Lakes, rivers, streams and ponds are teeming with extraordinary life.
There are scientists who study these fresh waters.
There are a huge number of freshwater snails which are just in one single spring or in one single tiny stream or so.
And I believe that they are quite easily protected. And policy makers who decide how best to use and protect them.
Policy making is very diverse and complex.
So what happens when those two groups of people get together?
In January 2014, more than 100 scientists and policymakers from over 30 European countries came together
in Brussels to talk about new scientific horizons for biodiversity and water policy.
This was Water Live's A Science Policy Symposium for Freshwater Life, organised jointly by Fire,
fresh and refresh to EU funded projects that are both coming to an end and that both focussed on the biodiversity of fresh waters,
including how they can be protected in the face of climate change.
I'm Helen Scales and I went along to the meeting to peer behind the scenes and explore the interface between science and policy.
In this podcast, I'll be finding out what the challenges are for communicating science to policymakers and
what can be done to help encourage and improve these sorts of important discussions.
Coming up, we'll hear from policymakers the key things they think scientists should know about the process of policymaking.
But first,
one thing at the Water Live symposium that was very clear to me was that everyone there agreed on the immense importance of freshwater life.
And that's what is the most dynamic, the most complex and the most diverse ecosystems that we have on Earth, our rivers and lakes.
These are our topic rainforests in respect to the biodiversity as well.
It's a hidden diversity there. The decline in biodiversity is much faster and pragmatic in freshwater standard disinterest
in lower marine systems because there's much more so kind of pressure from a human,
said Clement, talking to there from the Life Mates Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries,
as well as the many threats to freshwater life. Another problem is that for most people, most of the time it's out of sight and out of mind.
Paul Jepsen from Oxford University. One of the slightly tricky things about freshwater is a lot of them are very murky.
So if we think of the marine environment, you go and dive in the marine environment, you can take wonderful images.
It's blue, there's fishes, there's coral reefs. The freshwater environment isn't quite like that.
I mean, it's, you know, it's murky, it's cold, it's rocky, it's fast flowing or, you know,
of course, the lakes aren't quite like that, but then they're dark and cold, maybe.
And here's William Dowell, who heads up the Freshwater Biodiversity Unit at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
IUCN, talking about what they're doing to help raise the profile of freshwater biodiversity.
One collaboration we are building at the moment is with an excellent underwater photographer for Freshwater,
Michel Rogo, and he's been doing underwater photographs around the world for the last 20, 30 years, I think.
But he goes to the places where you can see what's going on in the clear waters of the world and got some fantastic images which
we're hoping to use to try and raise public awareness because there's absolutely beautiful landscapes underwater in freshwater.
And some of the freshwater creatures are amazing, wonderful creatures that may just disappear.
And we were completely unaware that they even existed. As well as the challenge of getting to grips with these out of sight ecosystems.
The other major issue tackled at the Water Live symposium is something that applies
to many different areas of science getting scientists on the one side of things
to interact and discuss with the policy makers on the other side who ultimately
make decisions about how their findings are translated into real world policies.
Here's Bridget Tobias from the European Commission speaking at the symposium.
We are talking much today about science policy interface,
and the value of that is today widely acknowledged because successful policy making goes hand in hand with a solid knowledge base.
Not only is good science vital for good policy, but good policy is also vital for successful science.
Interaction and dialogue between scientists and the diversity of stakeholders involved in water resources and biodiversity.
Conservation management are the very essence of science policy.
Interface activity is extremely challenging, sometimes daunting, even for both the scientist and the policymaker.
But I'm sure that is worth the effort and actually to make people's activities successful.
So why is it so difficult for scientists and policymakers to talk to each other?
His teamwork happens from the EcoLogic Institute in Berlin, one of the organisers of the symposium,
because they have different languages, they have they come from different worlds.
And there are conceptual thinkings, theoretical frameworks from the scientific part.
Not all of them, of course, but many. And then there are these every day real politics, which of course, influenced policymakers in there,
even if they like to have more deepening of of concepts, more provocative thinking and all these kind of things, they definitely appreciate that.
But of course, at the end, they come to certain, you know, decision making process where.
Where there are so many different interests.
And then they have to make a compromise and they need they have to look for which arguments are the right ones.
And Paul Jeppeson caught up with two of the policy makers at the symposium, Antilla and Francois Vecchione from the European Commission,
DG Environment, to see what their thoughts were on this disjuncture between scientists and policymakers.
