Exploring the quality of evidence for complex and contested policy decisions
By J. P. van der Sluijs, Arthur C. Petersen, Peter H. M. Janssen, J. Risbey, Jerome Ravetz. 2008
141 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Policy decisions on complex environmental risks often involve contested science. Typically there are no ‘facts’ that entail a unique correct policy. The evidence that is embodied in scientific policy advice requires quality assessment. Advice should be relevant to the policy issue, scientifically tenable and robust under societal scrutiny. In 2003, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency adopted a standardized method, referred to as ‘guidance’, whereby key quality aspects of knowledge production and use are exhibited through a checklist for uncertainty assessment and communication. Although the guidance is not fully used within all projects yet, it is increasingly used, attitudes towards dealing with uncertainty in performing and reporting environmental assessments have changed, and communication on uncertainty in the agency’s reports has improved over the past five years. In this letter, we present results from the application of the guidance to controversies on the risks of ambient particulate matter. The active deliberation on uncertainty in the policy–advisory setting brings about a joint learning process for advisors and policy makers, which leads to a deeper understanding and increased awareness of the phenomenon of uncertainty and its policy implications.
Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/36278a77607a69a67c833486b74c088805db2eb8
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In Global and Planetary Change
- Volker Krey
- Elmar Kriegler
- D. V. van Vuuren
- Christoph Kueffer
- R. Holderegger
- Bas J. van Ruijven
- Charlie Wilson
In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Enabling effective problem-oriented research for sustainable development (2012, background): “…experience, assumptions, and values, which is best communicated through personal encounters of scientists and practitioners based on mutual trust and transparency (Cash et al. 2003, van Kerkhoff and Lebel 2006, Collins and Evans 2007, Fry et al. 2008, van der Sluijs et al. 2008, Wibeck 2009).”
- Evaluating process-based integrated assessment models of climate change mitigation (2017, background): “The credibility and relevance criteria are most closely linked to the application of uncertain model results in complex and contested policy domains like climate change (Beck and Krueger 2016; van der Sluijs et al. 2008).”