Integrating knowledge and policy for the management of natural resources in international development: The role of boundary organizations

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This project is co-funded by the Studies in Policy, Science, Engineering and Technology and the Social Studies of Science components of the Science and Society Program, with additional support from the Office of International Science and Engineering. The project asks how the choice of institutions for linking practitioners and experts influences knowledge production and its outcomes in the context of a central challenge of sustainability: improving the management of natural resources. The project seeks to apply, evaluate and extend existing scholarly findings on "boundary organizations" as institutional means for facilitating the collaboration among researchers and users in the production of knowledge for natural resource management in the developing world. The scholarship on "boundary organizations" examines the dynamics and consequences of alternative institutional arrangements for facilitating collaboration among researchers, users, and intermediary bodies in the integration of knowledge and policy. Little attention has been given to the complex networks of experts, practitioners and intermediaries that characterize science-based policy for international development. Less has been given to power asymmetries among stakeholders that characterize most sustainable development problems in the developing world. The scholarly questions addressed by this project are: To what extent does the existing boundary organization framework illuminate the role of institutions in the multi-party, power-embedded negotiations characteristic of efforts to implement science-based sustainability strategies in international development? How can the existing boundary organization framework be generalized to cover this important class of expert-practitioner collaborations in knowledge production? This project explores the role of boundary organizations in the context of one of the principal science-intensive challenges facing sustainable development. It focuses on policy innovations for improving natural resource: "payments for environmental services" (PES) designed to simultaneously mitigate poverty and enhance conservation. PES approaches require broad political support to have a chance of success, but also require knowledge of the nature and value of services actually provided by alternative resource use decisions, of the opportunity costs to resource users of decisions that provide services to others, and of actual resource use patterns. To mobilize or create such shared knowledge often requires collaborations among researchers, policy practitioners, resource users and intermediaries operating at scales from the global to local. The practical question the project addresses is: What kind of boundary organizations can best promote the shared knowledge production needed for effective and equitable policies for natural resource management, in particular for science-intensive policies such as those involving payments for environmental services? The project approaches these questions through the comparative analysis of initiatives now underway in Asia to create mechanisms that reward the upland poor for the environmental services they provide (RUPES). RUPES mobilizes scientific research and local knowledge at 15 sites across SE Asia to characterize the impacts of land use practices on local livelihoods and on environmental services at multiple scales. The project analyzes covariation in the structure and outcomes of boundary organizations employed by RUPES sites for natural resource management (NRM). The project will generalize existing "western" concepts of boundary organizations to encompass the broader range of extended, multi-scale, asymmetrically empowered collaborations typical of efforts to harness science and technology to support international development. It would also broaden perspectives of ongoing programs of research on "Mode-2" knowledge production. The project will enhance RUPES' ongoing assessment - sharpening the lessons it learns regarding boundary organizations; increase the capacity of professionals working on science-based NRM strategies to bring together experts and practitioners; and build key human capital. More broadly, it will promote the integration of knowledge and policy for natural resource management.