No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Experts and the Environment--The UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 1970-2011
Abstract
The UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, first appointed in 1970 and abolished in 2011, has been credited with
important developments in environmental policy and legislation. This article examines the Commission's influence in the context
of wider questions about expertise and policy formation in modern democratic societies. After presenting a brief biography
of the Commission, it sets out four different ways in which the role of expert advisory bodies has been conceptualised. It
then examines the circumstances in which the Commission exerted influence and identifies the practices and characteristics
that helped build its reputation and enabled it to have effect. Especially significant were its composition as a ‘committee
of experts’, its autonomy, its positioning within networks, and its endurance over four, formative decades for environmental
policy. The analysis suggests that influence might be best thought of in terms of a continuum of different effects, that advisory
bodies can simultaneously perform multiple roles, and that relations between expertise and policy are necessarily both complex
and contingent. Finally, some thoughts are offered on the Commission's demise and on the tensions that have to be negotiated
in considering the future of expert advice.
... When focusing on the processes of governing Jordan and Schout (2006) emphasise the importance of having integration practices, mechanisms and tools to promote knowledge production and exchange. The use of knowledge is, however, not straightforward (Weiss, 1979;Owens 2012). Traditional conceptions of how to improve the influence of knowledge on decision making are often based on a model where knowledge will flow linearly to rational 'decision makers' demanding such information (Weiss 1979;Parsons 2002;Sanderson 2002;Owens 2005). ...
... Traditional conceptions of how to improve the influence of knowledge on decision making are often based on a model where knowledge will flow linearly to rational 'decision makers' demanding such information (Weiss 1979;Parsons 2002;Sanderson 2002;Owens 2005). But empirical findings suggest that knowledge use often strays from such rational linear and instrumental expectations as decision makers can consciously and/or unconsciously distort knowledge within the policy process as they try to cope with policy demands, context specific problems, higher level political priorities, etc (Juntti et al 2009;Owens 2012;Turnpenny et al. 2013). This problem can be exacerbated by the fact that a lot of knowledge is produced without fully considering user needs Fazey et al 2013). ...
... Consequently, mapping the degree of knowledge utilisation ultimately depends on what types of knowledge are being investigated, what the analyst means by 'use' and like CPI more generally, whether they see knowledge utilisation as an 'outcome' or a 'process' (ibid: 12). It is perhaps not surprising that knowledge utilisation is often far removed from the instrumental model (Juntti et al 2009;Owens 2012;Turnpenny, et al. 2013) when more often than not, knowledge producers supply knowledge in a manner that does not necessarily consider the needs of the user or the context in which it will be employed (Russel and Jordan, 2007;Fazey et al 2013); factors determined by the level of expertise within an organisation, the data required understand the policy problem, the context of the decision making sector, the speed of decision making, among others. Therefore this Chapter also examines which kind of knowledge is particularly important for the implementation of adaptation in the sectors in a more integrated and coherent manner." ...
... Throughout the years, the scholarly community has investigated the role of advisory bodies in the policy process and the type of advice they produce, as well as the influence they have on the policy process. However, the scholarly community has focused on accounting for the level of influence of institutionalised advisory bodies on public policy decisions during non-crisis times (for example, Lynn and Busenberg, 1995; Owens, 2012;Fraussen et al, 2015;Knierim et al, 2017) and less has been said about the role of advisory bodies during periods of crisis, when policy makers' relationship to expertise is heightened ('t Hart and Boin, 2001;Boin et al, 2016). ...
... The influence exerted by advisers on policy decisions, wherever they may be in the policy advisory system, has long been an area of research in the literature (McNeill et al, 1994;Halligan, 1995;Clark and Trick, 2006;Hedlund, 2010;Straus et al, 2015;Veselý, 2016;Schiffino and Krieger, 2019). Although the consensus claims that formal advisory bodies do affect decision-making, conditional specificities continue to be identified (for example, Owens, 2012;Christensen and Serrano Velarde, 2019;Irwin and Kyande, 2023). ...
Background:
The COVID-19 policy context was characterised by high levels of uncertainty, imperfect knowledge and the need for immediate action. Therefore, governments in Europe tended to rely on expertise provided by advisory bodies to design their crisis response. Advisory bodies played a fundamental part in policy making during the crisis to optimise policy formulation.
