Transcending the Loading Dock Paradigm—Rethinking Science-Practice Transfer and Implementation in Sustainable Land Management

Abstract

Modern science is increasingly called on to produce societally relevant and usable knowledge to tackle global challenges. Academics respond by conducting research projects that transcend the boundaries of single disciplines and institutions by actively engaging with non-academic actors. Such institutional arrangements open up entirely new perspectives for science communication and the problem-solving of real-world issues. However, they also call for elaborate management tasks and demand learning processes on the part of all those involved. This chapter introduces transfer and implementation (T&I) as a conceptual pair of terms to grasp the challenges, without compromising the opportunities of this new research mode. In doing so, this chapter discusses contemporary approaches of science knowledge transfer, and promotes a notion that prioritises knowledge transfer over information transfer through artefacts. After reframing T&I as a management area in research projects, I present three strategic policy pathways for sustainable land management.

Understanding Knowledge Exchange in Practice: Empirically Derived Insights for Engaging in Effective Knowledge Exchange for Environmental Management

“…Although the literature presents ways to engage in effective KE, there are fewer empirical examples of how this can be done and what factors enable KE for impactful environmental and natural resource management Reed et al, 2018;Walsh et al, 2019). As such, practitioners often perform KE based on what has worked in the past, emphasizing the need to identify the enabling conditions for practicing effective KE (Reed et al, 2014;Matzek et al, 2014;LSE 2019), A recurrent theme for improving KE at the interface of environmental science and policy is transitioning away from linear modes of communication and engagement i.e., generating and exchanging knowledge that does not specifically address a target audience and is not generally available or accessible to all knowledge users (Cash et al, 2006;Beier et al, 2017;Rogga, 2021) towards more interactive multi-directional modes of KE i.e., one that facilitates collaborative communication between knowledge producers and users and engages knowledge users in all aspects of the research process (Cook et al, 2013;Stewart et al, 2014;Bautista et al, 2016;Cvitanovic et al, 2021). A range of approaches have been identified that enable more interactive and collaborative KE and includes the use of science-policy intermediaries such as boundary spanners and boundary organizations (Bednarek et al, 2018), building relationships and trust between knowledge producers and users to maintain ongoing communication to produce useable science (Fazey et al, 2014;Cook et al, 2020;Cvitanovic et al, 2021), improving organizational structures such as embedding knowledge producers within research organizations to conduct long-term research (Roux et al, 2019;Walsh et al, 2019), acquiring sufficient resources (such as funding, time, and staff) to complete projects (Meadow et al, 2015), and improving organizational culture to support the use of scientific evidence (Walsh et al, 2019).…”