Do environmental systematic reviews impact policy and practice? Author perspectives on the application of their work

Environmental decisions related to policy and practice should be based on the best available evidence. Given the vast amounts of information of varying reliability, an ongoing challenge for decision-makers is how to access, collate, and use this information. The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) is dedicated to the synthesis of environmental evidence via systematic reviews (SRs) to advance evidence-informed policy and practice. The CEE has now published 79 completed SRs (as of August 2019), building a wealth of experience and expertise among authors of these works. This article reports meta-data from the 79 completed SRs, as well as findings from a survey of authors (N = 18) regarding their perspectives on the application of the SRs that they have produced (representing a total of 26 SRs). The survey asked authors to evaluate the extent to which the findings from their SRs have been applied, as well as possible facilitators and barriers to application. Based on author-reported perspectives, 13 of 25 cases were identified as having an impact on policy and practice. Respondents felt their work was most successful in identifying research gaps, transferring knowledge, and informing policy and/or practice. The most common barriers experienced by respondents were challenges in communication and engagement with stakeholders, challenges with evidentiary ambiguity arising from SR findings due to overly broad research questions, and limited financial resources. Our findings lead us to posit that, in order to maximise the impact of future SRs, evidence syntheses should: (1) be based on well-defined and policy relevant research questions; (2) involve extensive collaboration among evidence-synthesizers and end users throughout the entire process; (3) create opportunities for partners to build “end user” capacity and awareness of the principles of evidence-based management; (4) develop formal and (eventually) standardized measures and indicators of impact for long-term tracking and comparability purposes. Future research should extend to understanding the perspectives of end users and stakeholders on the relevance of SRs to inform environmental policy and practice.