Since the declaration of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), an incredible push to address biodiversity loss and climate change has become widespread. As part of efforts to ensure ocean protection, the Fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5) was held in Vancouver, Canada from 3-9 February 2023. Attendees represented […]
Scientific Communication
New Paper: The Global Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts: A Database Relevant to the Times
Biodiversity loss, unrestrained climate change, deteriorating ocean conditions, growing food insecurity, and human population explosion are all headline topics today. The recently concluded COP 27 meeting on climate change in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and the COP 15 Montreal Summit on biodiversity, currently in progress, have focused global attention on serious environmental, social, and political issues […]
Impact Assessment, Climate Change, and Environmental Effects Monitoring: Collaborations and Conference Presentations
Early Fall 2022 was a busy time for me as it involved two online conference presentations. First up was the Celsius 1.5: Impact Assessment and Climate Change conference of the South Africa chapter of International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) in Cape Town, 26-28 September 2022. Following on new connections made at the IAIA conference […]
Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership: Creating, Sharing, and Using Knowledge over 25 Years
After a successful Bay of Fundy Conference (Advancing Estuarine Science and Ocean Literacy in Atlantic Canada) 17-21 May 2022, co-hosted with the Atlantic Canada Coastal and Estuarine Science Society, work by Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership (BoFEP) members and partners has continued on several fronts. This activity is described in the reports presented at its […]
Being There: The International Impact Assessment Community Meets in Vancouver
I was pleased to be present for my first in-person conference since the COVID pandemic at the 2022 annual conference of the International Association of Impact Asssesment (IAIA) held in Vancouver, British Columbia, 4-7 May 2022. This conference was jointly hosted by the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office, and the Salish Nations Xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm […]
From Species at Risk to the Science-Policy Interface: EIUI at Conferences
After two years of cancelled or online-only conferences, members of the EIUI research team welcomed the opportunity to attend and participate in in-person conferences again where discussion and many conversations flowed around research work and resource management subjects. Two recent nearby conferences allowed several team members to present the results of current research projects and […]
Advancing Estuarine and Coastal Science and Ocean and Climate Literacy – Recent Conference
After a two-year delay due to the pandemic, the Atlantic Canada Coastal and Estuarine Science Society (ACCESS) and the Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership (BoFEP) jointly hosted a conference on “Advancing Estuarine and Coastal Science and Ocean and Climate Literacy,” 17-21 May 2022, at the Dalhousie University Agriculture Campus, Truro, Nova Scotia. Co-chaired by […]
Exploring the Role of the Media in Scientific Communication
A crucial component of the present-day understanding of media is the extent that traditional and modern forms have become interconnected with many other aspects of our lives. Referred to as a media ecology, Lester and Foxwell-Norton (2020) note that media has expanded beyond its traditional boundaries to become inseparable from our social lives and is […]
Enablers and Barriers to Communicating Research-Based Information in Public Policy Contexts
Pressing concerns about protecting human and environmental well-being from climate change illustrates the need for public policy decisions to reflect scientific knowledge. Policy and decision-makers, local communities, and citizens depend on research-based information to make evidence-informed decisions. If scientific communities fail to engage with external audiences using appropriate methods of communication, the policy sphere is […]
What is Evidence?
What constitutes evidence varies with decision makers and decision processes. For example, in some contexts, evidence is viewed as the results of research obtained through data collection and analysis. In policy making contexts, however, evidence used in decision-making processes should adopt a holistic approach that identifies multiple streams of knowledge and efficiently synthesizes information to […]