THE COMPLEX POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE (journal article)
By Andrew Norton
from Policy Vol. 25 Issue 4 Summer 2009/2010, pp. 22-26
"The public's aspirations for climate change policy are not matched by their willingness to act."

Mapping climate change knowledge: an editorial essay (journal article)
by Mike Hulme
from Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-8
"The relationship between climate and society has always been dynamic. Physical climates
have played important roles in the biological and social evolution of human beings and fashioned the biogeophysical systems which provide the goods and services from which human economic and cultural life emerges. Similarly, humans have imposed themselves upon climate, both in the ways in which climates have been imagined, studied, and articulated in thought and language and in the growing influences that human actions have had on the physical operations of climate.
This relationship between climate and society has been characterized throughout history and prehistory by both creativity and fear. ...
Examples of contestation emphasise the need for stronger interactions between the traditional climate disciplines of meteorology, oceanography, ecology, and economics on the one hand, and the social sciences and the interpretative humanities on the other. The perspectives and contributions of these latter disciplines are now probably more important than the climate sciences to ongoing public and policy debates."

Indicator development as 'boundary spanning' between scientists and policy-makers (journal article)
By Helga Pülzl and Ewald Rametsteiner
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 Number 10 Dec 2009, pp. 743-752
"In sustainability impact assessments the development of widely accepted indicators that structure the subject area and provide the framework for assessing sustainability impacts is clearly important. We argue that the development of sustainability indicators in science-based initiatives works across the science/policy interface where social and natural scientists as well as stakeholders and policy-makers both translate concepts and ideas to each other and thus make value judgments about the selection of indicators and related sub-classes. This explains why pure scientific indicator initiatives based on simple 'knowledge transfer' models are unlikely to succeed. Instead, sustainability indicator development requires a 'knowledge transaction model' which spans the boundary between the scientific and the political domains."

Innovation and growth : chasing a moving frontier [online]

Authors: OECD / World Bank

"Innovation is crucial to long-term economic growth, even more so in the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis. Making innovation-driven growth happen requires action in a wide range of policy areas, from education and science and technology to product and labour markets and trade." - abstract.

Two overarching priorities for STEM education (journal article)
by Lesley Parker and Adrian Egan
from ATSE Focus, December 2009
"A number of directions for the future emerged at the recent academy seminar, Science and Engineering Education: Towards 2030.These ranged from early childhood to adult learning, from quality of education to meeting a high and increasing workforce demand for engineers and scientists and from motivating individual students to shifting public perceptions of mathematics, science, technology and engineering – the enjoyment they provide and the roles they play in meeting community aspirations. Many of these directions are inter-related but, overall, they can be considered in four categories – wider society, students, teachers/lecturers/academics and industry. "

Innovation nation : how America is losing its innovation edge, why it matters, and what we can do to get it back [book]

Author: John Kao

Examines the world's innovation hotspots: Singapore, Denmark and Finland, and then presents a plan for a national innovation strategy which would harness the United States talent and resources, and change the way innovation occurs.

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The Economics of climate change mitigation : policies and options for global action beyond 2012 [online]

Author: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

"Addresses key climate policy issues including: an ideal set of climate policy tools; the size of the economic and environmental costs of incomplete country or sector coverage of climate change mitigation policies; how to concretely develop a global carbon market; the case for, and what can we reasonably expect from, R&D and technology support policies; and the incentives for major emitting countries to join a climate change mitigation agreement." - abstract.

Environmental decision-making : exploring complexity and context [book]

Authors: Ronnie Harding, Carolyn M. Hendriks & Mehreen Faruqi

"Contemporary environmental decisions are made within the context of sustainability aimed at meeting integrated ecological, economic and social goals. ... This book explores these processes and context and the influences which affect them. For example: How do different value systems influence what environmental issues come onto the public agenda, and their management? What institutions and actors are involved in the processes and how? What tools are available and what are their limitations? How should we deal with uncertainty and risk? How do we incorporate relevant but very different forms of knowledge, and how do we manage the information 'explosion'?" - cover.

