Suchergebnisse

Environmental scientists play a key role in society's responses to environmental problems, and many of the studies they perform are intended ultimately to affect policy. The precautionary principle, proposed as a new guideline in environmental decision making, has four central components: taking preventive action in the face of uncertainty; shifting the burden of proof to the proponents of an activity; exploring a wide range of alternatives to possibly harmful actions; and increasing public participation in decision making. In this paper we examine the implications of the precautionary principle for environmental scientists, whose work often involves studying highly complex, poorly understood systems, while at the same time facing conflicting pressures from those who seek to balance economic growth and environmental protection. In this complicated and contested terrain, it is useful to examine the methodologies of science and to consider ways that, without compromising integrity and objectivity, research can be more or less helpful to those who would act with precaution. We argue that a shift to more precautionary policies creates opportunities and challenges for scientists to think differently about the ways they conduct studies and communicate results. There is a complicated feedback relation between the discoveries of science and the setting of policy. While maintaining their objectivity and focus on understanding the world, environmental scientists should be aware of the policy uses of their work and of their social responsibility to do science that protects human health and the environment. The precautionary principle highlights this tight, challenging linkage between science and policy.

Includes bibliographical references. ; Forward -- Libraries as Environmental Activists -- Government Agencies -- Information Resources in Environmental Sciences: An Academic Viewpoint -- Environmental Information from Other Organizations -- Science and Educational Society Activity in the Environment Sciences -- Getting Down to Earth: The Call of Stockhom Upon the Information Services . ; Mode of access: Internet.

Educational systems should warrant learning needs of the population they serve offering a diversity of educational agents, strategies and answers to the needs of those that seek knowledge (Caeiro et al., 2004). In Portugal the experience of teaching subjects related to Environmental Sciences via open distance learning started in 1995 at Universidade Aberta (a Public University specially dedicated to the open distance learning of graduate and undergraduate courses). This experience began with General Ecology, and in view of the interest showed by students (and in fact by a wider public) the University later offered other subjects such as Environmental Education and Water Pollution. Today we have a number of different subjects within the vast area of Environmental Sciences and are preparing an undergraduate programme in view of the recent Bolonha agreement. The University also offers post-graduate programmes that bring together the environment and the citizen participation. The aim is to heighten the interests of our students in scientific subjects related to the environment as well as providing a practical perspective of what they can do as active citizens. The programmes are supported by necessary tools that enable students to critically analyse and discuss press articles about the environment, protocols that are designed to make industries "greener" as well as government decisions.

The goal of the Black Belt Environmental Science and Arts Program (BBSEAP) is to enhance classroom instruction in the environmental sciences for students in grades 5-8 of selected counties in Alabama's Black Belt region. BBSEAP differs from traditional outreach activities in that public school students come to off-campus, outdoor sites for instruction. The Auburn University Environmental Institute (AUEI) administers the program with support from local Alabama Cooperative Extension System (ACES) representatives. Since 2005, more than 2,000 students have participated in the program. Funding for BBESAP comes from government and corporate grants.

The idea of integration in research has risen rapidly in both environmental science and public environmental policy since the mid-1990s, and has encouraged innovative relationships between scientists and practitioners in a range of contexts. Yet the concept of integration is broad and ambiguous, which inhibits efforts to learn from these innovations. In this paper, I review the different concepts of integration that currently exist in international and Australian science and environmental policy contexts. Drawing on comprehensive examples, I identify 12 thematic categories of integration. The themes encompass integration within science, as well as integration between scientific and non-scientific partners. They also include integration focused on activities, and on the organisational or institutional structures that govern research activity. These groupings reflect significant differences in the ways science-policy relationships are understood, and the main problems integration is intended to overcome. They serve as a foundation for a framework that researchers, policy-makers and other partners can use to compare and learn from different integrative research approaches. This is a first step towards building a comprehensive understanding of how integration can contribute to better environmental outcomes.

The idea of integration in research has risen rapidly in both environmental science and public environmental policy since the mid-1990s, and has encouraged innovative relationships between scientists and practitioners in a range of contexts. Yet the concept of integration is broad and ambiguous, which inhibits efforts to learn from these innovations. In this paper, I review the different concepts of integration that currently exist in international and Australian science and environmental policy contexts. Drawing on comprehensive examples, I identify 12 thematic categories of integration. The themes encompass integration within science, as well as integration between scientific and non-scientific partners. They also include integration focused on activities, and on the organisational or institutional structures that govern research activity. These groupings reflect significant differences in the ways science-policy relationships are understood, and the main problems integration is intended to overcome. They serve as a foundation for a framework that researchers, policy-makers and other partners can use to compare and learn from different integrative research approaches. This is a first step towards building a comprehensive understanding of how integration can contribute to better environmental outcomes.

