Transcript

CAPTION: Why should scientists engage with policy?

IAN BATEMAN

Well, if you’re not interested in actually getting your science to change the world then you don’t have to. That’s absolutely fine, you know, if you just want to be sort of an ivory tower academic with no engagement in the real world then don’t bother but, if you actually are interested in changing things, then it’s absolutely vital to engage with all those people that actually make decisions in the world and policy makers are a large influence within that community, but I also add that business people, NGOs and also the general public as they are the arbiters of preference and values.

CAPTION: What are the biggest challenges to using scientific evidence in policy making? How can scientists help to overcome this?

IAN BATEMAN

You’ve got to think about the real-world challenge that the decision makers really face. The vast majority of decision makers that I’ve met actually do want to make a good job, they want to improve society. The problem is they are faced with unlimited want, unlimited ways to improve people’s lives – hospitals, better transport systems, better environment – and limited resources. So they got this real problem that they have got to handle all these different demands upon those limited financial and other resources.

If you simply go to them and say I know that this particular bat will react in this way and you give them no way to actually judge how important that issue is compared to the other issues that they have to deal with, then you’re really almost adding a problem rather than trying to find a solution. If you were a decision maker faced with all those different competing demands, what would you do?

Now, I think answering honestly you’d want to know how important the bat issue is compared to a lot of the other issues that decision makers face, so translating that information into a language that they can actually trade off against different competing calls on resources is absolutely vital. It’s part of the scientific challenge and if you duck that, you’re basically putting yourself into a very small category where you’re saying ‘my interest comes in a totally different unit, a totally different way of looking at things to everybody else’s interest’; so you know doctors might be telling you to do this and transport engineers might be telling you to do something else, they’re all making their claims in nice commensurate units, and they’re just saying this will generate this value or that will generate that value, and I’m just saying ‘no, you have to do this which is absolutely imperative’.

You need to put yourself in their shoes and realise that they have a very difficult job to do and you need to try and translate your findings into units and language that they can actually understand, otherwise they won’t really be able to deal with your information.

CAPTION: What practical steps should scientists take to engage with the policymaking process?

IAN BATEMAN

Number one, talk to them! I know it sounds very obvious but a lot of scientists don’t. These are typically intelligent non-specialists. They need to understand what you are talking about in language that is not overly complex, that actually relates to the real world decisions they have to make.

You also need to present information in ways which can be comparable with the other issues that they have to deal with, so imagine you are providing some information on some particular species to a decision maker who is also having to make decisions which will affect whether somebody’s house gets flooded or not, or whether somebody keeps their job or not, so you need to actually try and put yourself into their situation and generate tools which will help that comparability across that complexity of issues.

CAPTION: What examples have you seen of scientific evidence leading to a real policy change?

IAN BATEMAN

I was very lucky early on, well, a few years ago, to be part of the UK National League System Assessment. That was an attempt to try and look at the state of health and trends in UK ecosystems, and it did it in a way which was both scientifically credible but also accessible to decision makers.

It resulted in really quite a major impact upon the natural environment White Paper that came in afterwards, resulting in a whole host of practical initiatives but also the setting up of the Natural Capital Committee which I was fortunate enough to be part of, which has in turn led to a commitment by the government to set up a 25 year plan for the natural environment, which is what we need. The natural environment has been degraded for the last couple of centuries, we need a long term plan if we are actually going to deliver on that White Paper goal of not just halting the decline in natural capital but actually reversing it and leaving the environment a better state than the present generation has to deal with.