So sometimes we might think that in some ways, like today in this meeting,
we've got two different cultures coming together or two different tribes coming together.
Do you see it like that and do you see that this particular challenges in communicating?
I don't see it like that because in our day to day work there is constant interaction with the scientific community,
either in the form of bilateral exchanges in meetings,
either through, you know, the examination from our side of all the relevant material that is available from the scientific community.
So that interaction exists and is very thriving.
However, in these types of events,
what you see is that our agendas and ways of operating are still disconnected in the sense that the scientific community
does not necessarily always understand the constraints of policymaking and the immediacy of policymaking in terms of,
you know, the need to have response to difficult questions. If you want to advance with your political process and at the same time,
the policymaking community does not always understand or appreciate the fact that the scientific community cannot always
provide the answers to the questions they face and which prevent them from making progress at the policymaking level.
Yes, I see. We will see some evolution and a very positive evolution in the last years.
But there is a need to to better understand how we work respectively.
And I don't think that many scientists are reading directives that we are adopting.
And I must say that the scientific articles are often difficult to to read and to understand from our side.
So therefore, we need to better understand each other and maybe to format things a bit differently so that
we can then really have a common understanding of the issues and the policy priorities.
Things are changing. There are more and more scientists know who are engaging in policymaking and maybe to a new profile over I mean,
I'm not expecting all scientists to to do that,
but to to be able to translate science to policymakers in a format that can be used for policymaking and vice versa.
I was able to understand the policy questions and to frame it in a scientific context,
despite the challenges of bringing these groups of people together.
There's no doubt that it's incredibly important.
I think that the main driver is the recognition that we can only be effective if we bring together the two communities,
because the issues with which we deal are of such a level of complexity that policymakers
on their own depend on the scientific advice and knowledge which they do not have in-house.
And at the same time,
we also see a need for the scientific community to understand better how its contributions can be used and can be tailored to a policymaking audience.
Yes, I mean, the complexity we have to deal with nowadays is such that, I mean, nobody alone can can make the difference.
So we are dealing with systems which are interacting and are also we have different pressures, which mean tremendously a change of the whole dynamics.
And therefore, there is a need to put all this science, all this knowledge together and try to then design our policymaking differently.
One way that the symposium is try to overcome this barrier between scientists and policymakers
was to plan things a little differently from the normal way science conferences are often held.
Here again is teamwork. We had the choice. We had a long discussion about the symposium, how it should be organised,
and the choice was always to have a kind of a usual format, how it is implemented in many,
many research projects where you have a certain more research focussed conference where scientific outcomes are presented and discussed.
So that is one thing and we realised that it's, it's, it's not only nicer,
it's also much more needed to have a real policy science policy dialogue on the outcomes because we, we also saw the policy relevance and the results.
And yeah, there are some ongoing initiatives on at the EU level, but also on some national level where,
where this interface between policy and science should be improved.
And we thought that we could even jump on the same train, you know, and make a good contribution to that.
And both biodiversity and water policy are so are so crucial issues and there are so many open questions for the for the future design of.
A policy and everything which science could possibly contribute should also be directly brought to the policymakers.
And I think that was the overall aim. So as well as some of the bio fresh and refreshed scientists presenting their work to the symposium,
there were also smaller outbreak sessions where particular topics were discussed by everyone in the room.
They called this the Science Policy Café Timo Cup, thanks to moderated the lively debate about ecosystem services,
something that a lot of participants at the symposium were keen to discuss.
I actually enjoyed it quite, quite a lot. I knew that the that the topic is probably quite attractive to people to join the symposium here because
it seemed that it was quite became quite a controversial issue in the debate about ecosystem management,
biodiversity conservation, nature, conservation and these and these issues.
And yeah, especially the ecosystem service approach which, which has been widely applied,
especially in biodiversity policies, has its weaknesses I would say.
And, and we were interested in really having to viewpoints on that issue from,
from key actors in that respect, which is, which are the scientists on the one hand,
who are usually probably in the position to provide scientific evidence of the linkages between ecosystems,
biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services.
And on the other side, there are the policymakers who who actually want to implement a policy based on that concept.
And they need this this evidence from from from science.
And we felt that there is a certain gap which probably needs to be filled.
And that was the overall topic of the discussion.
But we already we also had noticed that there are so many other surrounding issues coming into play of yeah,
for example, the right communication of science, the right communication of policy.
