Bridging the GAPS between ecology and human security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 136

and Nordhaus 2004). In his speech The Death of Environmentalism and the Birth
of the Commons Movement , made to the Commonwealth Club of California on
8 December 2004, Adam Werbach, executive director of the Common Assets
Defense Fund, stated that environmentalists must 'talk to people outside of
their movement … Environmentalists find that their greatest audiences are
themselves' ( Chicago Tribune 2005).
Across academia in general, and locally in the ecological research commu-
nity, there is a long-term, ongoing conversation about the need to break out
of ivory towers and silos, often recommended via engagement in 'interdisci-
plinary' collaborations (e.g. Haeuber and Ringold 1998; Vaughan et al . 2007;
Lowe et al . 2009). Groups such as the Resilience Alliance (Hollings 2000)
represent efforts by ecologists to form interdisciplinary collaborations in order
to promote sustainable development principles and policies informed by eco-
logical research findings. Hollings (2000:7), himself an ecologist, stated that
'ecologists have been largely ignorant of human behavior, organizational
structures, and institutional arrangements that mediate the relationships
between people and nature'.
Can academics break out from their silos through increased interdis-
ciplinary collaborations? There is a large, diverse, yet disparate literature
that explores the nature of the science-policy gap (e.g. Dovers et al . 1996;
Brown et al . 2010). Ecologists fall on the science side of this gap. Certainly,
there are many within-university examples of efforts to engage academics in
interdisciplinary conversations on campuses globally. For example, in 2004,
the Liu Institute, University of British Columbia, held a monthly seminar
series entitled Science and its Policy Impacts , aimed at examining 'how scientific
knowledge shapes policy agendas and how communication between the two
could be improved at a variety of levels' (Liu Institute 2004).
Another way to bridge this gap is by participating in interdisciplinary
research teams comprised of diverse groups of academics and other stakehold-
ers. In this environment, the challenging issue of language, in which different
groups ascribe different meanings to the same terms, and may be talking at
cross-purposes, must be addressed. Norton (1998) pinpointed breakdowns
in communication arising from the failure of ecologists to make the link-
ages between ecological functions of ecosystems and social values clear, and
also to the reluctance of ecologists to mix values issues with scientific study.
He called for an integrated language of management that is: '1 adaptive, 2
perspectival, 3 multiscaled, 4 operationalizable, 5 normative in content and 6
communication enhancing' (Norton 1998:350).
Interdisciplinary, team-based research represents a very different approach
to research from that which prevails across most academic disciplines (Leshner
2004). Unfortunately, the time required for learning to communicate with
academics outside of one's own field represents a significant amount of research
time for which there may be little incentive. The challenges associated with
assessing interdisciplinary activities compared with in-discipline research for