Program on the Environment

Contemporary society environmental issues, such as global climate change and water pollution, are increasing in both scale and impact to the environment and human health. This entails the need for effective environmental policies, which provide the basis for action to either solve or mitigate the negative effects born from environmental issues. However, it is important to note that the efficacy of environmental policies is predicated on the accuracy of science used in the conception of said policies. Thus, to ensure that policies are practical solutions for the issues they aim to solve, it is imperative that science communication between scientists and policy-makers be made as effective as possible. The purpose of this study was to both identify barriers to effective communication between scientists and decision-makers, and discern ways to overcome the identified barriers. In order fulfill this purpose, I conducted extensive literature review on sources from scholarly journals and applied my research to my internship work with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region 10. From my research, I propose and argue that the co-production model of scientific information production be adopted using a combined framework that consists of, accessibility, comprehensiveness, timing, applicability (ACTA), credibility, relevance, and legitimacy (CRELE, and ACTACRELE). I argue that adopting the coproduction model with the ACTACRELE framework as guidance will facilitate more effective communication between scientists and policy-makers.