Defra’s areas of responsibility cover a wide range of interacting natural and human systems. Changes that affect one outcome are often likely to have knock-on implications for others. Policy in areas such as land management, biodiversity conservation, pollution prevention, food security, fisheries, and waste management, need to be designed in the absence of perfect knowledge of how human and natural processes interact. It can be particularly difficult to attribute cause and effect in such complex systems where evidence is often partial and fragmented.
Consideration of the issues that Defra deals with as parts of systems, i.e. in terms of relationships between the parts can help us to unpick complex or seemingly chaotic situations, and better deliver robust positive outcomes for society. To facilitate more effective decision making, a range of approaches and specialties need to be applied to the above challenges.
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This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:
This project implements a programme of public dialogue on the methods, analyses and recommendations of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA, 2011) and its recent follow on work (NEAFO). The UK NEA/NEAFO draws tog...
Funded by: NERC
Lead research organisation: University of Exeter
This project engages the public in critically inspecting the concepts and key scientific findings of the NEA/NEAFO and their real and emerging applications in environmental decision making, which aligns with the development of systems approaches to inform policymaking.
Human society and our economy have been built to make use of the natural world. However, as the Dasgupta report has highlighted these activities have damaged our environment and wild populations. Repairing this damage an...
Funded by: NERC
Lead research organisation: University of Kent
This project aims to produce a guide to the development of models to inform management decisions, which aligns with the development of systems approaches to inform policymaking.
Human-dominated landscapes are playing an increasingly important role in natural resource conservation and it is becoming progressively clear that social and ecological outcomes are inherently interrelated and difficult ...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: University of Sheffield
This project addresses the challenge of balancing information from relevant and diverse disciplines in natural resource management research, which partially aligns with the development of systems approaches to inform policymaking.