ABSTRACT
Joint fact-finding (JFF) is a process that engages stakeholders to collectively identify questions that they want answered, scope a research agenda to consider those questions, engage multiple sources of knowledge and information, and arrive at a set of facts that all will accept. The resulting facts may be accepted as input to further planning and decision making or as a technical foundation for further policy development. The problem is that, as Matsuura (Chapter 4) explains in this volume, facts are messy things in the post-positivist, fragmented and deeply uncertain world we find ourselves in. In many cases, a universally agreed upon set of facts is unattainable-epistemic differences among stakeholders leave them oceans apart, regardless of how much collective fact-finding they engage in. Furthermore, the notion that a universally accepted set of facts can be arrived at through research is often hubristic, given deep uncertainties and dynamic conditions. The most we can hope for in these situations is to narrow uncertainty. These challenges call for a more honest acknowledgement of what JFF can and cannot accomplish; one that accepts the fragile nature of facts while acknowledging their value in decision making. This chapter proposes an approach to JFF that is modest in its ambitions-it suggests that what we need to aim for in JFF efforts are facts for now and facts for use.
