The Role of National Ecosystem Assessments in Influencing Policy Making

Design and implementation of a national ecosystem assessment – insights from the French mountain systems’ experience

“…Mountain NEA lead authors addressed all written comments until final validation by the EFESE scientific committee. Such a review process, incorporating both technical and policy perspectives, has been proposed as a crucial step to validate results and favor their uptake by decision makers (Wilson et al 2014;Allison and Brown 2017). Following the stabilization of the final report, key messages for decision makers were written by the lead authors in interaction with the Ministry team, providing a four-page summary for policy-makers (MTES 2019, Suppl.…”

“…The National Biodiversity Foundation edited a 2-page summary for the broad public, and the Ministry edited an English language version published to coincide with the IPBES seventh Plenary meeting (Paris, May 2019). While meeting the European MAES and international IPBES agendas, the timing of the release of findings was not targeted specifically regarding the national political agenda, despite advices on how to increase political uptake of results such as by Wilson et al (2014). However, it appears difficult in practice to align with both international and national political momentums.…”

“…IUCN) and lay web sites. It has been anticipated that the IPBES platform could further support the development and dissemination of NEA's knowledge and methods, and to some extent facilitate use of their results through scales (Wilson et al 2014). Adaptive policy cycles have been described as going successively through the stages of i) problem framing and policy formulation, ii) adoption and implementation, and iii) monitoring and evaluation (Daily et al 2009;Maes et al 2018).…”

“…UK, Portugal or Japan, showed similar governance structures. Wilson et al (2014) describe these structures as including 'i) a diverse range of stakeholders which represent the community at large and can provide information about user needs, as well as ii) technical expertise to ensure the assessment process is fair and balanced and can provide advice on complex or contentious issues'. Establishing such governance structure conditions the perceived legitimacy and credibility of NEA results, and thereby their possible policy uptake (Wilson et al 2014).…”

“…Wilson et al (2014) describe these structures as including 'i) a diverse range of stakeholders which represent the community at large and can provide information about user needs, as well as ii) technical expertise to ensure the assessment process is fair and balanced and can provide advice on complex or contentious issues'. Establishing such governance structure conditions the perceived legitimacy and credibility of NEA results, and thereby their possible policy uptake (Wilson et al 2014). The rationale for engagement in a participatory science-policy interface is for the mountain NEA to act as a boundary organization with an even representation of knowledge systems and values towards mountain systems (Morin et al 2017).…”