Records of Engagement and Decision Tracking for Adaptive Management and Policy Development

The management of coupled human-natural (CHN) systems, including natural resource and environmental systems, would benefit from recognition of the need to integrate, and bring critical thinking, transparency, and accountability to science and policy development. It would benefit also from: (1) stakeholder engagement and participatory processes, (2) societal and institutional continuity in science and decisions evaluation and follow-through, and (3) recognition and understanding of the role of biases, beliefs, heuristics, and values (BBHV) in decision-making.We suggest that creating multi-media, efficiently accessible, "Records of Engagement" (RoE) could support meeting the above needs. RoE would offer: (1) a reward system to support and foster stakeholder engagement; (2) a record structure for evaluating processes and outcomes and for learning and knowledge transfer, and (3) an opportunity to systematize, facilitate, create efficiencies, and improve the engagement of experts and stakeholders in participatory modeling, planning and policy development. RoE, in our view, should also not only describe scientific evidence and lines of argumentation but also BBHV and emotions expressed, a first step in understanding their impacts on decision making and management of CHN systems.We seek to engage readers to help us determine how to create RoE, including what they might contain to be most useful. Preliminary thoughts are offered on RoE framework design and content, and on a Decision Tracking System and methodologies that could be used to support creation and use of RoE. Some existing stakeholder engagement records are discussed in reference to the ideal RoE that we envision.