News 17 of 49

Going from Research to Policy with an Ecosystems Approach

2003-08-12

D.D. Joshi laboured 10 years to convince Nepal’s parliamentarians to adopt a law governing how food animals were slaughtered. One of the sticking points was the fact that the proposed new rules would allow female animals to be eaten — a commonplace practice for years but one that was actually outlawed in the country’s religious-based National Code.

“We had to show them the data to back up why female animals should be included,” says Joshi, director of the National Zoonoses and Food Hygiene Centre in Nepal. “We started with only Kathmandu data. Then we took Kathmandu Valley data, but still the committee was not convinced.”

Finally, Joshi handed over research results from all five development regions in the country, along with letters from local government officials backing the claim that female animals already provided a large portion of the country’s meat supply. That was enough to convince four members of parliament to visit a slaughtering area in the capital — at five o’clock in the morning!

“They saw what was happening, and they interviewed local people,” said Joshi in an interview at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) sponsored International Forum on Ecosystem Approaches to Human Health held May 18^th to the 23^rd. “They interviewed both ward chairs, who said ‘yes, it is true’. Then they talked to the chair of the butchers’ association, who said ‘yes... people have been eating it for a long time’... so then they realized that’s how it is.”

As a result of the new law, basic national standards have been established for the slaughtering of animals and the handling of waste. Previous practices have been the source of many health problems documented by Joshi in Kathmandu. [See related article: Healthy Collaboration Cleans up Kathmandu]

Research to policy

Translating research results into policy is a major goal of the ecosystems approach, which recognizes that human health is inextricably tied to the environmental, social, and even political context. The question of how to meet some of the challenges associated with moving from research to policy was addressed at the conference’s plenary session.

Keynote speaker Herb Gray, Canadian section chair of the International Joint Commission on the Great Lakes, offered a number of tips for influencing policy, including one method used by Joshi: establish relationships with policymakers early in the research process.

“It’s not enough to identify a problem and then throw it out for someone else to catch and solve,” said Gray, Canada’s former deputy prime minister. “You, as scientists, need to be involved in all parts of the issue. And I’m not suggesting that researchers are expected to be the policymakers. However, you do need to give some thought to the implications of your research results and what needs to be done because of what you have learned.”

The role of recommendations

One scientist studying pollution in the St. Lawrence River said there was one action he did not want his research to generate. “We did not want our results to discourage people from eating fish,” said Éric Dewailly of the Institut national de santé publique du Québec. Dewailly is a strong advocate of a diet that includes fish, because of the Omega-3 fatty acids they contain. The acids are said to improve health in many ways, including development and functioning of brain and nerve tissue.

“The role of public health could have been to wait 10 years until the river was clean. But more practically, [its role] was to make recommendations to consumers,” he said. After measuring levels of mercury and persistent organic pollutants — which include dioxins and furans — by testing sports fishers and members of native communities, Dewailly’s final conclusion was that “certain women in their child-bearing years... (should) not eat certain types of fish in certain areas.”

The importance of synthesis

Taking analysis to synthesis should be a key element of research, suggested one of Joshi’s colleagues. “If we’re moving to policy, to decision-making, we have to have that synthesis because that’s where you begin to look at the trade-offs, the costs, the benefits, and then you negotiate a collective future for that community, which is what happened in Kathmandu,” says David Waltner-Toews, from the University of Guelph’s department of population medicine in Canada.

Recalling the early days of the 10-year Kathmandu project, Waltner-Toews said researchers’ initial solutions were too linear and removed from local realities. “Policy makers, political leaders, and indeed all of us make our decisions based on the stories we tell ourselves, stories that make sense of our messy and contradictory reality and give us a basis for ongoing decisions in the face of radical uncertainty.

“Evidence is good, evidence is essential, but evidence without a story is useless. It’s just data,” he added. “I think more than anything, influencing policies for sustainability involves changing the cultural stories we tell ourselves.”

Marty Logan is a freelance writer based in Montréal.

For more information:

Top of Page

News 17 of 49