Impacts of science on society and policy in major river basins globally

Abstract

Radical transformations of knowledge development are required to address the sustainability issues in the Anthropocene. This study developed a framework to understand the internal structures of knowledge development with two dimensions: degree of multidisciplinarity and degree of issue connectivity. Examining the knowledge development in 72 river basins globally from 1962 to 2017 using the Web of Science (WoS) dataset, it was found that the river basin knowledge systems were characterized by increasingly interconnected issues addressed by limited disciplines. Evaluating these structural characteristics against six impact indicators of society and policy, over 90 % of rivers were found to have knowledge structures that were strongly linked to society impacts, whereas only 57 % were linked to that of policy. Optimization analysis further found that about 35 % of the rivers studied mostly in Asia, Africa, and South America were prone to fragmented knowledge structures that had limited capacities to effectively address the issues with negative environmental impacts and resource depletion. Improving multidisciplinary research is the key to transforming the current knowledge structure to support more sustainable river basin development.