Understanding El Niño - the importance of grey literature in coastal ecosystem research and management

Access to information about past states of the environment and social systems is fundamental to understand, and cope with, the challenges of climate change and over-exploitation of natural resources at the onset of the 21st century. The loss of (old) data is a major threat to understanding better and mitigating long-term effects of human activities and anthropogenic changes to the environment. Although this is intuitively evident for old and local literature of any kind, even present-day international publishing of papers without the underlying raw data makes access to basic information a crucial issue. Here, we summarise experience resulting from a EU-funded International Science & Technology Cooperation (INCO) project (CENSOR) addressing Coastal Ecosystem Research and Management in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) context. We show that indeed ‘‘Grey Literature’’ is still one of the most important sources of knowledge about natural science research and management of natural resource systems in Latin American countries. We argue that public archiving of original data of present-day research and old (Grey) Literature and easy public access are important for appreciating today’s global environmental challenges caused by human activities, both past and present

Recovering fisheries from crisis or collapse: how to shorten impact time of international research cooperation

ICES – the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea – was founded more than a century ago out of concern for overfishing. However, today’s global marine ecosystems are for the most part in a degraded state, many alarmingly so. Why is the science used so little to make decisions compatible with long-term sustainability of fisheries? The paper argues that there is a large gap between the understanding of scientists and that of political and economic decision makers. Scientists investigate the fundamentals of nature and socio-economic systems. These approaches do not coincide with the perceptions, belief systems and experiences of most social actors, except in the long run. Communicating scientific results better and more pervasively to citizens is an avenue that holds great potential to shorten impact times – provided there is willingness to hear the message. Since the media brought the overfishing message to the general public in the early 1990s, the international discourse has gradually shifted. From ‘maximum sustainable yield’ (MSY) of single species, the discourse started to put restoration of entire marine ecosystems by 2015 formally on the agenda through the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation adopted at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. But results are few and far between as fleet overcapacity driving the process shows little sign of alleviation.It is desirable that international scientific cooperation engages more constructively with citizens, civil society movements, companies and government authorities to speed up adaptive learning. While not replacing political processes, research and research communication that are aware of the different mindsets, cultures and historically grown preferences in societies can help more effectively to bring about the conditions for recovery of lost ecosystem functions and productivity. Trust is a key condition for acceptance of the message. A few examples of the EC’s international S&amp;T cooperation projects are given to explore opportunities and challenges to recover fisheries in crisis.<br/

Implementing the WSSD decision of restoring marine ecosystems by 2015 - scientific information support in the public domain

Among the relatively few decisions taken by heads of States and government at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in September 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa, was the time-bound objective to restore degraded stocks to productive levels in its Plan of Implementation. The paper examines the evidence leading to this decision and the broadening of cognitive maps it implies. In particular, it documents how public archiving of research results and other knowledge sources particularly those accessible through the Fish Base (www.fishbase.org) and Sea Around Us (www.seaaroundus.org) websites has been effective in enabling citizens in addition to specialist publics to counteract shifting baselines and monitor progress against the WSSD plan. The increased targeting and cost-effectiveness of research efforts and the social benefits of public research spending this implies militates for the extension of such approaches to other groups as an enabling mechanism for WSSD decisions on restoring marine ecosystems by 2015