into coastal management.

  • We argue for a shift in thinking about the science-policy nexus into a knowledge-policy interface thus facilitating integration of all kinds of knowledge and hence the opportunity for diverse and responsive coastal management.

Abstract

The world's coastal resources are under pressure, even more so under climate change with 90% of the world's population living near or along our coastal zone. Ecologically, this zone is also the most productive, and the mainstay of economic livelihoods on a global scale. Managing the coast effectively is crucial, but as an area it remains contested. Despite multiple efforts to manage the coast, it remains a contested space. This paper offers a reflection into the ways in which different discourses influence and impact on one specific dimension of coastal zone management—the transmission of science into the policy domain. Using historical and discourse analysis, we find that the science-policy interface is largely constructed within two knowledge discourses: (i) scientific knowledge and (ii) local knowledge. This arbitrary separation into a binary discursive landscape mitigates against science-policy integration in practice especially given each discourse in itself, encompasses multiple forms of knowledge. We argue that in order to better understand how to build scientific research outputs into policy, decision makers and researchers need to understand how knowledge works in practice, overcome this dichotomous construction of knowledge and specifically, re-construct or transition the notion of ‘science as knowledge’ into ‘all knowledge types’ into policy.

Section snippets

Introduction: Science, policy and the coastal zone

The world's coastal resources are under pressure, even more so under climate change. Ecologically, this zone is also the most productive, and the mainstay of economic livelihoods on a global scale. Managing the coast effectively is crucial, from both social and ecological perspectives, but remains contested. The coastal zone is typically characterised by multiple jurisdictions, multiple habitats and scales, and many competing interests. In this paper we define the coast as “the area, on both

Method

Using the coastal zone as our focus, we apply historical document and discourse analysis to examine the role knowledge plays in affecting the science-policy interface in the management of the coastal zone. We acknowledge that the contribution of policy into science is also important, but not the scope of this paper. Using an historical approach, we reviewed the coastal literature using the key words ‘coastal management’, ‘knowledge’, ‘history of science’, ‘local’, ‘lay’ ‘Indigenous knowledge’,

Discourse 1: Knowledge when constructed as science

The tradition of knowledge being associated with science is a long one and “science is recognised as a particularly formidable enterprise” (Michaels, 2009, p. 995). Science is not only seen as synonymous with western knowledge, but has historically been constructed as being the type of information that is verifiable, and ‘true’. Indeed the term “Scientia” translates in Latin as ‘knowledge’ with the Latin phrase “scientia potestas est” commonly interpreted as meaning knowledge is power. Plato

Building bridges—Knowledge into policy in the coastal zone

Scientists and policy makers must work together in order to build effective coastal zone management regimes, but how can a future knowledge/policy interface continuum be built, one that is not contingent primarily on the advancement of science, but all kinds of knowledge into management? One that surmounts the constraints contained within the discursive framework that dominates decision making? This is not an easy challenge to resolve. Firstly, scientists and managers do not always find they

Conclusions

In this paper, we provide results of an historical and discourse synthesis that aimed to discover what the driving factors were influencing the incorporation of science into policy in the coastal zone. In so doing we found that the discursive construction of knowledge was a key factor driving change, and one that shaped and inhibited decision making. Specifically, we found two discourses about the coast dominate discussions about management yet this binary representation in practice hinders

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research funded by the CSIRO Coastal Collaboration Cluster. We also acknowledge the many people who looked over this paper and the independent anonymous referees of this paper.

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