Making short-term climate forecasts useful: Linking science and action.

This paper discusses the evolution of scientific and social understanding that has led to the development of knowledge systems supporting the application of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasts, including the development of successful efforts to connect climate predictions with sectoral applications and actions "on the ground". The evolution of "boundary-spanning" activities to connect science and decisionmaking is then discussed, setting the stage for a report of outcomes from an international workshop comprised of producers, translators, and users of climate predictions. The workshop, which focused on identifying critical boundary-spanning features of successful boundary organizations, included participants from Australia, Hawaii, and the Pacific Islands, the US Pacific Northwest, and the state of Ceará in northwestern Brazil. Workshop participants agreed that boundary organizations have multiple roles including those of information broker, convenor of forums for engagement, translator of scientific information, arbiter of access to knowledge, and exemplar of adaptive behavior. Through these roles, boundary organizations will ensure the stability of the knowledge system in a changing political, economic, and climatic context. The international examples reviewed in this workshop demonstrated an interesting case of convergent evolution, where organizations that were very different in origin evolved toward similar structures and individuals engaged in them had similar experiences to share. These examples provide evidence that boundary organizations and boundary-spanners fill some social/institutional roles that are independent of culture.

Linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable water-resources management.

Managing water for sustainable use and economic development is both a technical and a governance challenge in which knowledge production and sharing play a central role. This article evaluates and compares the role of participatory governance and scientific information in decision-making in four basins in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, and the United States. Water management institutions in each of the basins have evolved during the last 10-20 years from a relatively centralized water-management structure at the state or national level to a decision structure that involves engaging water users within the basins and the development of participatory processes. This change is consistent with global trends in which states increasingly are expected to gain public acceptance for larger water projects and policy changes. In each case, expanded citizen engagement in identifying options and in decision-making processes has resulted in more complexity but also has expanded the culture of integrated learning. International funding for water infrastructure has been linked to requirements for participatory management processes, but, ironically, this study finds that participatory processes appear to work better in the context of decisions that are short-term and easily adjusted, such as water-allocation decisions, and do not work so well for longer-term, high-stakes decisions regarding infrastructure. A second important observation is that the costs of capacity building to allow meaningful stakeholder engagement in water-management decision processes are not widely recognized. Failure to appreciate the associated costs and complexities may contribute to the lack of successful engagement of citizens in decisions regarding infrastructure.

Scenario Planning: Embracing the Potential for Extreme Events in the Colorado River Basin.

Scenario planning (SP) has been increasingly utilized by water managers and planners in the 21st century as climate and other uncertainties have challenged traditional planning approaches. This paper discusses the potential for scenario planning processes in the Colorado River Basin in the southwestern United States to build collective understanding of compound and cascading risks, and to identify possible solutions at multiple scales. Under the Colorado River Conversations Project, we convened a series of conferences and scenario planning workshops over the past 3 years to explore the potential to enhance the use of social and physical sciences in river management, and to broaden the community of people and entities engaged in discussions about managing the Colorado River. Working with a group of thirty water managers and other interested parties representing all 7 basin states, several Tribes, NGO's and Mexico, we used a participatory, mixed-methods approach to scenario planning that identified multiple drivers of change and developed eight science-based storylines from the intersection of these drivers. The development of the storylines and the subsequent conversations with participants about impacts and solutions resulted in a framework for understanding low probability-high consequence climate and other risks across the Colorado River Basin. We highlight three lessons that speak to the value and role of SP for fostering collaboration and creativity. These lessons include: (1) the importance of process in SP in fostering deliberate community building across sectors and geographies; (2) identifying challenges with engaging with uncertainty, complexity, and risk; and (3) determining what these findings mean for future SP in the Colorado River Basin and beyond.

The IPBES Global Assessment: Pathways to Action.

The first Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found widespread, accelerating declines in Earth's biodiversity and associated benefits to people from nature. Addressing these trends will require science-based policy responses to reduce impacts, especially at national to local scales. Effective scaling of science-policy efforts, driven by global and national assessments, is a major challenge for turning assessment into action and will require unprecedented commitment by scientists to engage with communities of policy and practice. Fulfillment of science's social contract with society, and with nature, will require strong institutional support for scientists' participation in activities that transcend conventional research and publication.