Wetlands International ranks #17 in top climate think tank list
Wetlands International takes the 17th spot on the International Centre for Climate Governance top 100 list for climate think tanks in 2014.
With the aim of recognizing the excellence of the main institutions addressing the climate issue worldwide, every year ICCG publishes a ranking of the best think tanks active in the field of climate change economics and policy that are not affiliated with academic institutions, political parties or interest groups. The ranking takes into account the quality of a think tank in conducting research and its role in influencing climate and energy policy. On the basis of the results of the ranking, the International Center for Climate Governance awards the top “climate think tank” designation of the year.
The role of think tanks in shaping climate policies and raising awareness among the general public has become increasingly important in the last decades. The ability of a given think tank to have policy outreach is usually dependent on a variety of factors that can be divided between internal and external conditions. Evaluating their role in “bridging knowledge and power” is now a crucial issue. In this context, it is only possible to evaluate the ways in which think tanks are trying to influence the policy-making process, and not the influence itself. It is reasonable that an assessment of a think tank’s influence on the different public circles can be seen as a proxy of its potential impact on the final policy-making process.
The originality of ICCG’s Think Tank Map observatory ranking lies in the wealth of objective criteria considered, which distinguishes it from existing rankings based on opinion surveys or bibliometric indicators solely. The Think Tank Map ranking is based on solid quantitative and analytical data, which are translated into both bibliometric and non-bibliometric indicators. In the evaluation process the think tank is assessed on a set of indicators structured into a decision tree with three main pillars: Activities, Publications and Dissemination.
Two different rankings are built: a Standardized Ranking and an Absolute Ranking. The Standardized Ranking measures think tanks’ efficiency in per capita/researcher terms, while the Absolute Ranking measures think tanks’ performance regardless of their efficiency and hence size. Since absolute ranking would favor large-sized institutions, making it unfair to compare different think tank performances, the ICCG Climate Think Tank Ranking Award is based on the standardized ranking. However the absolute ranking is shown for complementary information too.
Text from ICCG