Aims and objectives:
During the COVID-19 crisis, the literature on policy advice grew considerably. To grasp the main research outcomes, we conduct a scoping review that interrogates the COVID-19 policy advice literature to answer the question ‘How did policy advisory bodies operate in Europe during the COVID-19 crisis?’ Our review builds on a strong theoretical and conceptual basis informed by the literature on policy advisory systems, while offering a new perspective by focusing on advice and policy making during crisis times specifically. We present a review of newly established knowledge and identify what merits further study.
Methods:
The scoping review follows a strict protocol informed by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to capture the literature published between 2020 and 2023. We searched two databases, Scopus and Web of Science. The grey literature was excluded.
Findings:
In total, 59 academic outputs inform this review. Overrepresented in our review were qualitative studies, studies about the UK and Sweden, and studies that examined the first half of 2020. Our review shows that the academic community has focused on advisory body composition, body structure and the advisory process.
Discussion:
Avenues for further research include the independence and influence of advisory bodies, and the fate of bodies set up during the crisis.
... The CCC also has a mandate to provide ad hoc advice, analysis, information, or other assistance at the request of a national authority (CCA, Part 2, s.38, 2008). Its ad hoc advice, published as 'Letters', is excluded from our analysis because it is not produced with the same remit, for the same audience or within a similar timeframe thus inhibiting cross-year comparisons (Owens, 2012;Turnpenny et al., 2014). ...
... A search yielded 19 fulllength reports and two summary reports. We focused on the full-length reports because they: (1) contained the CCC's formal recommendations i.e., our unit of analysis; and (2) were produced with the same remit, for the same audience and within a similar timeframe to enable cross-year comparisons (Owens, 2012;Turnpenny et al., 2014). The 19 reports were downloaded for content analysis. ...
Despite the recent proliferation of national climate change advisory bodies, very little is known about what advice they provide, to whom, and when. To address these gaps in the literature, this article systematically analyses all 700 of the recommendations made by the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) in the period 2009–20. The CCC is one of the oldest climate change advisory bodies of its kind in the world and its design has been widely emulated by other countries. For the first time, this article documents how the CCC’s mitigation and adaptation recommendations have changed over time with respect to their addressee, sectoral focus and policy targets. It reveals that they became: more numerous per year; more cross-sectoral in their nature; clearer in targeting a specific addressee; and more focused in referring to specific policy targets. By drawing on Fischer’s synthesis of policy evaluation to derive a measure of policy ambition, it also reveals that despite many of its recommendations being repeated year after year, the CCC has become more willing to challenge the policy status quo. It concludes by identifying future research needs in this important and fast-moving area of climate governance, notably understanding the conditions in which the recommendations of advisory bodies (do not) impact national policy.
... In its simplest form, such a model assumes that policy goals can be translated into measurable quantitative terms, with decisions based on cost-benefit analysis and economic rationality (Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998). In that framing, advisors would act as 'rational analysts,' presenting authoritative, impartial knowledge and evidence for direct use in decision making (Owens, 2012). This general model relies on an appeal to scientific facts and data for informing policy decisions, based on the theory that better scientific characterization of a problem will lead to better policy. ...
... How is 'effectiveness' determined? One of the perpetual questions about science advisory ecosystems is how to assess whether it is effective or not (Owens, 2012). This obviously depends on how 'effective' advice is defined, and from whose perspective-scientist, public, policymaker or politician. ...
This article analyses the conceptual framework of brokerage at the science–policy interface as an important boundary function to support trusted and transparent government decision-making. Policymaking involves a broad range of considerations, but science advice and evidence is critical to help inform decisions. However, mechanisms for requesting and receiving advice from the scientific community are not straightforward, considering that the knowledge needed generally spans multiple disciplines of the natural and social sciences. Once evidence has been appropriately synthesized, there remains the need to ensure an effective and unbiased translation to the policy and political community. The concept of knowledge brokerage revolves around an understanding of the ontologies, cultures and languages of both the policy community and the science community, in order to effectively link the two bidirectionally. In practical terms, this means ensuring that the information needs of the former are understood, and that the type and form of information offered by the latter aligns with those needs. Ideally, knowledge brokers act at the interface between researchers/experts and decision-makers to present evidence in a way that informs policy options but does not determine policy development. Conceptually, negotiating this interface involves acknowledging that values are embedded in the scientific process and evidentiary synthesis, and in particular, in considering the inferential risks inherent in making evidence claims. Brokers are faced with navigating complex policy dynamics and balancing information asymmetries between research providers and users. Building on the conceptual analysis and examination of the nuances of brokerage observed in practice, we propose a set of guidelines to translate the concepts of brokerage to practical application.
