SUMMARYThere is increasing emphasis on the need for effective ways of sharing knowledge to enhance environmental management and sustainability. Knowledge exchange (KE) are processes that generate, share and/or use knowledge through various methods appropriate to the context, purpose, and participants involved. KE includes concepts such as sharing, generation, coproduction, comanagement, and brokerage of knowledge. This paper elicits the expert knowledge of academics involved in research and practice of KE from different disciplines and backgrounds to review research themes, identify gaps and questions, and develop a research agenda for furthering understanding about KE. Results include 80 research questions prefaced by a review of research themes. Key conclusions are: (1) there is a diverse range of questions relating to KE that require attention; (2) there is a particular need for research on understanding the process of KE and how KE can be evaluated; and (3) given the strong interdependency of research questions, an integrated approach to understanding KE is required. To improve understanding of KE, action research methodologies and embedding evaluation as a normal part of KE research and practice need to be encouraged. This will foster more adaptive approaches to learning about KE and enhance effectiveness of environmental management.

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Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is seen as an important tool for integrating the environment into decision‐making, e.g. at plan and programme levels where it is being used with increasing regularity. At the policy and most strategic decision levels, however, it is less clear how SEA can best be used or what methodologies are appropriate in what are inevitably highly politicized contexts. This paper reports on a study carried out for the European Commission to review the mechanisms of integration at strategic decision levels and to examine the role of SEA in helping to achieve better integration. This was undertaken by first reviewing integration and SEA in all EU member states and in a range of other countries and international financing organizations, and then analysing in detail 20 SEA and integration case studies at various strategic decision levels, primarily policy and plan levels. What is clear is that SEA at the most strategic level needs to be flexible in relating to the policy‐making process, but can bring significant advantages by providing a more systematic approach to the consideration of environmental issues. Existing institutional mechanisms may already provide elements of SEA that can be harnessed together in a more systematic process. At the most strategic levels qualitative, participation and communication processes become much more important than technical methodologies. SEA should be seen as complementary to the newly emerging tool of sustainability appraisal, although the exact relationship will depend upon the preferred interpretation of sustainable development. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.

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Integration and integrated approaches are increasingly presented as new and superior ways to consider the environment in policy-and decision-making. If used in an uncritical way, this assertion could become a hindrance to good practice and could undermine efforts to defend or improve environmental quality. The aim of this paper is to provide the missing critical perspective through an investigation of the meanings of integration found in recent literature on assessment. This literature represents a broad survey of European (particularly UK) and US critiques of assessment practices, and proposals for better and usually 'more integrated' approaches. These critiques and proposals relate to a range of assessment contexts, from relatively technical issues of data handling, to questions of the design, choice and implementation of policy options. This paper also surveys, and contributes to, literature that questions the central goals and assumptions informing assessment practice and environmental governance more widely. Fourteen meanings of 'integration' are presented, with a discussion of the potential synergies and conflicts among them, and with environmental objectives. Integration is argued to be a matter of value judgements concerning assessment design in specific historical and social contexts. Far from providing a panacea, integration would appear to create as many challenges as it might resolve in seeking to achieve more sustainable development.

Green infrastructure as a climate change adaptation policy intervention:Muddying the waters or clearing a path to a more secure future? AbstractAs dangerous climate change looms, decision-makers are increasingly realising that societies will need to adapt to this threat as well as mitigate against it. Green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly seen as an ideal climate change adaptation policy response. However, with this research the authors identify a number of crucial knowledge gaps within GI and, consequently, call for caution and for a concerted effort to understand the concept and what it can really deliver. GI has risen to prominence in a range of policy areas in large part due to its perceived ability to produce multiple benefits simultaneously, termed 'multifunctionality'. This characteristic strengthens the political appeal of the policy in question at a time when environmental issues have slipped down political agendas.Multifunctionality, however, brings its own set of new challenges that should be evaluated fully before the policy is implemented. This research takes important first steps to developing a critical understanding of what is achievable within GI's capacity. It focuses on one of GI's single objectives, namely climate change adaptation, to focus the analysis of how current obstacles in applying GI's multifunctionality could lead to the ineffective delivery of its objective.By drawing on expert opinion from government officials and representatives from the private, non-government organisation (NGO) and academic sectors, this research questions GI's ability to be effectively 'multifunctional' with an inconsistent definition at its core, deficiencies in its understanding and conflicts within its governance. In light of these observations, the authors then reflect on the judiciousness of applying GI to achieve the other objectives it has also been charged with delivering.