IES and ACCESS publish new toolkit to support collaborative working across disciplines and sectors

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IES News Social Science Sustainability

The IES and Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environmental Social Sciences (ACCESS) have launched a new practical toolkit to help environmental researchers, policymakers, and practitioners collaborate more effectively across disciplines. The project represents a timely and strategic opportunity to build stronger links between environmental and social scientists and practitioners, and to equip these communities with the tools and insights needed to work more effectively together on urgent environmental issues.

Tackling urgent and complex environmental challenges requires profound societal change alongside technological breakthroughs. Collaborative working across disciplines and sectors within the environmental sciences is vital to meet climate and biodiversity goals, but it can be difficult to adopt in practice.

Bringing together expertise spanning the natural and social sciences, this toolkit provides a practical and flexible framework for collaboration, along with supporting resources. It was developed from a series of workshops and led by a core team of environmental scientists working in social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. Developed over the course of a year, the project received input from over 40 environmental researchers and practitioners.

The publication of this toolkit is a milestone in ACCESS and the IES’s goals to support greater integration of environmental social sciences with other environmental science disciplines. To further support this goal, the IES have also launched a new field category and webpage for members working in environmental social science.

Early academic pioneers framed environmental science as a blend of biology, physics, and chemistry. Half a century on, the profession has outgrown those roots. Environmental science now incorporates behavioural and social science. This new initiative provides existing and prospective members the option to categorise themselves as social scientists and provides a dedicated space for signposting IES work in this area. Through greater visibility of social science within the IES family, we aim to ensure behavioural and social science evidence is used alongside other environmental expertise to support effective environmental work that delivers for our society, economy and environment.

Ethny Childs, Head of Communities & Partnerships at the IES said: “Collaboration is an essential skill for environmental professionals. Environmental science is, at its core, an interdisciplinary field, and we must support the sector to build meaningful and impactful collaborations. By working across disciplines and sectors, we can better address the complex and interconnected challenges facing our society and environment and develop solutions that deliver positive environmental outcomes in a just and equitable way.”

Birgitta Gatersleben, Co-Director of ACCESS said: "Developing the toolkit with a wide range of experts was a great experience and a fantastic example of successful collaborative working in itself. The toolkit provides flexible practical guidance and resources to support collaboration and build bridges between different disciplines. I hope it will be used widely and support greater integration of different environmental sciences including the social sciences."

Toolkit resources