... In this tradition, translation is understood as displacement (Latour, 1994: 32) and dissonance (Callon, 1986), and explicitly avoids the targeted linguistic sense of translation which becomes embroiled within normative concerns for faithfulness to an original text, or achieving meaning within a target community (Latour, 1994). Instead, translation is conceptualised as the unofficial work of mediation that stabilises social order by upholding narratives of science-policy separation -a function that is highlighted as important in constructing legitimacy for scientific knowledge as ostensibly outside the murky world of politics (Jasanoff, 1990, Owens, 2012. This understanding of translation signals a very different kind of work than that emphasised by science-policy practitioners. ...
... This approach also lacks suitable tools to critique the politics of a functionalist approach without recourse to a faithful alternative. With its ontological assumption of an authentic original, faithful translation would reify science and advocate a truth-to-power model which has been rightly critiqued for misrepresenting the way science and policy interact (see critiques by Bray and Martinez, 2015;Jasanoff, 1990;Owens, 2012). Second, postcolonial accounts have moved debates beyond such concerns over equivalence and faithfulness (Bachmann-Medick, 2009) to emphasise the ways through which original cultures are also brought into being and fixed through translation (Niranjana, 1992: 3). ...
This paper raises critical questions about the relationship between knowledge translation and hegemonic power, and the way that this relationship shapes particular forms of neoliberal climate governance. The process of making scientific knowledge meaningful for policy audiences is increasingly being described as knowledge translation (over knowledge transfer or knowledge exchange), but what process does the language of translation describe? What discursive work is performed? And what politics does this shift in language serve? Through detailed analysis of a science–policy boundary organisation in Scotland, the paper examines the way in which emphasis on knowledge translation is central to creating a “demand-led” model of science–policy interaction. Drawing from Laclau and Mouffe’s work on articulation, the paper demonstrates the discursive work that translation performs in facilitating the construction and circulation of particular forms of scientific knowledge that (re)produce neoliberal climate change discourses and neoliberal modes of policy delivery. The paper further develops this argument by unpacking science–policy translation as a hegemonic practice. It concludes by calling for greater critical awareness of the hegemonic politics performed through science–policy translation, and highlights key implications – for boundary work, for knowledge politics and for addressing climate change.
... A number of authors argue that natural resource management is underpinned by indigenous worldview. To these authors, indigenous societies claim that their worldviews have been the foundation for sustainable natural resource management [11,[12][13]. Some researchers contend that the sustainability of natural resources needs ecocentric models of relationship with the environment, and that indigenous cultures provide such models and therefore there is the need for multicultural societies to include their values in natural resource management [14]. ...
This position paper discusses indigenous water resource conservation practices and modern methods to address challenges in Akwamu traditional area in the Eastern region of Ghana. Africa is bedeviled with environmental crisis in this 21st century, and this has been a major concern to environmental conservationists. In Ghana, one of such environmental crisis is pollution of water bodies as a result of indiscriminate human activities. Some have argued that non-recognition of indigenous knowledge in the management of water resources has been one of the major challenges of water resource crisis in Africa and Ghana is no exception. In the life and thought of indigenous people of Ghana, studies confirm that conservation of water resources is enforced through traditional religiously governed norms which have stood the test of time before formal institutions responsible for biodiversity conservation were established by government. Using Akwamu traditional area in Ghana as a case, this study explores how the indigenous people manage water bodies and to find out the possibility of incorporating indigenous knowledge practices and modern methods to address the current water resource problems in Ghana. Primary and secondary sources are employed for data collection. The study is carried out within the concept of ‘worldview’ to understand how indigenous people manage the environment through their indigenous belief systems. The findings are that; indigenous knowledge practices are potential tools for addressing water resource crisis in Ghana. The study also indicates that if indigenous knowledge practices are used alongside with the modern methods in water resource management, our water resource problems would be minimized if not totally solved in Africa.
... The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution was an independent standing body established in 1970 to advise the Queen, Government, Parliament, the devolved administrations and the public on environmental issues, and was closed on 1 April 2011(Owens, 2012). ...
The prevalence of population-level obesity in England has reached critical levels, particularly in early years where 1 in 5 children start school above a healthy weight. The planning system empowers local authorities to manage the use and development of the environment to support and enable people’s healthy lifestyles in avoiding being overweight or obese. Since the public health reforms in 2012 which brought public health functions back into local authorities, local authorities are exploring the range of powers available to achieve public health objectives, including transforming how we plan for healthy weight environments.
