Integrated versus Multi-disciplinary Research: Prospects for Environmental Researchers

Introduction If 'sustainability' is an icon of environmentalists in southern Africa, so too is 'integration' for scientists drawn into this arena. Scientists seem to be less capable than their compatriots, however, at substantiating their ideals. Popular environmentalism thrives on various forms of civic pressure on government and industry to 'clean up their acts'. Conservation agencies can show that they have implemented appropriate principles such as 'community participation'. Governments too cannot be found wanting when they emphasise their administrative responsibility, as in South Africa's Integrated Environmental Management (IEM) policy. Scientists, in contrast, have told others what to do, but seem unable to practise what they preach. This doubt was voiced recently, indeed, by South Africa's Minister of Water Affairs. In an address to the International Association for Impact Assessment, he noted that the different sciences were 'currently fragmented and caught up in their own worlds'. The scientists' ideal of integration is for combined thought and action by researchers from different disciplines in the design of projects, in field work, in analysis, and in development planning; in short, a crossing of disciplinary boundaries. The common practice is multi-disciplinary research; that is, 'teams' composed of researchers from different disciplines who follow a common project brief, but work according to the tenets of their own sciences, and whose results are combined afterwards. The gap between ideal and practice is tangible, but to question is to open Pandora's Box. Indicating that integrated research is an ideal suggests that the multi-disciplinary format is problematic, not least for giving a lie to procedures that proclaim to be integrated. Although integrated research is substantively different from multi-disciplinary research, the latter has been the basis of efforts to develop an integrated approach in South Africa (Council for Environment, 1989; Department of Environment Affairs, 1992; Department of