IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/forpol/v13y2011i1p37-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Government science in forestry: Characteristics and policy utilization

Author

Listed:
  • Klenk, Nicole L.
  • Hickey, Gordon M.

Abstract

The relationship between forest research, its producers and forest policy is extremely complex. While there is a growing body of work about the role of university research in informing forest policy, comparatively little attention has been paid to government science in forestry. This paper describes the characteristics of government science and explores how it informs forest policy using the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), Canada, as a case study. A close and effective relationship was found between scientists and policy developers/analysts where the OMNR was legally required to engage in scientific research to inform the development of guidelines and associated evaluation processes. Other factors that contributed to an effective use of research in the development of policy included the active engagement of policy developers/analysts in the design of projects using "policies as hypotheses" within an adaptive forest management framework. While our results suggest that government science at the OMNR has effectively addressed many of the policy risks associated with forest management, it can also generate risks where government science challenges the strategic directions set by forest policy in response to societal values. Another associated risk is that publicly-funded research will result in "irrelevant" knowledge in the context of current policies. These risks are difficult to manage and can affect relationships. Nevertheless, the OMNR will need to continue taking calculated risks to effectively monitor the dynamic relationship between forests, policy and society into the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Klenk, Nicole L. & Hickey, Gordon M., 2011. "Government science in forestry: Characteristics and policy utilization," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 37-45, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:forpol:v:13:y:2011:i:1:p:37-45
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389-9341(10)00129-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Etzkowitz, Henry & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2000. "The dynamics of innovation: from National Systems and "Mode 2" to a Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 109-123, February.
    2. Reynolds, Keith M. & Johnson, K. Norman & Gordon, Sean N., 2003. "The science/policy interface in logic-based evaluation of forest ecosystem sustainability," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 433-446, December.
    3. Ellefson, Paul V., 2000. "Integrating science and policy development: case of the national research council and US national policy focused on non-federal forests," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 81-94, May.
    4. Spilsbury, Michael J. & Nasi, Robert, 2006. "The interface of policy research and the policy development process: challenges posed to the forestry community," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 193-205, March.
    5. Birot, Yves & Buttoud, Gerard & Flies, Robert & Hogl, Karl & Pregernig, Michael & Paivinen, Risto & Tikkanen, Ilpo & Krott, Max, 2002. "Voicing interests and concerns: institutional framework and agencies for forest policy research in Europe," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 333-350, December.
    6. Laurens K Hessels & Harro van Lente & Ruud Smits, 2009. "In search of relevance: The changing contract between science and society," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 36(5), pages 387-401, June.
    7. Guldin, Richard W., 2003. "Forest science and forest policy in the Americas: building bridges to a sustainable future," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 329-337, December.
    8. Janse, Gerben, 2006. "Information search behaviour of European forest policy decision-makers," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(6), pages 579-592, August.
    9. Janse, Gerben, 2008. "Communication between forest scientists and forest policy-makers in Europe -- A survey on both sides of the science/policy interface," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 183-194, January.
    10. Landry, Rejean & Amara, Nabil & Lamari, Moktar, 2001. "Utilization of social science research knowledge in Canada," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 333-349, February.
    11. Innes, John L., 2003. "The incorporation of research into attempts to improve forest policy in British Columbia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 349-359, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kleinschmit, Daniela & Pülzl, Helga & Secco, Laura & Sergent, Arnaud & Wallin, Ida, 2018. "Orchestration in political processes: Involvement of experts, citizens, and participatory professionals in forest policy making," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 4-15.
    2. Stevanov, Mirjana & Böcher, Michael & Krott, Max & Krajter, Silvija & Vuletic, Dijana & Orlovic, Sasa, 2013. "The Research, Integration and Utilization (RIU) model as an analytical framework for the professionalization of departmental research organizations: Case studies of publicly funded forest research ins," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 20-28.
    3. Böcher, Michael, 2016. "How does science-based policy advice matter in policy making? The RIU model as a framework for analyzing and explaining processes of scientific knowledge transfer," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 65-72.
