Links between science and policy making

Abstract Shifts in the driving forces for agricultural production and agro-ecosystem processes require a re-examination of the links between research and policy making. The major driving forces shaping global change impacts on food and agricultural production in the future will be appreciably different from those prevailing when the global change and terrestrial ecosystems (GCTE) programme was setup in 1984. Population growth and technological change aimed at raising yields were the main driving forces in the 1980s. Future driving forces, however, will be centred on income growth, shifts in consumption patterns and technological change shaped by environmental objectives and social concerns operating through the market, e.g., pollution taxes on fertilisers and pesticides, and consumer resistance to genetically modified crops, respectively. It follows, therefore, that global change impacts on food and agricultural production will increasingly be the consequence of interactions between bio-physical and socio-economic processes rather than predominantly by the former as is assumed by many GCTE activities. These shifts in driving forces point to the need for a reassessment of the policy context of global change research, and of the multiple roles that science can play in the policy process. It is important at the outset of research project formulation to consider how science can contribute to each stage of the policy process, and particularly to: problem identification; strategy formulation; selection of policy options; policy implementation; setting of regulatory standards; monitoring and evaluation. This paper provides such an assessment and puts forward a number of principles for policy relevant science. For example: broad consultation in identifying and defining the issues; greater inter-disciplinarity because of the growing importance of socio-economic factors. It highlights a number of issues and research opportunities. These include the current difficulties of scaling up from GCTE plot observations and transects so that they provide meaningful inputs to the analysis of global issues and the greater use of matrix analysis and similar tools to key science and policy linkages. It is not enough for the International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme and GCTE to promote leading edge science. They need to enhance the role that policy needs and socio-economic factors play in setting scientific agenda.