These are two aspects which I still have in mind from the from the discussion, but other limitations, I would say.
So there is it's it was very broad. So my personal impression was it was not easy to moderate that session because it was very broad.
But I think we figured out some of the key problems and even to some extent some possible ways to at least alleviate the problems.
I wouldn't say that we solved them. So you only had like an hour, so but I mean,
so there are obvious challenges to just almost physically getting these people in the same room in a sense,
like what opportunities are there for scientists and policymakers to actually sit down and and talk over these things?
Is that is that becoming a more common event or is it still difficult to to fit this in?
I actually hope so, because you could already feel at the very beginning that the people,
of course, when they enter the room, they, first of all, had a kind of a distance to that forum.
And so they felt a bit uncomfortable just standing around in a room and with two person at the front talking.
But I think they got used to it. And it's, of course, a big difference to these kind of these plenary sessions where you have,
you know, clear roles, people sitting in the audience and listen to speakers.
But I think in terms of a dialogue, it's much better to have that kind of format where people are free to speech,
where you can see everyone, you know, standing in a circle at least, and where everyone has as well.
Can this develop the feeling that he or she has can contribute to that discussion?
And that turned out quite well. It took it took some time. I think at the beginning they were a bit hesitant, the people, the participants.
But then after a certain time, a certain threshold, it would say you really felt like, you know, everyone has its own its own opinion about that.
And then it became became kind of quite visible. And this is that was a quite nice process, I think.
So at the end of two days of presentations and discussions, sometimes quite heated, how are people feeling about the success of the symposium?
I caught up with some of the scientists involved.
The benefits of this particular event is that we've been able to combine our networks, the Biodiversity Network,
with bio fresh in the Water Frame Directive network with them with refresh to bring
together policymakers that perhaps don't talk to each other as often as they should do.
And I think it's given us a then an opportunity to try to broaden our dissemination message.
This was a great meeting because we saw solid results.
First of all, these two projects are finishing.
They produced good, solid results. I hope that this results will help policymakers reform their policies accordingly.
So we will be able to halt biodiversity loss in freshwater systems.
Well, the biggest benefit to me is actually to have made contact with the people
who I think I've been told are the ones that can actually have an influence.
So that was one of the main objectives of being here, actually. So from that point of view, yes, I do think it's been a big success.
I've also become much clearer what the sort of limitations of what we might expect from how much we can influence policy.
That's become much clearer, and we can understand that there are clear limits to what can be done.
That was Martin KERNAN from University College, London. Maria Stansbury from the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, and William Doyle from IUCN.
And how about some of the policy makers? How did they think it went?
I research policy, what I'm taking home from here, I'm taking home some identified knowledge gaps and new research priorities,
and I'm taking home more on how to deal with science policy interfaces.
That was Adrian Perez from the European Commission.
Paul Jepson also caught up with and Helen Farnsworth you from the European Commission to see how they felt the meeting had gone.
You know, as I said, we've come together for these two days in this sort of format where, you know, we're dialoguing face to face.
It's costly to us all in terms of time and resources. Do you think these are part of the solution?
I think they are. I think they are. And it's an important part of improving the dialogue.
I'm really pleased by the fact that the discussions have been truly interactive.
It's not always the case in such a. So this is certainly to the credit of the organisers of this conference.
Now I don't think it's sufficient. I think that these are extremely useful opportunities for more, I would say relaxed discussions about,
you know, how we can do things better, how we can reinforce the interaction.
But the reality of our work requires that we do that on a constant basis when dealing with the challenges that we face on a on a more regular basis.
So we need to have mechanisms in place.
We need to have tools through which we can interact more directly and more spontaneously in order to to be truly effective.
Yes, I think that I mean, I see this as an investment from both sides.
I guess that in the future, there are many things that we will need to do to repeat,
to explain to each other, because we would better understand how we work and but as are as France facing.
I think also that DG research will play in the years to come,
also a role in facilitating this dialogue and therefore that we could save our time and resources as much as possible.
And after all that, what happens next? What else can be done to help boost the communication between scientists and policymakers?
Here's Brian Moss, retired professor of biodiversity from the University of Liverpool,
who opened the symposium with a talk pointing out that both scientists and policymakers need to try a bit harder to communicate to each other.
