Abstract
We provide a synthesis of what regional scientific research networks in less developed regions of the world can do and why they might be relevant for societal decisions and practice. We do so through a focus on three regional science network initiatives that aim to enhance understanding of the multiscalar dynamics of global environmental change (GEC) regionally and globally, namely the Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000), the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change (IAI). With a view to aiding future efforts at regional research network formation, we assess whether and how these three networks enhanced regional science, and the extent to which they sought and managed to bridge the science-policy gap that challenges GEC science as a whole. Identifying key decisions and attributes bearing on their successes, the analysis attends specifically to how the three networks sought to build capacity, how differences and similarities between them affected their level of autonomy from governments, and how this and other factors influenced their functioning and achievements.
Highlights
We provide a synthesis of what regional scientific research networks in less developed regions of the world can do and why they might be relevant for societal decisions and practice
We provide a synthesis of what regional scientific research networks can do and why they might be relevant to societal decisions and practice
We do so through a focus on three regional-science network initiatives in the Americas and Africa that share the goal of enhancing understanding of interactions between environmental changes on regional and global scales: The Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000), the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change (IAI)
Summary
Researchers from smaller and less wealthy countries benefit from participating in the three RRNs: they learn from, and contribute to, the production of multiscalar knowledge, gain access to extranational funding sources, and achieve greater voice nationally and internationally, which can be used to press for additional resources and for international science agendas attuned to their local circumstances In these ways, RRNs can enhance the quality of GEC research, which has tended to be dominated by wealthy country scientists (Sagar and Kandlikar 1997, Miller 1998, Lahsen 2004, 2007). The meetings alternated between better-resourced partners such as the U.S and South Africa, and partner countries such as Botswana, Zambia, and Mozambique,
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