Search

‘Wicked problems’ are tricky to solve because of their many interconnected components and a lack of any single optimal solution. At the science-policy interface, all problems can look wicked: research exposes the complexity relevant to designing, executing, and implementing policy fit for ambitious human needs. Expertise in philosophical research can help navigate that complexity.

In 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recognized chemical pollution as a planetary crisis tantamount to climate change and biodiversity decline. (1) In an important next step, the international community agreed in March 2022 on establishing an independent, intergovernmental science–policy panel on chemicals, waste, and pollution prevention (hereafter termed “the Panel”). (2) This Panel will take its place among two other intergovernmental bodies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (3) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). (4) Now is a crucial time for establishing the Panel, following a process facilitated by UNEP to negotiate the Panel’s scope, functions, and institutional design, with the ambition to formally establish the Panel in 2024. As a group of international scientists working on chemical pollution, we applaud this milestone of progress to initiate the establishment of a panel for chemicals, waste, and pollution prevention. At the beginning of the negotiating process, we would like to highlight the following 10 critical aspects for consideration in determining the settings of the Panel.

Background: Evidence-based policymaking is a paradigm aimed at increasing the use of evidence by actors involved in policymaking processes. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a heavy reliance on emerging evidence for policymaking during emergencies. Objective:This study describes the focus and types of evidence in journal articles self-described as relevant to policymaking using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, identifying gaps in evidence and highlighting author stated perceived biases specifically in evidence-based policy making. Design Evidence mapping. Data sources: We systematically searched SCOPUS, PubMed and LexisNexis for literature identifying policy-relevant evidence available on the COVID-19 pandemic. Eligibility criteria: The study included only peer-reviewed literature identified as ‘article’, ‘book chapter’, ‘review’ covering the period from January 2020 to December 2022. Inclusion criteria required that articles have an abstract, authorship attribution and are written in English. Data extraction and synthesis: A minimum of two authors independently extracted and coded for every level and final outputs were compared for consistency. Results: A total of 213 articles met the inclusion criteria and were reviewed in this study. Lead authorship affiliations were from 50 countries with 70% of the outputs from developed economies including USA (20.2%), UK (18.3%) and Australia (7.5%). The most common purpose of the articles was the presentation of research findings the authors considered of relevance to policy (60.1%), followed by work that examined the impact of policy (28.6%) or highlighted or supported a policy need (22.5%), while some papers had multiple stated purposes. The most common challenges in policymaking identified by the authors of the reviewed papers were process failures and poor evidence utilisation during policymaking. Conclusions: The evidence map identified the need for an interdisciplinary policy approach involving relevant stakehold

When evidence‑based policymaking is so often mired in disagreement and controversy, how can we know if the process is meeting its stated goals? We develop a novel mathematical model to study disagreements about adequate knowledge utilization, like those regarding wild horse culling, shark drumlines and facemask policies during pandemics. We find that, when stakeholders disagree, it is frequently impossible to tell whether any party is at fault. We demonstrate the need for a distinctive kind of transparency in evidence‑based policymaking, which we call transparency of reasoning. Such transparency is critical to the success of the evidence‑based policy movement, as without it, we will be unable to tell whether in any instance a policy was in fact based on evidence.