Improving the Use of Science in Collaborative Environmental Governance

Many complex environmental problems – such as habitat conservation and water pollution – are managed today through voluntary partnerships of public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private actors. In the 20th Century, it was common for public agencies to address environmental problems individually, with little assistance from other agencies and limited input from citizens and other actors.

In the 21st Century, public agencies have increasingly participated in collaborative partnerships for managing environmental problems as a means for sharing management responsibility across jurisdictions and involving non-governmental actors in developing plans and projects. This new means for addressing environmental problems is known as collaborative governance.

While the move from centralized planning and regulation to collaborative governance can promote fairness, trust building, and inclusion of different types of knowledge, it may reduce the impact of scientific findings on policies. At present, little is known about how science informs decision making within collaborative partnerships. By comparison, academics have long studied how science is used in public agencies, which are under legal obligations to justify their decisions based on science.

Collaborative partnerships, by contrast, are not under similar legal obligations. It is thus important to understand how science informs decision making within these partnerships, particularly given the important role that scientific knowledge and evidence should play in addressing environmental problems. This research project will build academic understanding of how science is used in collaborative partnerships and provide policy makers and agency managers with guidance on generating usable science that can be employed in collaborative partnerships to improve environmental conditions and human wellbeing.

The project seeks to answer the following two questions: (1) How is scientific research valued, acquired, evaluated, and applied in collaborative environmental governance? (2) What are the impacts of these current practices? The empirical focus is Puget Sound, the second-largest estuary in the United States. Drawing on surveys, interviews, document analysis, and meeting observations, the research team will compare how science is used in different types of partnerships, ranging from partnerships comprised mainly of citizens operating at the local level to partnerships comprised primarily of government agencies operating at larger scales.

Within each partnership, surveys and interviews will be conducted to understand how participants think about the role science should play, and does play, in their partnerships. Document analysis and meeting observations will provide additional data to examine the mechanisms through which science is used to inform decision-making processes in each partnership.

The project will build theory by testing hypotheses synthesized from the fields of collaborative governance and the interface between science and policy. In addition, results will be used to identify practical strategies to enhance links between science and collaborative governance.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.