A Case Study on Scientific Policy Advice: Lessons learned from the German Science Platform Sustainability 2030

Abstract

Over the years, the scholarly debate about communication on the science-policy interface changed fundamentally: from simply regarding scientific advice to policy making as a linear process it shifted towards a transdisciplinary and interactive concept that includes academic experts, political decision-makers, intermediaries and non-academic societal stakeholders. This is also mirrored in the discussion about the Sustainable Development Goals. Under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 the 2030 Agenda emphasizes the role of intermediaries and postulates effective co-creative platforms for coordinating multiple stakeholders as a key means of policy implementation. This paper presents an in-depth case study of the Science Platform Sustainability 2030 (the wpn2030). It was initiated by the German scientific community in 2017 as an integral part of Germany’s Sustainable Development Strategy of 2016 and developed several formats for communication on the science-policy interface. The goal of the platform is twofold: On the one hand, it sets out to strengthen broad scholarly engagement in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda/SDGs and the German Sustainable Development Strategy. On the other hand, the platform seeks to channel and mainstream scholarly input on SD into German politics more effectively. The objective of our case study is to highlight difficulties and accomplishments in setting up a platform designated to mediate the communication between researchers and political decision-makers on sustainability issues. The paper draws upon first-hand experience of developing the platform by example of one of its dialogue formats it set up together with the Sustainable Solution Development Network (SDSN) Germany: A dialog with the German scientific advisory councils. Reaching the end of the second year of its operations, the paper asks the questions whether so far, the platform was able to live up to its promise and what lessons learned can be drawn from the experience of the dialog to inform future endeavors of building and sustaining science platforms for the implementation of SD, in Germany and elsewhere.