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Corporate responses to climate change : achieving emissions reductions through regulation, self-regulation and economic incentives [book]

Author: Rory Sullivan

"Analyses current business practice and performance on climate change, in the light of the dramatic changes in the regulatory and policy environment over the last five years. More specifically, it examines how climate change-related policy development and implementation have influenced corporate performance, with the objective of using this information to consider how the next stage of climate change policy - regulation, incentives, voluntary initiatives - may be designed and implemented in a manner that delivers the real and substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that will be required." - cover.

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Influence of research funding and science policy on university research performance: a comparison of five countries (journal article)
by Laura Himanen, Otto Auranen, Hanna-Mari Puuska, Mika Nieminen
from Science and Public Policy, Volume 36, Number 6, July 2009 , pp. 419-430(12)
"The ability of universities to efficiently produce high-standard knowledge has become an important goal in science policies of many developed countries. Thus, many countries nowadays steer universities based on performance monitoring and competition. This article analyzes the connection between the competitiveness of the university funding environment and research performance in five OECD countries in 1987-2006. Besides funding, other science policy factors are analyzed using the framework of four state steering models. Results indicate that the university funding environment has become more competitive in all the compared countries, but the extent and pace of this development varies. Countries also differ in relation to steering models but all have employed policy elements typical of at least two models. In terms of competitive funding environment and research performance, there is no straightforward relationship between the two. With reference to the state steering models, the most traditional model which emphasizes university independence from the state seems to be the most beneficial to research performance. "

What Local Policy Makers Should Know about Urban Road Charging: Lessons from Worldwide Experience (journal article)
By Daniel Albalate and Germè Bel
from Public Administration Review Vol 69 No 5 2009, pp. 962 - 974
"Congestion costs are emerging as one of the most important challenges faced by metropolitan planners and transport authorities in developed economies. In the United States, these costs were as high as $78 billion in 2005 and are growing as a result of rapid increases in travel delays. In order to solve the current and severe levels of congestion, the U.S. Department of Transportation has recently started a program to initiate congestion pricing in five metropolitan areas. In this context, it is important to identify factors that influence successful implementation, as well as the problems or difficulties associated with charging projects. The authors review, synthesize, and analyze worldwide experience with urban road charging in order to extract lessons for policy makers who are considering the implementation of congestion pricing projects and for those who are interested in the introduction of traffic management tools to regulate entrance to city centers. "

Defining regional research priorities: a new approach (journal article)
By Hariolf Grup, Sybille Hinze and Barbara Breitschopf
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 No 7 Aug 2009, pp. 549-559
"This paper outlines a new approach to defining research priorities at a regional level. The methodical approach relies on a combination of bibliometric indicators and qualitative data and aims at the identification, selection and evaluation of medium-term relevant research fields. This type of analysis of quantitative and qualitative data contributes to what is called evidence-based policy making. By linking bibliometric information with questionnaire-based assessments by more than 480 scientists in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg (Germany), strategic research fields were pre-selected for potential policy action. Overall, the study shows that strategic decisions for shaping and advancing research processes demand not only methodical proficiency in bibliometrics but also a broad knowledge of the structure of the research landscape and forward thinking on a broad canvas."

Managing without growth : slower by design, not disaster [book]

Author: Peter A. Victor

"Challenges the priority that rich countries continue to give to economic growth as an over-arching objective of economic policy. The challenge is based on a critical analysis of the literature on environmental and resource limits to growth, on the disconnect between higher incomes and happiness, and on the failure of economic growth to meet other key economic, social and environmental policy objectives." - from publisher.

