Facilitating professional normative judgement through science-policy interfaces: the case of anthropogenic land subsidence in the Netherlands

Abstract

Science-policy interactions can both facilitate and hamper professional normative judgement, i.e. a value judgement about the desirability of a certain situation. Anthropogenic land subsidence, contributing to relative sea-level rise in the economically important Western peatland areas in the Netherlands is a case in point. The implementation of mitigation, adaptation and compensation measures is lagging, partly due to science-policy interaction problems potentially leading to conflicts between stakeholders, including agrarians, climate scientists and inhabitants. We find that professional normative judgement is enhanced when researchers and societal stakeholders reflect more critically on their role and engage in more inclusive science-policy interactions.