How EviEM worked
Mistra EviEM’s remit was to assist environmental management in Sweden by providing reviews of the results from environmental research. In its activities, the Council aimed to help bring about evidence-based environmental management that made use of the best possible scientific documentation.
Practical benefits from research results
It was usually public agencies and other decision-makers and stakeholders in the environmental sector that proposed the subjects for EviEM’s reviews. The aim was that they should be able to benefit from the results and turn them into practical environmental measures. The final decisions on which issues to review were taken by EviEM’s Executive Committee.
Every review was conducted as a project by a specially appointed team comprising researchers in the area concerned and a project manager from the EviEM Secretariat. The results were published in comprehensive scientific reports, but they were also presented in popularised summaries in Swedish and English.
EviEM’s first review dealt with the effects of reindeer grazing on alpine and arctic vegetation. This picture was taken during the second meeting of the review team. Photo: Bo Söderström.
Systematic reviews behind all
evidence-based environmental management
To survey the scientific documentation on various environmental issues, EviEM used a method known as ‘systematic review’. A review of this kind involves a meticulously planned and documented search to find every scientific publication that may be of interest in the context. Results from the studies that prove useful are then summarised and compared. Work in this stage, too, is documented with great thoroughness, and this enables the review and its assessments to be subsequently examined in detail.
Systematic reviews are the foundation of all evidence-based work, in the environmental sector as elsewhere. Mistra EviEM’s work on evidence-based environmental management followed several models in other fields, notably medicine.