Over the past year, the ISSP has published multiple member blogs about how we need to transform decision-making to more effectively address grand challenges, such as transforming teaching, training and the science enterprise; fostering equity, diversity and inclusion in decision-making; putting into practice new decision-making models, and reframing how we think about science and technology in domestic and international policy. The compilation also includes a dedicated section on the grand challenges of COVID-19 and climate change.
Research Director, ISSP & Positive Energy, uOttawa
Climate change is a daunting policy challenge, where decision-makers must respond to a high-uncertainty and high-risk problem in an environment featuring a diverse multitude of stakeholders and deep-seated ideological controversy. In this situation, making policy decisions based on the best available science is often considered a desirable objective. But empirical studies – including Positive Energy research – have identified the flaws of this technocratic model of policymaking. The link between science and policy is complex, shaped by politics, and coloured by decision-makers’ worldviews. Two Positive Energy studies examine these complexities in greater depth and reveal ways to promote consensus about Canada’s energy future in an age of climate change.
Our U.S. neighbours have been lamenting the dissolution of their shared sense of reality for years. The trucker convoys that overtook Ottawa and several other Canadian cities this winter appear to have ushered in similar anxieties on this side of the border.
There is no doubt that, for future humans to have a habitable planet to call home, it is imperative that we decarbonize energy systems (including electrical, thermal, and transport energy) as quickly as possible. It’s also clear that, if we care about other people, we should do this in a way that does not disproportionally benefit or burden any particular group of people (like benefitting those who already have more than they need and disproportionately contribute to climatic change through their carbon intensive activities or burdening those who can hardly afford to pay their energy bills today).
A worldwide movement, citizen science is a phenomenon in which people without formal scientific credentials participate in scientific investigation. Citizen science is becoming important to environmental policy, because data collected by ordinary people can extend science’s field of vision to places and times that scientists would not be able to cover. It can increase the frequency of measurements and observations. It can speed up large-scale, labor-intensive tasks that computers don’t do a good job of, like identifying animals in images. These extensions of science can bolster the knowledge base of environmental science and make it possible for environmental agencies to make better decisions.
Physician & Founder, Digital Epidemiology and Population Health Lab (DEPtH Lab)
At the Digital Epidemiology and Population Health Laboratory, one of my first goals was figuring out how to build a research program that addresses existing and emerging population health issues. To do so, we need a seat at the “big data” table, playing a greater role in developing innovative digital health platforms.
In recent public opinion survey work, Positive Energy has identified that Canadians are polarized along partisan lines on a number of key energy and climate issues. At the same time, we have seen the negative effects of partisan politics on broader society. Against this backdrop, policymakers must consider how to build consensus in intensified partisan settings. This blog post discusses how consensus processes can help facilitate policymaking in divisive contexts.
It should come as no surprise that politics have played an outsized role in polarizing key energy and climate issues. Partisan politics appear to impose three key limits on consensus-building. This blog unpacks them one by one.
On July 22, 2021, Science and Policy Exchange, the Institute for Science, Society and Policy, the National Research Council and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) hosted a science diplomacy event to introduce early-career scientists to real global science-policy issues and to guide them through evidence-informed policy scenarios. This blog is an adaptation of the author’s keynote speech.
The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISSP or its staff.
