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ABSTRACT. It has been acknowledged that natural sciences alone cannot provide an adequate basis for the management of complex environmental problems. The scientific knowledge base has to be expanded in a more holistic direction by incorporating social and economic issues. As well, the multifaceted knowledge has to be summarized in a form that can support science-based decision making. This is, however, difficult. Interdisciplinary skills, practices, and methodologies are needed that enable the integration of knowledge from conceptually different disciplines. Through a focus on our research process, we analyzed how and what kind of interdisciplinarity between natural scientists, environmental economists, and social scientists grew from the need to better understand the complexity and uncertainty inherent to the Baltic salmon fisheries, and how divergent knowledge was integrated in a form that can support science-based decision making. The empirical findings suggest that interdisciplinarity is an extensive learning process that takes place on three levels: between individuals, between disciplines, and between types of knowledge. Such a learning process is facilitated by agreeing to a methodological epochè and by formulating a global question at the outset of a process.

Long-term scenario analyses can be powerful tools to explore plausible futures of human development under changing environmental, social, and economic conditions and to evaluate implications of different approaches to reduce pollution and resource overuse. Vulnerable ecosystems like the Baltic Sea in NorthEastern Europe tend to be under pressure from multiple, interacting anthropogenic drivers both related to the local scale (e.g. land use change) and the global scale (e.g. climate change). There is currently a lack of scenarios supporting policy-making that systematically explore how global and regional developments could concurrently impact the Baltic Sea region. Here, we present five narratives for future development in the Baltic Sea region, consistent with the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) developed for climate research. We focus on agriculture, wastewater treatment, fisheries, shipping, and atmospheric deposition, which all represent major pressures on the Baltic Sea. While we find strong links between the global pathways and regional pressures, we also conclude that each pathway may very well be the host of different sectoral developments, which in turn may have different impacts on the ecosystem state. The extended SSP narratives for the Baltic Sea region are intended as a description of sectoral developments at regional scale that enable detailed scenario analysis and discussions across different sectors and disciplines, but within a common context. In addition, the extended SSPs can readily be combined with climate pathways for integrated scenario analysis of regional environmental problems.

Levontin, P., Kulmala, S., Haapasaari, P., and Kuikka, S. 2011. Integration of biological, economic, and sociological knowledge by Bayesian belief networks: the interdisciplinary evaluation of potential management plans for Baltic salmon. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: . There is a growing need to evaluate fisheries management plans in a comprehensive interdisciplinary context involving stakeholders. The use of a probabilistic management model to evaluate potential management plans for Baltic salmon fisheries is demonstrated. The analysis draws on several scientific studies: a biological stock assessment with integrated economic analysis of the commercial fisheries, an evaluation of recreational fisheries, and a sociological study aimed at understanding stakeholder perspectives and potential commitment to alternative management plans. A Bayesian belief network is used to synthesize the findings from these separate studies and to evaluate the robustness of management decisions to different priorities and various sources of uncertainty. In particular, the importance of sociological studies in quantifying uncertainty about the commitment of fishers to management plans is highlighted by modelling the link between commitment and implementation success. Such analyses, relying on prior knowledge, can forewarn of the consequences of management choices before they are implemented.

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