    4. Hickey, Gordon M., 2013. "International developments in the administration of publicly-funded forest research: A review," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-8.
    5. Klenk, Nicole Lisa & Wyatt, Stephen, 2015. "The design and management of multi-stakeholder research networks to maximize knowledge mobilization and innovation opportunities in the forest sector," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 77-86.
    6. Real, Alejandra & Hickey, Gordon M., 2013. "Publicly funded research: A participative experience from the Chilean Native Forest Research Fund," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 37-43.
    7. Pratiwi, Santi & Juerges, Nataly, 2022. "Digital advocacy at the science-policy interface: Resolving land-use conflicts in conservation forests," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Janse, Gerben, 2008. "Communication between forest scientists and forest policy-makers in Europe -- A survey on both sides of the science/policy interface," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 183-194, January.
    2. Hickey, Gordon M., 2013. "International developments in the administration of publicly-funded forest research: A review," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-8.
    3. Salomaa, Anna & Paloniemi, Riikka & Hujala, Teppo & Rantala, Salla & Arponen, Anni & Niemelä, Jari, 2016. "The use of knowledge in evidence-informed voluntary conservation of Finnish forests," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 90-98.
    4. Kleinschmit, Daniela & Pülzl, Helga & Secco, Laura & Sergent, Arnaud & Wallin, Ida, 2018. "Orchestration in political processes: Involvement of experts, citizens, and participatory professionals in forest policy making," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 4-15.
    5. Hasanagas, Nikolaos D., 2016. "Managing information in forest policy networks: Distinguishing the influential actors from the “postmen”," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 73-80.
    6. Klenk, Nicole Lisa & Wyatt, Stephen, 2015. "The design and management of multi-stakeholder research networks to maximize knowledge mobilization and innovation opportunities in the forest sector," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 77-86.
    7. Spilsbury, Michael J. & Nasi, Robert, 2006. "The interface of policy research and the policy development process: challenges posed to the forestry community," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 193-205, March.
    8. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    9. Dhanush Dinesh & Dries Hegger & Joost Vervoort & Bruce M. Campbell & Peter P. J. Driessen, 2021. "Learning from failure at the science–policy interface for climate action in agriculture," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 1-24, January.
    10. Flink, Tim & Kaldewey, David, 2018. "The new production of legitimacy: STI policy discourses beyond the contract metaphor," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 14-22.
    11. Hawkins, Richard & Langford, Cooper H. & Saunders, Chad, 2015. "Assessing the practical application of social knowledge: A survey of six leading Canadian Universities," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 83-95.
    12. Janse, Gerben, 2006. "Information search behaviour of European forest policy decision-makers," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(6), pages 579-592, August.
    13. Frank J. Rijnsoever & Laurens K. Hessels, 2021. "How academic researchers select collaborative research projects: a choice experiment," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 46(6), pages 1917-1948, December.
    14. Youtie, Jan & Bozeman, Barry & Jabbehdari, Sahra & Kao, Andrew, 2017. "Credibility and use of scientific and technical information in policy making: An analysis of the information bases of the National Research Council’s committee reports," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 108-120.
    15. Mendoza, Guillermo A. & Prabhu, Ravi, 2006. "Participatory modeling and analysis for sustainable forest management: Overview of soft system dynamics models and applications," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 179-196, November.
    16. Teder, Meelis & Kaimre, Paavo, 2018. "The participation of stakeholders in the policy processes and their satisfaction with results: A case of Estonian forestry policy," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 54-62.
    17. Cvitanovic, C. & Hobday, A.J. & van Kerkhoff, L. & Marshall, N.A., 2015. "Overcoming barriers to knowledge exchange for adaptive resource management; the perspectives of Australian marine scientists," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 38-44.
    18. Yoon, Junghyun & Lee, Hee Yong & Dinwoodie, John, 2015. "Competitiveness of container terminal operating companies in South Korea and the industry–university–government network," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1-14.
    19. Marius Băban & Călin Florin Băban & Tudor Mitran, 2023. "Universities as an External Knowledge Source for Industry: Investigating the Antecedents’ Impact on the Importance Perception of Their Collaboration in Open Innovation Using an Ordinal Regression-Neur," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-23, March.
    20. Edurne Magro Montero & Mari Jose Aranguren & Mikel Navarro, 2011. "Smart Specialisation Strategies: The Case of the Basque Country," Working Papers 2011R07, Orkestra - Basque Institute of Competitiveness.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:forpol:v:13:y:2011:i:1:p:37-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.