Better utilization of science in policy has been seen as a way to enable solving environmental problems. Several science-policy interface organisations have been established to compile and assess existing knowledge, as well as facilitate dialogue between science and policy (Tinch et al. 2016). Simultaneously, statements ignoring science in policy and emergence of alternative facts has led to claims that we currently live in a post-truth era (Lockie, 2017). However, it can be questioned whether the use of knowledge in policy has ever been apolitical. So far, there is only a little research on the impact of environmental science-policy interface organisations (also as SPI or boundary organization). The impact has been studied, however, e.g. through relevance, credibility, legitimacy and iterativity. The interface actors may have different perceptions on what the impact means. In addition, the various organisations can have similar objectives, their functions and activities are partly overlapping and therefore their relationships are not clear. In this research project I study: 1) How various actors perceive the meaning of the impact of environmental science-policy platforms and organisations? 2) How various organisations act in relation to each other and their objectives? 3) How organisations work as a combination in the alleged post truth-era? The post doc research project will start 2018 and last 26 months. First work package focuses on actors. In first article, I will study Finnish participants of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (10 persons) and supplementary views from members of the Finnish national IPBES panel (5) using thematic interviews. In second article, I will study knowledge produces perceptions by interviewing Red List evaluators (10). Red List is an example of international knowledge production and assessment organization. In this article, I focus on peatland evaluation because peatland conservation policy has showed examples of political use of knowledge. In the second work package, I will conduct a systematic literature review that produces a typology of impact of various Finnish environmental science-policy panels from Web of Science and SCOPUS. It covers interrelationships of various panels and stakeholders, as well as panels' objectives and achievement of those objectives. The article will be supplemented with the materials produced by panels and actor involvement. Actors will be asked to comment the typology. Finally, I bring together all data from different work packages to answer third research question. Lockie, S. 2017. Post-truth politics and the social sciences. Environmental Sociology, 3(1), 1-5. Tinch, R., Balian, E., Carss, D., de Blas, D. E., Geamana, N. A., Heink, U., … Young, J. C. 2016. Science-policy interfaces for biodiversity: dynamic learning environments for successful impact. Biodiversity and Conservation. (online) ; peerReviewed

In countries globally there is intense political interest in fostering effective university-business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how individual scientists' workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This work reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, a tension exists between opportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties (e.g. administration, teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with business, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20-50 key duties, typical full-time scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 days/week for work with business. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a 'user guide' to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and newly-created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial, and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model of academics' behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literatures on academics' motivations and performance assessment, which we propose is internationally applicable and transferable between sectors. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts, 'user 10 guide') may serve as templates for how people may act differently to work more effectively together.

In countries globally (e.g. UK, Australia) there is intense political interest in fostering effective university-business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how individual scientists' workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, a tension exists between opportunities presented by working with industry and non-optional duties (e.g. administration, teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with industry, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 days/week for work with industry. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a user guide to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance industry. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and newly-created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial, and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance industry. However, a new conceptual model is developed, joining perspectives from literatures on academics' motivations and performance assessment, which we tentatively posit is widely applicable. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts, user guide) may serve as templates globally and across sectors.

While many analyses of citations from theses and dissertations in STEM have been published, none have focused on environmental science. We analyzed over 6,500 citations from all master's theses completed in Environmental Science at Florida Gulf Coast University from the inception of the program to 2017. Our results illuminate information sources and trends in this highly interdisciplinary and timely field. We will present a novel method for collecting and processing the citations, as well as results in the data visualization software Tableau. Types and formats of sources cited, subject categories of journals and books, most-used journals and books, important web and government information sources, age of cited sources, publication dates and other results will be discussed. ; UT Libraries

In countries globally there is intense political interest in fostering effective university–business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how an individual scientist's workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This work reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, tension exists between opportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties (e.g. administration and teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with business, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, typical full-time scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 day per week for work with business. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a "user guide" to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and a newly created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model of academics' behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literature on ...

In countries globally there is intense political interest in fostering effective university–business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how an individual scientist's workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This work reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, tension exists between opportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties (e.g. administration and teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with business, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, typical full-time scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 day per week for work with business. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a "user guide" to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and a newly created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model of academics' behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literature on academics' motivations and performance assessment, which we propose is internationally applicable and transferable between sectors. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts and user guide) may serve as templates for how people may act differently to work more effectively together.

In countries globally there is intense political interest in fostering effective university–business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how an individual scientist's workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This work reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, tension exists between opportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties (e.g. administration and teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with business, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, typical full-time scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 day per week for work with business. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a "user guide" to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and a newly created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model of academics' behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literature on academics' motivations and performance assessment, which we propose is internationally applicable and transferable between sectors. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts and user guide) may serve as templates for how people may act differently to work more effectively together.

In countries globally there is intense political interest in fostering effective university–business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how an individual scientist's workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This work reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, tension exists between opportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties (e.g. administration and teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with business, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, typical full-time scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 day per week for work with business. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a "user guide" to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and a newly created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model of academics' behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literature on academics' motivations and performance assessment, which we propose is internationally applicable and transferable between sectors. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts and user guide) may serve as templates for how people may act differently to work more effectively together.

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by EGU under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ; In countries globally (e.g. UK, Australia) there is intense political interest in fostering effective universitybusiness collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how individual scientists' workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities' varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily timeconstrained culture; specifically, a tension exists between opportunities presented by working with industry and non-optional duties (e.g. administration, teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with industry, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business' advisor), to feed back into the scientist's performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20-50 key duties, scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 days/week for work with industry. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a 'user guide' to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an early- to mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance industry. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and newly-created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial, and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance industry. However, a new conceptual model is developed, joining perspectives from literatures on academics' motivations and performance assessment, which we tentatively posit is widely applicable. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts, 'user guide') may serve as templates globally and across sectors.