## Knowledge systems for sustainable development > [!Abstract]- > The challenge of meeting human development needs while protecting the earth's life support systems confronts scientists, technologists, policy makers, and communities from local to global levels. Many believe that science and technology (S&T) must play a more central role in sustainable development, yet little systematic scholarship exists on how to create institutions that effectively harness S&T for sustainability. This study suggests that efforts to mobilize S&T for sustainability are more likely to be effective when they manage boundaries between knowledge and action in ways that simultaneously enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of the information they produce. Effective systems apply a variety of institutional mechanisms that facilitate communication, translation and mediation across boundaries. > [!Cite]- > Cash, David W., William C. Clark, Frank Alcock, et al. “Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development.” _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 100, no. 14 (2003): 8086–91. [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1231332100](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1231332100). > > [link](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1231332100) [online](http://zotero.org/users/17587716/items/U8PN8S5C) [local](zotero://select/library/items/U8PN8S5C) [pdf](file://C:\Users\erikt\Zotero\storage\INJEK6SD\Cash%20et%20al.%20-%202003%20-%20Knowledge%20systems%20for%20sustainable%20development.pdf) ## Notes %% begin notes %% Authors describe the role of "boundary organizations" in communicating, translating and mediating the flow of knowledge between researchers and practitioners. They describe the tradeoffs between credibility, salience and legitimacy of information to both sides of the spectrum. They highlight the risk of losing credibility (to scientists) by increasing legitimacy (to practitioners). This reminds me of the delicate balance in our work at the boundary of science and policy for various Credit Exchanges. %% end notes %% %% begin annotations %% ### Imported: 2025-10-20 10:19 am This study suggests that efforts to mobilize S&T for sustainability are more likely to be effective when they manage boundaries between knowledge and action in ways that simultaneously enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of the information they produce. Effective systems apply a variety of institutional mechanisms that facilitate communication, translation and mediation across boundaries. Generally lacking, however, has been the systematic scholarship needed to extract those lessons for general use. As a result, society lacks a critical understanding regarding which kinds of programs, institutional arrangements, and, more generally, ‘‘knowledge systems’’ can most effectively harness S&T for sustainability. credibility involves the scientific adequacy of the technical evidence and arguments. Salience deals with the relevance of the assessment to the needs of decision makers. Legitimacy reflects the perception that the production of information and technology has been respectful of stakeholders’ divergent values and beliefs, unbiased in its conduct, and fair in its treatment of opposing views and interests. Our work shows these attributes are tightly coupled, such that efforts to enhance any one normally incur a cost to the others (7–9) Finally, a wide range of studies have identified the importance to effective science advising of ‘‘boundary work’’ carried out at the interface between communities of experts and communities of decision makers. This work highlights the prevalence of different norms and expectations in the two communities regarding such crucial concepts as what constitutes reliable evidence, convincing argument, procedural fairness, and appropriate characterization of uncertainty. It points out the difficulty in effective communication between the communities that results from these differences, and stresses the importance for effective advising of explicit development of boundary-spanning institutions or procedures Stock assessment science and the establishment of maximum sustainable yields in fisheries management appear to present a direct link between knowledge and action: estimate a fish stock population and extrapolate the maximum number of fish that can be harvested in a given year without jeopardizing the stock’s ability to sustain itself. When coastal states extended their management jurisdictions through 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was considerable optimism that a new cadre of fisheries scientists, armed with sophisticated models, could facilitate sustainable fisheries policies within EEZs, if not outside them. Two decades later, most EEZs still experience significant overfishing (23). The cases explored here suggest that efforts to mobilize S&T for sustainability are more likely to be effective when they manage boundaries between knowledge and action in ways that simultaneously enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of the information they produce. We characterize the three functions that contributed most to such ‘‘boundary management’’ as ‘‘communication,’’ ‘‘translation,’’ and ‘‘mediation.’’ Active, iterative, and inclusive communication between experts and decision makers proves crucial to systems that mobilize knowledge that is seen as salient, credible, and legitimate in the world of action We found effectiveness suffered when communication was largely one-way, whether this involved experts assuming they knew what questions decision makers would see as salient or decision makers assuming that questions relevant to them were ones experts could credibly answer. The ability to mobilize knowledge for action was also reduced when communication was infrequent or occurred only at the outset of an assessment. Mutual understanding between experts and decision makers is often hindered by jargon, language, experiences, and presumptions about what constitutes persuasive argument. Systems mobilize knowledge for action by translations that facilitate mutual comprehension in the face of such differences. CIMMYT illustrates attempts at successful translation. CIMMYT has made new research findings on crop breeding useful to farmers and converted the tacit knowledge of traditional farmers into information useful to crop breeders. CIMMYT’s current work seeks to avoid problems evident in more conventional ‘‘scientific’’ plant breeding programs of the green revolution. In such programs, scientists sometimes did not engage farmers in their studies for fear of forgoing conventional statistical designs required to make field trials and experiments credible to their peers. Instead, researchers focused on laboratory and greenhouse work later ‘‘transferred’’ to the field. This approach maintained credibility with scientists but sometimes lost it with farmers. Although often successfully transferred from the breeding program to the field, crops developed through such processes sometimes did not work in local environments, did not have the qualities desired by farmers (e.g., taste and storage capacity), and did not fit with existing management regimes. The technology (crops) produced was not relevant to the needs of the user. Likewise, farmers, not consulted during R&D, saw both the process and its products as illegitimate. CIMMYT (and, other select parts of CGIAR) are beginning to experiment with new models of participatory research to integrate experimental and tacit knowledge in breeding programs that will be credible to both communities, while maintaining adequate levels of salience and legitimacy to all concerned Mediation activities helped to make the boundary between experts and decision makers selectively porous, open to certain purposes (e.g., getting user research needs to researchers) but closed to others (e.g., keeping politics out of the scientific process). When mediation fails it can create a too rigid boundary, as when aquifer assessments by Texas’ state science agencies were so effectively segregated from local decision makers that they retained scientific credibility but lacked salience with local decision makers. But failed mediation can also create a too porous boundary, as when Canadian fish stock assessments had their scientific credibility called into question because they were seen as excessively vulnerable to the influence of interested decision makers. Our research suggests that the ‘‘boundary management’’ functions summarized above—communication, translation, and mediation—can be performed effectively through various organizational arrangements and procedures. These functions can be institutionalized in ‘‘boundary organizations,’’ organizations mandated to act as intermediaries between the arenas of science and policy As originally conceived, boundary organizations have at least three features: (i) they involve specialized roles within the organization for managing the boundary; (ii) they have clear lines of responsibility and accountability to distinct social arenas on opposite sides of the boundary; and (iii) they provide a forum in which information can be coproduced by actors from different sides of the boundary through the use of ‘‘boundary objects’’ Our central finding is that, all else being equal, those systems that made a serious commitment to managing boundaries between expertise and decision making more effectively linked knowledge to action than those that did not. Institutionalizing accountability of boundary managers to key actors on both sides of the knowledge action boundary was crucial to building effective information flows. A third strategy for harnessing S&T for sustainability involved joint production, by experts and decision makers, of models, scenarios, and assessment reports. Such ‘‘boundary objects’’ are collaborative efforts outputs that ‘‘are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them’’ Individual efforts in research, innovation, monitoring, and assessment clearly can contribute to sustainability. But the full utility of such independent contributions depends on developing integrated knowledge systems, a lesson already learned in the agriculture, defense, and health sectors, but generally neglected elsewhere. For R&D to address the challenges posed by sustainability, our work confirms the great need to strengthen the ‘‘demand’’ side of the dialogue between experts and decision makers involved in action programs for sustainability Another acute need emphasized by our work is for the creation of bridges across spatial scales, so that the location-specific needs and knowledge central to sustainability can be linked with relevant national and international level R&D These are not tasks conventionally associated with research, leading many scientists, not surprisingly, to see participating in knowledge systems for sustainability as at best uncomfortable and at worst inconsistent with real scholarship. Reciprocally, many managers and decision makers see participating in such systems as at best an expensive time investment with uncertain returns and at worst a risk to their perceived autonomy and independence A higher-order obstacle to designing knowledge systems for sustainability is thus to learn how to harness the boundaryspanning potential of multiple individuals and organizations in ways that can most effectively bolster salience, credibility, legitimacy, and the tradeoffs among them. %% end annotations %% %% Import Date: 2025-10-20T10:19:48.360-06:00 %%