I think you need a level playing field at the moment. Government and policymakers essentially are the first link of government influence,
much more by business, by the concept of growth economies and so forth,
and so that the ear is much more open to them than to people saying, actually,
we're facing major problems and the only way of really tackling them is to change the system in a very big way.
They want to do things in a small way and it's in business interest because they're interested really in their profits over the next five years.
It's in their interest to have things done in a small way, in a short term.
But you really do have to think on the long term and on a planet on a truly global scale.
Clement Tickner thinks that there are a few key things that both scientists and
policymakers can think about to help improve links between them and share ideas.
I mean, there's one prerequisite from both sides that may facilitate this discussion.
The first one is curiosity to be interested in the science and that we as
scientists are interested what happens with the knowledge that we are generating.
There must be a fundamental interest. The second, of course, is we are learning jointly to speak the same language and disrupt the issue.
And then speaking as a scientist, there is through this feedback, we get fascinating questions that we as scientists need to answer.
And it's the simple questions that the most difficult and the most challenging one to answer.
It would be fascinating to close this loop between basic science, empirical research, modelling, and then implementation as well.
This needn't be done by a single person, so not each of them needs to to close this loop.
But you need a very fascinating. Combination were excellent in all this and were just open minded and interested to close this loop.
And here's your cry of who, like Clement, is also from the Leibniz Institute to Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries.
All this is also a question of solidarity.
So Europe is not just an aggregation of member states, but we we stand together as one unit, also also for conservation.
We hope, of course, that this message has reached the policymakers and the message that there is really a
need to do something which might not just be solved by optimising ecosystem services.
We hope that this has reached them and will have some beneficial outcome to them.
So what key things do scientists need to know about the process of policymaking?
That was the question Paul Jepson put to Antilla and Francois Vecchione from the European Commission.
You say it's important for scientists to better understand the constraints which which you're working under.
What might be the key ones you think we need to understand?
One of the constraints is the is linked to the need to convince people that are not experts and will never be in any policymaking process.
You have at some stage to reach the top level to make a difference and get decisions to go through.
And in those discussions, what you need is to be able to translate very complex scientific findings into an extremely simple,
layman's language that will convince someone who will not have the expertise that you would expect them to have on some of the issues.
But at the same time will be the one that will be ultimately making the decision that will make a scientific difference,
not from scientists have been very good in the last decade to raise the problems,
but not so good in proposing solutions and operational solutions that the society could accept.
So often we are asking them, okay, and so what?
I mean, we are losing these species or this ecosystem is under threat.
So what? How will it affect our our daily life and what can we do about it?
And I think there is a change to be also made from that point of view, to look not only at the identification of problems,
but also at solutions that can be maybe not ideal, but at least can be acceptable by the society.
And oftentimes you need simple solutions, which will be easy to translate into regulatory or other types of measures.
And where there can be a difficult interaction sometimes is in relation to the
fact that science is complex and there are no easy solutions to certain issues.
And that can be a difficulty. And what strikes me all the time is that they should start with these and they should start with the resolve to think
which can attract the policymaker and by making a direct link to some policy action if there is no link to policy action.
Well, you know, I mean, interesting. But, you know, what can I do about it?
And then when you have this attention, then you can, you know, go more into the detail.
And as I saying, depending on the person who will act and use the information,
you may then go to a very high level of detail, but you should really start with the the catchy conclusions.
And usually it's the other way around.
You have a lot of context, background methods and so on, and then at the end you have maybe one centre left to lead.
And another dimension that I would underline there is linked to what I was just saying.
It relates to cycles, policy cycles.
Policy cycles are short cycles. You know, you work on a strategy and then three or four years later you assess whether it's been effective and
obviously you've got the electoral dimension to political cycles as well that comes into the picture.
And scientists don't often realise that this places specific constraints in terms of the messages that one may wish to convey.
For instance, focusing all the debates on what will happen in 2050 if we don't do certain things is not
necessarily going to trigger the responses that you would require from a policy perspective,
because your political constraints will make it compulsory for you to be able to identify what the impact will be two or three years down the line.
So there you have it. Some ideas fresh from the European Commission policymakers on how scientists can help to smooth the discussions
and exchange of ideas with the people who use their science and ultimately put it into real world policies.
That's all for this podcast from the Water Dev Symposium in Brussels.
You can find out more about both the refresh and bio fresh projects at their websites that's refreshed on UCL,
DOT, Act, UK and freshwater biodiversity.
Don't you? Thanks for listening.