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Why don’t ecologists get more respect?
Dawn R. BazelyBiology Department, York University, Toronto
Wed 29 Oct 2014, Carolinian Canada Ecoystem Recovery Forum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Hamilton, ON, Canada
http://bit.ly/13muPEZ
“If you want advice on how to save the planet don’t walk into an ecology department.”
Hugh Possingham (Ecologist & co-developer of MARXAN software)March 2009, Fenner Conference on the Environment, Australia
The ecologists’ framework...
“Today the world’s major unsolved challenges all revolve around science. By the 2012 election cycle, at a time when science is influencing every aspect of modern life, anti-science views from climate-change denial to creationism to vaccine refusal have become mainstream.”
Shawn Otto in Fool Me Twice
Why don’t people listen to ecologists?
• The science is too difficult?• Ecologists are terrible communicators?• We talk about depressing doom & gloom
scenarios?
Only 18% of Americans have actually met a scientist
Council of Canadian Academies report: Science Culture: Where Canada Stands 2014http://www.scienceadvice.ca/en/assessments/completed/science-culture.aspx
Ecologists need help with
• Understanding:• How science feeds into policy…• How policy is different from politics• We need social scientists!
The policy ecosystem
Hoogensen et al. 2009 Journal of Human Security.
Policy Defined
“A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s). The term is not normally used to denote what is actually done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or protocol”
Wikipedia
Human Security“freedom from fear, freedom from want”United Nations 1994
CAUX Forum
International Polar Year GAPS project Gas, Arctic Peoples & Security
Students: Nora, Paul & Milissa
Conceptualizing Human Security
Movement corridors for species
19
Non-Indigenous Plants in the Northwest Territories, Canada
• Non-indigenous species are already here
20
Non-Indigenous Plants in the Northwest Territories, Canada
Their numbers decline as we go further north
Making the case for the concept
Interdisciplinary collaborations
• Are not all equal• science academics + NGOs + government
bureaucrats (multiple stakeholder groups)
• ≠• collaborations between science
academics and different kinds of academics from the social sciences and humanities
Uncomfortable & not for everyone!
• Not all academics share the same goals• e.g. Political Ecologists offer a critique that includes the “science agenda” and ecologists
Benefits of interdisciplinary collaborations are still unclear
• Science of Team Science research asks IF & HOW collaboration generates novel, innovative, transdisciplinary solutions
• Previously, there’s been little rigorous assessment
Drolet, D. 2014. Meet 5 academics who have switched disciplines mid-career. University Affairs, February 12. (that’s me…)
My world for 7 years!
Bringing it back to Southern Ontario Forests
Forests in Southern Ontario
Trillium
Tanentzap et al. 2010 Forest Ecology & Management
How deer alter forests
RONDEAU 2009
31
Rondeau Provincial Park post-years of deer herd reductions: politically unpopular but evidence-based management
Don’t hide from media
Ecology’s contribution…• … to the broader collaborative,
interdisciplinary table?• IMO, kick-ass flow charts
Knowledge as a nutrient
35
For increasing resilience
Dr. Carlos Nobre, Brazil IPCC
“get a meeting with the minister”
I explained to Donna Cansfield (Minister of Natural Resources) in 2009 that science was being swept aside and that forest health, as assumed under various acts (eg ORM) was declining via lack of action
Participate beyond science eg. Ontario’s Human-Wildlife Conflict Advisory Group
• Provides advice and support to the implementation of the “Strategy for Preventing and Managing Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Ontario” and “Strategy for Preventing and Managing Human-Deer Conflicts in Southern Ontario””.
• notes from first meeting June 2009
Engage in the Science-Policy Interface
Write text books!
Why get out of our comfort zone?
Acknowledgements
• Norwegian Research Council, for Leiv Eiriksson Mobility Fund support.
• International Polar Year, Government of Canada 2006-11.
• Harvard Forest, Harvard University, for a Charles Bullard Fellowship 2011-12
• For opportunities to get outside of the science box into the science-policy-politics space