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Public support to private innovation in multi-level governance systems: an empirical investigation (journal article)
By Andrea Fernández-Ribas
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 No 6 July 2009 , pp. 457-467
"This is an exploratory analysis of the distinct distributive nature of innovation programs by government levels. The research setting is a European region actively involved in regional, national, and supra-national (EU)-level programs. The results suggest that sub-national programs lead to changes in firms' attitudes towards product and process innovation. The impacts of national and supra-national programs are different: nationally supported firms are more likely to accelerate their path towards product (but not to process) innovations; supra-national supported businesses gain in greater sales due to incremental innovative products. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that lower levels of government could alleviate entry barriers into technological activities while upper-level programs improve the economic performance of pre-existing innovators."

The evolution of Norway's national innovation system (journal article)
By Jan Fagerberg, David C Mowery and Bart Verspagen
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 No 6, July 2009 , pp. 431-444
"This paper analyses the co-evolution of science, technology and innovation policy and industrial structure in a small, open, resource-based economy (Norway). The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, it develops an evolutionary and historically oriented approach to the study of the development of these policies that may have wide applicability. Second, it focuses on a particular type of innovation, innovation in resource-based activities, that differs in many respects from the more commonly studied case of innovation in 'high-tech' industries. Third, the paper advances our understanding of the roles played by institutions and politics in innovation. Previous work on national systems of innovation has devoted little attention to these matters, possibly because much of this work examines 'snapshots' of various innovation systems at a specific point in time and lacks historical depth."

Australia's Indicator-Based Sustainability Assessments and Public Policy (journal article)
By Adnan A. Hezri and Stephen R. Dovers
from Australian Journal of Public Administration Vol 68 Iss 3 2009, pp. 303 - 318
"Operationalising sustainability has proven difficult because the concept is ambiguous and fraught with contradictions. In response, sustainability indicator systems to characterise and measure sustainable development have been developed globally. The focus of this article is on how indicators function as an instrument of policy to enhance achievement of environmental and sustainability policy in Australia at national scale. In theory, by integrating information from the environmental, social and economic domains and then feeding knowledge to a wide range of policy sectors, sustainability indicator systems may facilitate cross-agency and -portfolio connectivity. Key characteristics of the various sustainability indicator systems developed to inform policy at the national level are described, noting the diverse approaches to indicator development in Australia. The structural relevance of indicator systems to the mechanisms of policy and institutions in Australia is discussed, and corresponding issues of institutional fit are analysed."

Clusters, innovation and entrepreneurship [online]

Author: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

"Explores the success of major innovation and entrepreneurship clusters in OECD countries, the challenges they now face in sustaining their positions and the lessons for other places seeking to build successful clusters. What are the key factors for cluster success? What problems are emerging on the horizon? Which is the appropriate role of the public sector in supporting the expansion of clusters and overcoming the obstacles?" - abstract.

Peak Oil and Strategic Resource Wars (journal article)
By Roger Howard
from Futurist Vol. 43, Issue 5, Sept/Oct 2009, pp. 18-21
"When the oil fields run dry — and they will — what will happen to the economies of petroleum producers? And what will that mean for the rest of us? The time to consider the potential scenarios and strategies is now."

The Cloud, the Crowd, and Public Policy (journal article)
By Michael R Nelson
from Issues in Science and Technology Vol. 25 Issue 4 Summer 2009, pp. 71-76
"A new age of more flexible, less expensive, and more secure computing will emerge soon if governments act wisely."

Water and Wastewater Services in Non-Metropolitan New South Wales: A Critical Analysis of the Report of the Independent Inquiry (journal article)
by Brian Dollery
from Agenda, Vol 16 No 2 2009
"The Commonwealth's assumption of greater control over water policy has been justified on the grounds that a 'national approach' to the problems in the Murray-Darling Basin is required to resolve the ills of the Basin. This paper investigates the validity of this contention in the context of the Federal government's 'Water for the Future' manifesto. The paper argues that the current naive understanding of 'water use efficiency' concepts is likely to stymie any purported basin-wide gains from a 'national approach' to water policy."