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:
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
The project addresses the development of models to support decision making on complex and wicked problems, providing a guide to the development of models and demonstrating how to apply it in practice.
There is an increasing demand from policy that conservation and sensitive management of our landscape should not be restricted to areas designated for their conservation value, but should extend to the broader landscape ...
Funded by: NERC
Lead research organisation: University of York
The project focuses on linking evidence and operation in ecosystem service-based decision support tools, which is partially relevant to the question on supporting decision making on complex and wicked problems.
The dual climate change and biodiversity crises put an urgency for implementing inclusive, just, and effective policies, while their inextricable nature calls for integrated assessment approaches that capture synergies a...
Funded by: Horizon Europe Guarantee
Lead research organisation: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
The project aims to develop a holistic decision-making framework that integrates advanced economic and biophysical models, empirical methods and stakeholder participation tools, which aligns with the question's requirement of developing models to support decision making on complex and wicked problems.