The research aimed to better understand what and how planning powers are being utilised by local authorities to help tackle population obesity. It updated the evidence base, through a literature review, of the Town and Country Planning Association’s six Planning Healthy Weight Environments Framework (PHWEF) themes developed in 2014 which set out areas where planning can have influence over. It identified what powers currently exist within the English planning system to address these themes. It collated and synthesised local authority public health professionals and town planners’ perspectives on the barriers and opportunities of the use of planning and its powers through focus groups within two local authorities and semi-structured interviews with national stakeholders.
The findings validated the PHWEF on the positive association between the environment and obesity indicators including physical activity levels and nutritional intake, though method employed by researchers in the literature were inconsistent; identified three categories of planning powers according to Legislative, Guidance and Levers, available to both require and encourage those with responsibilities for and involvement in planning to promote all of some of the PHWEF themes; and highlighted practitioners’ role and challenges in promoting healthy weight environments. While the majority of research participants were aware of the availability of relevant planning powers and have further highlighted other relevant powers available, many were not aware of their potential. Also, there were wider systems barriers including conflicting policy priorities, lack of policy prescription and alignment at local levels, and impact from reduced capacity and resources.
The conclusions supported a small body of research which suggest policy makers need to ensure barriers are removed before planning powers can be effectively used, and despite challenges, local authorities can have confidence in rallying around the planning powers they already have to promote healthy weight environments as part of a whole systems approach.
... One of the reasons for this might be that the ES concept has been predominately well known mainly by scientists since the 1990s. Yet, the diffusion of scientific knowledge into policy making and practice can be extremely slow due to institutional inertia, policy constraints, or the time needed by the stakeholders to adjust to new ideas (Owens 2012;Sabatier 1988). This means that policy makers and practitioners at least seem to think about environmental issues even if they do not use the ES concept for the analysis. ...
Neben der Erhaltung und Sanierung von Biotopen ist auch deren Neuentwicklung eine wichtige Aufgabe der Landschaftsplanung. Damit kann ein breites Spektrum von Adressaten angesprochen werden, welches neben den Naturschutzbehörden die Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Gemeinden, Fachplanungen und andere Vorhabenträger umfasst. Diese können instrumentelle Möglichkeiten zur Erhaltung und Sicherung von neu entwickelten Biotopen nutzen, die u. a. in rechtlichem Schutz und der planerischen Steuerung der Flächennutzung bestehen. Entwicklungsmaßnahmen können aus dem Biotopentwicklungspotenzial unter Berücksichtigung anderer Ziele der Landschaftsplanung und der Umsetzungsbedingungen abgeleitet werden. Detailliert wird in diesem Kapitel auf Maßnahmen zur Wiedervernässung, Aufforstung, Sukzession und Entwicklung von Ackerwildkrautfluren eingegangen.
... Inspections application, create an opportunity for research to inform practice (60), sitting within the "research-implementation space" (60) by making research outputs accessible in multiple dynamic forms that maintain pace with the discovery of new infestations support communication between local AIS county managers and researchers. It's important to note that knowledge gained through empirical, data-driven, "evidence" is only one factor in the decision-making process (61,62), and practical, social, and institutional constraints, in addition to stakeholder attitudes, beliefs, and intentions, are all critical contributions to decision-making and AIS management. ...
Invasions of aquatic invasive species have imposed significant economic and ecological damage to global aquatic ecosystems. Once an invasive population has established in a new habitat, eradication can be financially and logistically impossible, motivating management strategies to rely heavily upon prevention measures aimed at reducing the introduction and spread. To be productive, on-the-ground management of aquatic invasive species requires effective decision-making surrounding the allocation of limited resources. Watercraft inspections play an important role in managing aquatic invasive species by preventing the overland transport of invasive species between waterbodies and providing education to boaters. In this study, we developed and tested an interactive web-based decision-support tool, AIS Explorer: Prioritization for Watercraft Inspections, to guide AIS managers in developing efficient watercraft inspection plans. The decision-support tool is informed by a novel network model that maximized the number of inspected watercraft that move from AIS-infested to uninfested waterbodies, within and outside of counties in Minnesota, USA. It was iteratively built with stakeholder feedback, including consultations with county managers, beta-testing of the web-based application, and workshops to educate and train end-users. The co-development and implementation of data-driven decision support tools demonstrate how interdisciplinary methods can be used to connect science and management to support decision-making. The AIS Explorer: Prioritization for Watercraft Inspections application makes optimized research outputs accessible in multiple dynamic forms that maintain pace with the identification of new infestations and local needs. In addition, the decision support tool has supported improved and closer communication between AIS managers and researchers on this topic.
