Trustworthy and Accountable Decision-Support Frameworks for Biodiversity - A Virtual Labs based Approach

科学的性质正在发生变化，特别是它与决策和政策制定的关系。从本质上讲，科学正在变得更加复杂，问题的范围变得更广，因此需要跨越学科，实现科学学科与社会经济关切之间的融合。鉴于这种复杂性，不确定性的程度正在增加，有必要在面临这种不确定性的情况下做出决定。此外，我们看到，科学话语的利害关系很大，与决策相关的紧迫性。许多观察家称这是一个后常态科学时期，但无论人们采用什么术语，考虑到这种复杂性、不确定性、重要性和紧迫性，我们显然需要新的工具来支持科学和决策。这些声明强烈适用于环境科学，特别是与生物多样性及其与经济和社会的关系有关的问题。《达斯古普塔评论》强调了自然对我们的经济、生计和福祉的重要性，我们迄今在管理自然方面的失败，以及与此相关的巨大风险。至关重要的是，它呼吁对我们的思维、行为和衡量成功的方式进行革命性的改变，将我们的经济从根本上与自然联系在一起。这与后正常科学文献中呼吁从根本上重新思考我们用于与科学相关的决策的方法和工具的声明产生了共鸣。为了应对这些挑战，我们将提供一种变革性的方法，通过将围绕生物多样性经济学的新视角与虚拟实验室(支持透明科学的协作、基于云的环境)相结合，在决策中嵌入生物多样性价值。作为起点，我们将建立一个全面的证据库，以支持虚拟实验室内的生物多样性决策经济学，从而：i)促进围绕生物多样性及其经济和非货币利益、价值和成本的数据和分析的必要整合；ii)促进协作和开放的方法，这两个要素都是支持学科专家和利益攸关方之间必要对话的关键组成部分，并支持围绕不确定性的集体推理。我们将通过决策支持框架增加值得信赖和负责任的决策能力，从而扩展虚拟实验室。这些框架将以系统思维方法为基础，建立在虚拟实验室提供的集成基础上，并促进对互动和反馈的理解。这将使我们能够更深入地分析与生物多样性和社会经济活动有关的共同或附带惠益或其他协同效应，我们认为这对于支持改善这一领域的决策至关重要。将通过两个相辅相成的案例研究对这项工作进行评估，调查：1)生物多样性和可再生能源在太阳能公园规划和运营中的共同效益；2)生物多样性和农业生产在土地利用决策中的共同效益。请注意，我们寻求一种灵活的方法来设计决策支持框架，其中可以针对不同的背景进行专门设计，并根据案例研究中出现的共性和多样性进行调整。研究从根本上讲是跨学科的，我们有一个在科学、数据科学和社会科学方面拥有国际领先专业知识的财团(见第一部分)。我们采用灵活的方法进行研究，这种方法可以实现必要的跨学科对话，并使利益相关者能够在共同设计解决方案的过程中更紧密地整合。我们有一系列丰富的项目合作伙伴支持这一进程，并已与我们的合作伙伴共同参与设计活动，为这项提案做准备。

The nature of science is changing, particularly in its relationship to decision-making and policy formulation. In essence, science is becoming more complex with questions becoming broader in scope and with the consequent need to span disciplines and achieve integration between scientific disciplines and socio-economic concerns. Given this complexity, levels of uncertainty are increasing and there is a need to make decisions in the face of such uncertainties. In addition, we are seeing that the stakes are high in scientific discourse and there is an urgency associated with decision-making. Many observers refer to this as a period of post-normal science but, whatever terminology one adopts, it is clear that we need new tools to support science and decision-making given this complexity, uncertainty, importance and urgency. These statements apply strongly to the environmental sciences and in particular to issues related to biodiversity and its relationships with economics and society. The Dasgupta Review highlights the criticality of nature for our economies, livelihoods and wellbeing, our failures in managing nature to date and the huge risks associated with this. Crucially, it calls for transformative change in the way we think, act and measure success, seeing our economies as fundamentally embedded and interlinked with nature. This resonates with statements from the post-normal science literature calling for a fundamental rethink about the approaches and tools we use for decision-making related to science.In response to these challenges, we will deliver a transformative approach to embedding biodiversity values in decision-making by integrating novel perspectives around the economics of biodiversity with virtual labs (collaborative, cloud-based environments supporting transparent science). As a starting point, we will build a comprehensive evidence base to support economics of biodiversity decision-making within virtual labs, thus: i) facilitating the necessary integration of data and analyses around biodiversity and its economic and non-monetary benefits, values and costs; ii) promoting an approach that is collaborative and open, both critical components in supporting the necessary dialogue between disciplinary experts and stakeholders, and supporting collective reasoning around uncertainties. We will extend virtual labs by adding trustworthy and accountable decision-making capability, through decision-support frameworks. These frameworks will be informed by a systems thinking approach, building on the integration offered by virtual labs, and promoting an understanding of interactions and feedback. This will enable deeper analyses of co- or incidental benefits or other synergies associated with biodiversity and socio-economic activity, which we see as crucial in supporting improved decision-making in this area. The work will be evaluated through two complementary case studies, investigating co-benefits between: i) biodiversity and renewable energy in the planning and operation of solar parks; ii) biodiversity and agricultural production in land use decision-making. Note that we seek a flexible approach to the design of decision-support frameworks, where they can be specialised for different contexts and scales with commonalities and variabilities emerging from the case studies.The research is fundamentally transdisciplinary in nature and we have a consortium with internationally leading expertise in science, data science and social science (see Part I). We adopt an agile approach to the research, an approach that can achieve the necessary cross-disciplinary dialogue, as well as enabling tighter integration of stakeholders in the co-design of solutions. We have a rich set of project partners supporting this process, and have already engaged with our partners in co-design activities in preparation for this proposal.