Elizabeth De Santo, Department of Earth and Environment at Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania, and Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University, recently published a new paper about public consultations regarding marine protected areas in the UK. The paper provides an assessment of public consultation processes and outlines implications resulting from the erosion of public confidence in the […]
EIUI team members, Suzuette Soomai, Lee Wilson, and Ian Stewart, recently spoke about their research in several academic and professional settings. Suzuette Soomai, Post-Doctoral Fellow, spoke about “Elucidating the Role of Scientific Information in Decision-making for Fisheries Management” in the Ocean and Ecosystem Science Seminar Series at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova […]
Peter Wells, a member and co-lead of the Environmental Information: Use and Influence research team, and a senior research fellow at the International Ocean Institute (IOI), travelled to Haikou, Hainan, China, in late January 2016, with an IOI team (Figure 1) to attend and participate in the Inaugural Program of the China-Asean Academy on Ocean […]
The Environmental Information: Use and Influence (EIUI) research team is very pleased to announce that an application for an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) has been approved. The five-year (2015-2020) funding of $371,575.00 will support the team’s continuing research on questions about the use of information in […]
Suzuette Soomai, Interdisciplinary PhD student with the EIUI research program, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on 30 October 2015. Her research focused on the role of fisheries scientific information in policy- and decision-making for fisheries management. She studied the information pathways – production, communication, and use of scientific information – at the operational level in […]
Suzuette Soomai, PhD Candidate and a member of the EIUI research program, participated in the 41st International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC) Annual Conference, “Blue Growth: Motivating innovations in aquatic information management,” hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in Rome, Italy, on September […]
A new paper published by members of the Environmental Information: Use and Influence (EIUI) research team emphasizes that simply advocating the use of information without understanding the contexts of its use will likely be ineffective in closing the gap between research and policy-making. As the growing number of studies on the science-policy interface demonstrate, the […]
The World Wildlife Fund’s recent report, Reviving the Ocean Economy: The Case for Action – 2015, positions the world’s oceans with major global powers (Hoegh-Goldberg et al., 2015). The oceans are ranked as the seventh-largest economy on the planet – as if combined they were a country. The numbers are staggering: WWF conservatively estimates that […]
Research based information is important in decision and policy making, and problem management. Understanding how information is used offers an opportunity to improve these aspects of decision making and the inclusion of different networks. Models, framing, structure, and knowledge systems are all components that influence how research-based information is used and are explored below. Considering […]
Social media plays a complex role in the development of evidence-based policy. Many have suggested that sites like Facebook and Twitter have created a new online public sphere, where open debate can lead to a strengthened democracy, improved community ties, and decision making (Merry, 2014). In reality, the effect of social media is not so […]