... However, scholarship has shown that the influence on decision-making of expertise from GEAs and other expert bodies can take different forms. A long-term study of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in the UK, for example, found the influence of this national-level expert body ranged from rapid adoption of recommendations to diffuse 'atmospheric' influence that is impossible to tease out from other sources (Owens, 2012). This picture is further complicated when we consider that GEAs engage with a heterogeneous global audience, whose cultures and traditions of decision-making can vary widely (Miller, 2007). ...
Global environmental assessments are widely considered to play a prominent role in environmental governance. However, they are also criticised for a lack of effectiveness in informing policy and decision-making. In response, GEAs have adopted a number of strategies to bolster their effectiveness, including by orienting themselves towards solutions (solution-orientation), increasing the diversity of included experts (participation), and producing more targeted assessments (contextualisation). In this article, we analyse these strategies as attempts to be effective for multiple audiences while also identifying the limitations of these strategies. Based on this analysis, we propose to conceive of GEAs as processes that are able to empower diverse actors – ranging from diplomats in international negotiations to civil society activists, or indigenous and local knowledge holders – to act towards socio-environmental objectives. Seen in this light, the effectiveness of GEAs can be improved by reflecting on which actors can benefit from assessments and how assessments can contribute to their empowerment. This strategy goes beyond current proposals that aim to strengthen the authority of assessments by boosting the scientific quality and credibility of the reports. Indeed, it complements them with an explicitly political perspective. Using examples of empowerment in different phases of GEA production and use, we argue that this reconceptualisation of effectiveness requires assessments to reflect a diversity of problem and solution frames, thereby creating entry points for the empowerment of a broad range of actors. We conclude by providing three illustrative ideas to improve effectiveness for the design and execution of assessments.
... One of the reasons for this might be that the ES concept has been predominately well known mainly by scientists since the 1990s. Yet, the diffusion of scientific knowledge into policy making and practice can be extremely slow due to institutional inertia, policy constraints, or the time needed by the stakeholders to adjust to new ideas (Owens 2012;Sabatier 1988). This means that policy makers and practitioners at least seem to think about environmental issues even if they do not use the ES concept for the analysis. ...
Human well-being depends in many ways on maintaining the stock of natural resources which deliver the services from which humans benefit. However, these resources and flows of services are increasingly threatened by unsustainable and competing land uses. Particular threats exist to those public goods whose values are not well-represented in markets or whose deterioration will only affect future generations. As market forces alone are not sufficient, effective means for local and regional planning are needed in order to safeguard scarce natural resources, coordinate land uses and create sustainable landscape structures.
This book argues that a solution to such challenges in Europe can be found by merging the landscape planning tradition with ecosystem services concepts. Landscape planning has strengths in recognition of public benefits and implementation mechanisms, while the ecosystem services approach makes the connection between the status of natural assets and human well-being more explicit. It can also provide an economic perspective, focused on individual preferences and benefits, which helps validate the acceptability of environmental planning goals. Thus linking landscape planning and ecosystem services provides a two-way benefit, creating a usable science to meet the needs of local and regional decision making.
The book is structured around the Drivers-Pressures-State- Impact-Responses framework, providing an introduction to relevant concepts, methodologies and techniques. It presents a new, ecosystem services-informed, approach to landscape planning that constitutes both a framework and toolbox for students and practitioners to address the environmental and landscape challenges of 21st century Europe.
... Traditional TA is centered on independent expert analysis-for example, setting up government bodies of experts that hold public hearings and seek input from selected witnesses (Federation of American Scientists, n.d. ;Owens, 2012). In contrast, participatory technology assessment (PTA) refers to methods and activities that aim to be more democratic by eliciting the informed views of citizens or formally integrating public deliberation into the TA process. ...
People in contemporary industrial societies encounter countless novel materials that did not exist previously, many of which present risks to health and environment. In this article, we build on the concept of “materials sovereignty” as the right of people to use and be surrounded by environmentally benign, non-toxic, and renewing materials in their everyday lives. As a rights-based approach, materials sovereignty may help change the politics of governing materials. We suggest that social movements that explicitly base interventions into design on materials sovereignty may be better able to gain traction in changing industrial production. We consider the case of nanotechnology as a particularly challenging field for social movement intervention. We review several pathways that have been used by social movement organizations in attempts to influence the development of nanomaterials, but which have met with limited success. We more closely examine three participatory pathways through which social movements could intervene more directly into material design: participatory technology assessment, collaboration with industry, and co-design. We identify three key elements of materials sovereignty: participatory knowledge systems, which create multi-directional flows of knowledge and agency; the embedding of citizen voices into design processes; and building accountability systems. Of the pathways we examine here, co-design appears to be the most promising from a theoretical and ethical perspective, but there remain significant institutional and organizational challenges for bringing it into practice.
