A fatal gap between science and policy?

David Dickson in SciDev.net: little more than 30 years ago, a major UN conference on science and technology for development held in Vienna, Austria, ended on an upbeat note with an agreement in principle to set up a US$250-million fund to finance capacity-building projects.

Sadly, the heady optimism among delegates, which I remember vividly, was short lived. No major donations were received and science slipped off the international aid agenda for the next two decades, during which time the gap in scientific capacity between rich and poor nations grew larger.

The latest negotiations, COP 18, ended in Doha, Qatar, earlier this month with a similar agreement to establish a mechanism to transfer money from rich to poor nations to compensate for the "loss and damage" caused by rich countries' addiction to carbon-based fuels. Judging from media reports, this decision was met with an enthusiasm similar to that at the 1979 Vienna conference.

But there is no binding commitment, and the possibility of significant money becoming available looks remote given that rich nations have so far failed to act on the 2010 promise to raise US$100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing nations cope with climate change.

The otherwise disappointing outcome of COP 18 reflects the growing gap between the science and the politics of climate change. While the scientific case for action hardens, the ability politicians to act appropriately — by replacing the soon-to-terminate Kyoto Protocol, for example — appears to be diminishing, creating a scenario for global disaster.

Science communicators in general — and science journalists in particular — have a key role in bridging this gap. We must present scientific evidence to politicians and the public in a way that means such evidence becomes the basis for sound decisions....

Reading a newspaper in Addis Ababa, shot by Terje Skjerdal, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Video Repository on Forest Commodification

Forests are facing immense challenges from the increased commodification of their resources. Some incoming policies may worsen these challenges dramatically. To highlight the lived experiences of communities affected by forest commodification, the Global Forest Coalition has launched a repositoryof videos gathered from a variety of organisations and contexts. The repository has been launched as government representatives gather for the 18th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to highlight the results of commodification and the dangers of policies that ignore or intensify commodification processes. The repository organises the videos into three key thematic areas: exporting commodities; carbon: schemes, scams & cowboys; and rights and resistance.

The repository can be accessed here.

Resource Media Report on Ecosystem Services Messaging and Strategy

Via the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) research programme, a new report has been released by Resource Media on public communications strategies and "messaging" for ecosystem service policies. The report was developed through in-depth interviews with ecosystems services practitioners, government officials, and other stakeholders, through a survey of media and digital coverage of ecosystem services projects, and a review of a wide range of materials produced by practitioners. The report finds that out of 16 terms to describe the benefits of nature, “ecosystem services” and “natural capital” ranked 13th and 15th, respectively, as the terms were found to be difficult to understand and inadequate in conveying meaning by those surveyed. 

On messaging, the report recommends a clearer discussion of nature’s value and benefits instead of using the term ‘ecosystem services’. To achieve this, it recommends discussing specific lands and areas, the acknowledgement of nature’s intangible and incalculable benefits, increased emphasis on the gap in traditional economic analysis’s ability to understand and quantify nature’s benefits, and using plain English over jargon. 

Find a summary of the report’s findings on ESPA’s blog here. Download the full report here.