Organising evidence for environmental management decisions: a ‘4S’ hierarchy
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Publication Date
2014Journal Title
Trends in Ecology & Evolution
ISSN
0169-5347
Publisher
Cell Press (Elsevier)
Volume
29
Pages
607-613
Language
English
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Dicks, L., Walsh, J., & Sutherland, W. (2014). Organising evidence for environmental management decisions: a ‘4S’ hierarchy. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29 607-613. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.09.004
Abstract
Making decisions informed by the best-available science is an objective for many organisations managing the environment or natural resources. Yet, available science is still not widely used in environmental policy and practice. We describe a ‘4S’ hierarchy for organising relevant science to inform decisions. This hierarchy has already revolutionised clinical practice. It is beginning to emerge for environmental management, although all four levels need substantial development before environmental decision-makers can reliably and efficiently find the evidence they need. We expose common bypass routes that currently lead to poor or biased representation of scientific knowledge. We argue that the least developed level of the hierarchy is that closest to decision-makers, placing synthesised scientific knowledge into environmental decision support systems.
Keywords
evidence, evidence-based conservation, information, policy, practice, environmental management, environmental decision-making
Sponsorship
L.V.D. is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (Grant code NE/K015419/1). J.C.W. is funded by the UK Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust. W.J.S. is funded by Arcadia.
Funder references
NERC (NE/K015419/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.09.004
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/245935
Rights
Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales
Licence URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/