... However, decades of research in other fields, including communication studies, behavioural psychology, and science and technology studies, have challenged the idea that making information produced by scientists more accessible will lead to better conservation outcomes (Pielke, 2007;Owens, 2012;Newell et al., 2014). These scholars have effectively demonstrated that the linear model of scientific uptake is only effective in relatively simple contexts in which stakeholders have shared goals and solutions that are technical, rather than behavioural or cultural (Sarewitz, 2004;Pielke, 2007;Wyborn et al., 2017). ...
Despite increased focus on the importance of navigating the spaces between research and implementation, conservation science is still not put into practice as often as it could be. Disciplinary and geographical biases, as well as insufficient funding or recognition of interdisciplinary communication, limit engagement between scientists, practitioners and decision-makers in the field of conservation science - especially in early stages and the follow-up of conservation projects. In light of the current global biodiversity and climate crisis, the broad community of conservation science faces questions with regard to how we can explore and expand implementation spaces to create opportunities for better collaboration and communication between science and our society: (1) Do we have our priorities right? (2) Are we documenting and learning from our successes and failures through evaluation? (3) And who are we including or excluding in the spaces between research and implementation? In this editorial, we present an overview of our Special Issue on “Implementation Spaces in Conservation Science”, in which these questions and the challenges that they raise are highlighted. Finally, we ask whether conservation science is ready for a paradigm shift - not only in the ways we do conservation, but also in how we think about it. This shift would open new avenues towards modern ways of implementing conservation evidence into practice through teaching, training and evaluation integrated into cooperation and communication with other disciplines and non-scientists. Ultimately, it will help us to properly measure success and thus influence cooperation with policy and decision-makers in conservation, but also promote integration of more diverse perspectives and knowledges from yet underrepresented parts of the conservation science landscape.
... One of the reasons for this might be that the ES concept has been predominately well known mainly by scientists since the 1990s. Yet, the diffusion of scientific knowledge into policy making and practice can be extremely slow due to institutional inertia, policy constraints, or the time needed by the stakeholders to adjust to new ideas (Owens 2012;Sabatier 1988). This means that policy makers and practitioners at least seem to think about environmental issues even if they do not use the ES concept for the analysis. ...
This chapter describes the potential of different EU policies for implementing the concept of ecosystem services (ES) at different scales. We provide an overview of a broad range of EU policies and their role as drivers for ecosystem services provision and impairment on the regional and local scale and present the consideration of the ES concept within these policies. This is based on research conducted in the EU FP7 OpenNESS project. Additionally, we provide examples of the implementation of selected policies in EU Member States: the EU Water Framework Directive and Public Policy Appraisals allowing for a more in-depth evaluation of opportunities and obstacles of the implementation processes.
... Knowledge use might be constrained either consciously or unconsciously due to a wide range of factors, including context specific problems, policy conflicts, time constraints, decision-maker characteristics such as personal interests, limited capacity or report skills to process scientific knowledge, organizational structure, mismatches between the type of knowledge that is produced and needed, uncertainties etc. (e.g. Simon, 1947;Juntti et al., 2009;Owens, 2012;Turnpenny et al., 2013;Hilden et al., 2014). Hence it is due to such factors, that in reality knowledge use and its influence on policy decisions often, if not always, deviate from the rational norms and expectations described in traditional conceptual models. ...
This deliverable produces a comparative analysis of national adaptation strategies in a selected sample of EU Member States. It is split into 3 analytical parts. Part 1 explores the architecture of adaptation policy in different EU Member States through the lens of policy coordination, including knowledge sharing, and explores the tension between top-down and bottom-up approaches. Part 2 compares the climate policy integration rationale underpinning national adaptation strategies to examine conceptual differences between climate policy integration and climate adaptation policy integration. Part 3 examines the integration of adaptation concerns and associated knowledge use in three key policy sectors: agriculture, water management and health. report 2
... They generally exist for a limited time, on average taking between two and four years to produce a report, and have had a mixed impact. The work of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution spanned 40 years and had considerable influence (Owens, 2012), but other commissions have had less impact or have even been disestablished before reporting (Institute for Government, n.d.). We do not think a Royal Commission would be an appropriate means of representing future generations primarily because a Commission is generally time-limited and addresses a specific issue. ...
