Many of our most pressing environmental challenges are wicked in nature, existing within complex socioecological webs. Various stakeholders have different perceptions of the nature of ‘the problem’, different solutions they wish to advance, anticipate varying costs and benefits from different solutions, and have different preferences or beliefs around what information should be used to make decisions. Rather than information asymmetries, in many cases we often find ourselves in situations with competing knowledge claims and fact patterns. Stakeholders marshal and wield ‘the facts’ that best support their interests, priorities and perspectives.
The question undergirding this work is if and how decision-makers, other stakeholders, and scientific and technical experts can engage in more collaborative processes of fact-finding to arrive at shared sets of scientific and technical information to inform their policy-making, management, and planning. More specifically, it examines a relatively under-utilized approach called joint fact-finding.
A case-based methodology is applied to more fully understand the practice and efficacy of joint fact-finding. Cases explored include work on the siting of renewable energy facilities, desalinization, and climate adaptation.
Results/Conclusions
Qualitative cross-case analysis suggests that joint fact-finding methods can be effective in narrowing the fact-pattern to avoid disputes around the data. The resulting products can also serve as useful ‘boundary objects’ to facilitate deliberations around how to move forward with policy-making, planning and management decisions. However, joint fact-finding cannot provide the answer; its efficacy is in helping move parties beyond fighting about the facts to necessary debates around differences in interests, priorities, risk tolerance and other irreducible questions that are sociocultural in nature.