The Environmental Information: Use and Influence research initiative (EIUI) will present a special session entitled “Does Information Matter? A Critical Question for the Future of Coastal Zone Management” at the 2014 Coastal Zone Canada conference to be held in Halifax on 15-19 June 2014. This session will offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the challenges of communicating […]
Grey Literature
Doctoral Student Receives SSHRC Awards for Research Involving Governmental Organizations
Suzuette Soomai, Interdisciplinary PhD student with the EIUI initiative, has been named a recipient of a Michael Smith Foreign Study grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Suzuette currently holds a prestigious three-year Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) from SSHRC. The Michael Smith Foreign Study grant will support her […]
EIUI Attends NAFO’s Annual Meeting as Official Observer
The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) – a regional, intergovernmental fisheries management body that conducts scientific research, provides advice, and facilitates cooperation among member states on management and conservation of fisheries resources – held its 35th annual meeting in Halifax on 22-27 September 2013. As a recently accredited official Observer, the Environmental Information: Use and […]
Grey Literature Matters — Climate Change Especially Matters
Grey literature takes centre stage in international circles today (27 September 2013) when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases the first of three summaries on the state of the world’s climate, specifically written for policy makers. This summary is the first part of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which will culminate in the […]
Information of the Marine Stewardship Council Certification Process and Developing Countries
The way fisheries are managed and how participatory mechanisms are rooted in policy and regulatory systems present implications for information providers, users, and decision-makers (FAO, 2009). Research has shown that the use and influence of fisheries scientific information are shaped and defined by the context in which stakeholders (e.g., fishers, mangers, and policy makers) operate, […]
New EIUI Paper on the Necessity and Benefits of Interdisciplinary Research
The Environmental Information: Use and Influence (EIUI) research team’s new paper “Tracking the influence of grey literature in public policy contexts: The necessity and benefits of interdisciplinary research has been published in The Grey Journal (vol. 9, no. 2, 2013). As this paper notes: “The necessity of interdisciplinary investigation becomes clear when the complexity of […]
Grey Literature in the Marine Sciences: Recognizing Its Importance, Retaining It for Canadians
We have been pursuing research on awareness and use of marine scientific information, especially grey literature, at the science-policy interface for several years and have been focussing on the significance of enablers and barriers to information use. Lately, we have become increasingly concerned about recent federal government decisions to substantially reduce the number of government […]
EIUI Gives Presentation to Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment Working Group
Bertrum MacDonald and Peter Wells gave a presentation about the Environmental Information: Use and Influence research initiative to the Working Group of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, which met in Halifax on 5 March 2013. The presentation outlined the recent history of the EIUI initiative and, in particular, research undertaken collaboratively […]
New EIUI Paper on Communicating Environmental Information
A new paper by the Environmental Information: Use and Influence research initiative (EIUI) has been published in Marine Policy: Soomai, S. S., MacDonald, B. H., & Wells, P. G. (2013). Communicating environmental information to the stakeholders in coastal and marine policy-making: Case studies from Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Maine/Bay of Fundy region. Marine […]
Influence of Environment Canada’s Grey Literature
Peter Wells, a member of the EIUI team, recently co-authored a paper published in the Water Quality Research Journal of Canada entitled “Regulatory Ecotoxicity Testing in Canada – Activities and Influence of the Inter-Governmental Ecotoxicological Testing Group (IGETG)”(48(1),14-29, 2013; www.iwaponline.com/wqrjc/o48/). This ad-hoc scientific group, affiliated with Environment Canada, has been working since 1976 on the […]