Global existential and catastrophic risks, particularly those arising from technological developments, present challenges for intergenerational justice. We aim to present a solutions-based approach to the challenge of intergenerational inequality. We examine options for representing future generations in our present policymaking structures, drawing on case studies from Singapore, Finland, Hungary, Israel, Scotland and Wales. We derive several factors which contribute to the success of some of these institutions, and discuss reasons for the failure or abolition of others. We draw out broad lessons which we can apply to policymaking in England, and make policy recommendations based on these findings.
... Yet the ways in which knowledge on ecosystem services is actually used to inform decision-making at different governance levels is overlooked (Laurans et al., 2013;Jordan and Russel, 2014;Primmer et al., 2015;Mann et al., 2015;Russel et al., 2016). As literature on the role of scientific knowledge in policy making suggests, the knowledge-decision making dynamics are far more complicated than the linear knowledge transfer model assumes (Weiss, 1979;Jasanoff, 1987;Owens, 2012), implying that simply providing more knowledge does not automatically lead to better and more informed decisions. Therefore, there is a need for studies to better understand the patterns of ecosystem service knowledge use and associated enablers and barriers in different institutional, sectoral and operational contexts. ...
The promise that ecosystem service assessments will contribute to better decision-making is not yet proven. We analyse how knowledge on ecosystem services is actually used to inform land and water management in 22 case studies covering different social-ecological systems in European and Latin American countries. None of the case studies reported instrumental use of knowledge in a sense that ecosystem service knowledge would have served as. an impartial arbiter between policy options. Yet, in most cases, there was some evidence of conceptual learning as a result of close interaction between researchers, practitioners and stakeholders. We observed several factors that constrained knowledge uptake, including competing interests and political agendas, scientific disputes, professional norms and competencies, and lack of vertical and horizontal integration. Ecosystem knowledge played a small role particularly in those planning and policy-making situations where it challenged established interests and the current distribution of benefits from ecosystems. The factors that facilitated knowledge use included application of transparent participatory methods, social capital, policy champions and clear synergies between ecosystem services and human well-being. The results are aligned with previous studies which have emphasized the importance of building local capacity, ownership and trust for the long-term success of ecosystem service research.
... One reason for this lack of ES concept recognition may be that the ES concept is mainly acknowledged by scientists; and then only since the 1990's. Moreover, the diffusion of scientific knowledge into policymaking and practice can be extremely slow because of institutional inertia, policy constraints and the time required by agents to accept and disseminate new ideas (Owen 2012). Finally, the integrative effects of the ES concept are not considered because of separation of planning systems into spatial-economic planning and ecosystem-related landscape planning. ...
This paper provides a detailed analysis of environment policy implementation in national, regional and local landscape planning in Slovakia. The policy and strategic documents are assessed from the perspective of the ecosystem services (ES) concept which integrates environmental and economic objectives of the landscape planning. This paper builds on three main empirical elements: (1) review of key national policies in respect to landscape planning, (2) review of key local and regional planning, strategic and assessment documents, (3) stakeholder interviews and focus groups. Our results indicate that spatial planning and assessment processes in Slovakia based on legislation and regulations for individual sectors are mainly contradictory in some cases, rather than encompassing integrated (landscape) planning procedures. The ES concept has not been considered in any planning tools across scales. These results were found to be similar with respective EU policies, in which the limited uptake of the ES concept was also observed. Finally, the paper presents recommendations which can enhance spatial planning processes in Slovakia; using an ES-inspired integrated framework for landscape assessment and decision-making. Such improvement of planning and decision-making procedures can be exploited in real-world solutions, and provide long-term benefits for human well-being while still retaining links to ecosystem functions and processes.EDITED BY Sandra Luque
... However, the notion that larger quantities of evermore precise information inevitably lead to more effective outcomes in the "real-world" is refuted by well-established theories of human decision-making, such as value-action gap theory in social psychology and reflective practice theory in organizational management, along with contemporary understandings of the science-policy interface in communications and science and technology studies (Table 1). Scholars have convincingly shown that empirical "evidence" is only one factor (and often a minor one) influencing decision-making and change (Pielke 2007;Owens 2012). While the linear model depends upon the idea that science is a tool that enables the trained expert to uncover the "truth" about the universe (i.e., positivism), decades of science studies scholarship has demonstrated that "facts" are not perceived in the same way by different publics, but rather are filtered through existing beliefs, mental models, experiences, and concerns (Nisbet & Scheulefe 2009;Newell et al. 2014). ...
