What Do Users Want from a State of the Environment Report? A Case Study of Awareness and Use of Canada’s State of the Scotian Shelf Report

The 1972 United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment (United Nations 1972) recognized that effective environmental management needed to be conducted on a global scale and supported by the best available scientific information. Since the conference’s declaration, various governments, nongovernmental organizations, and intergovernmentalCONTENTS12.1 Introduction ...283 12.2 The Eastern Scotian Shelf Integrated Management Initiative andthe State of the Scotian Shelf Report ...284 12.3 Identifying Useful Scientific Information ... 286 12.4 Methodology ... 289 12.5 Results ... 29012.5.1 Use of the State of the Scotian Shelf Report ... 290 12.5.2 Use of the Report for Government Purposes ... 291 12.5.3 Use of the Report for Public Advocacy ... 292 12.5.4 Use of the Report by Industry Groups ... 292 12.5.5 Use of the Report for Educational Purposes ... 293 12.5.6 General User Satisfaction with Form and Content of theReport ... 294 12.5.7 Enablers of SOE Report Use ... 295 12.5.8 Barriers to SOE Report Use ... 29512.6 How Can SOE Report Producers Maximize Use and Awareness? ...296 12.7 Conclusion ... 299 References ... 301partnerships have sought to address the latter need by producing State of the Environment (SOE) reports, beginning with Ward and Dubos’s Only One Earth, the unofficial report commissioned for that conference (Ward and Dubos 1972). Though SOE reports vary widely in scope, they generally share the purpose of providing a comprehensive aggregation of available scientific information for a particular ecosystem, written clearly to facilitate understanding and focusing on information relevant to the management and policy issues affecting that ecosystem.