Recent scholarship in conservation biology has pointed to the existence of a ‘research-implementation’ gap and has proposed various solutions for overcoming it. Some of these solutions, such as evidence-based conservation, are based on the assumption that the gap exists primarily because of a communication problem in getting reliable and needed technical information to decision makers. First, we identify conceptual weaknesses with this framing, supporting our arguments with decades of research in other fields of study. We then reconceptualise the gap as a series of crucial, productive spaces in which shared interests, value conflicts and complex relations between scientists and publics can interact. Whereas synonyms for ‘gap’ include words such as ‘chasm’, ‘rift’, or ‘breach’, the word ‘space’ is connected with words such as ‘arena’, ‘capacity’, and ‘place’ and points to who and what already exists in a specific context. Finally, we offer ways forward for applying this new understanding in practice. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... Same applies to the effectiveness of the use of GIS-based information on ES: it is problematic to detect a direct use of ES knowledge for a specific decision. However, it is possible that knowledge produced for different purposes may accumulate and gradually contribute to long-term learning (Owens, 2012;Turnpenny et al., 2014). According to Turnpenny et al. (2014: 249) knowledge use is 'heavily determined by the ability of 'generators' to find the right moment to 'deploy' their knowledge. ...
... This leads to our second argument, which is that addressing the leverage questionunderstanding how, why, and in what circumstances environmental knowledge comes to exert leverage over business as usual (see also Owens, 2012)-requires a theoretical framework with a more reflexive engagement between techniques for environmental assessment and the social and institutional contexts in which they are used (see Adelle et al, 2012;Carmona and Sieh, 2008;Rydin, 2010). We make a case for using concepts from science and technology studies to dissect how particular approaches to the production of environmental knowledge become bound into actions-a process in which the 'internal' qualities of knowledge are but one element of processes that also bring together an array of 'external' factors. ...
Proponents of ecosystem services approaches to assessment claim that it will ensure the environment is `properly valued' in decision making. Analysts seeking to understand the likelihood of this could usefully reexamine previous attempts to deploy novel assessment processes in land-use planning and how they affect decisions. This paper draws insights from a meta-analysis of three case studies: environmental capital, ecological footprinting, and green infrastructure. Concepts from science and technology studies are used to interpret how credibility for each new assessment process was assembled, and the ways by which the status of knowledge produced becomes negotiable or prescriptive. The influence of these processes on planning decisions is shown to be uneven, and depends on a combination of institutional setting and problem framing, not simply knowledge content. The analysis shows how actively cultivating wide stakeholder buy-in to new assessment approaches may secure wider support, but not necessarily translate into major influence on decisions.
In recent years, the drama of ‘Crown’ in Netflix becomes
popular promptly in the globe. In Episode 3 of Season 3, the plot is
about Aberfan disaster, occurring in 1966 of Wales, the UK, and this
episode successfully recalls audiences’ sorrow. Undoubtedly, it was
one of significant events in British history of education. Since
COVID-19 does serious damage to all mankind in 2019, it causes
numerous deaths and has deep influences on the development of
economy, education and other levels of our lives. The lesson is
concerned once again on the balance between human beings and the
natural environment. This paper explores 116 students of deaths in
Aberfan disaster, caused by human and natural disasters, by official
documents, reports and scholars’ surveys. After that, the concept of
‘pedagogies of disaster’ will be examined for a new definition to
criticize Aberfan disaster. Specifically, the foundation of pedagogies
of disaster is mainly built on two scholars’ contributions, including
environmental ethics of H. Rolston, III by the perspective of
philosophy and G. McCulloch’s demonstration on the relationship
between educational development and economic performance by the
perspective of history. Finally, some concluding remarks and implications will be supported for educational policy-makers,
educational practitioners and educational researchers.
近年隨著Netflix 影集「王冠」於全球受到觀眾喜愛之後，第
三季第三集有關威爾斯艾伯凡災難之描述，再次勾起大眾對於這
起發生於1966 年英國教育史上重大事件的傷痛記憶。自從2019
年起嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎席捲全球，造成大量傷亡，影響經濟、
教育等各層面發展，人類如何與大自然和諧相處再次成為重要課
題。本研究透過官方檔案及調查報告等一手史料，以及二手的今
人研究文獻重新耙梳艾伯凡災難的前因後果，探究「人禍」加上
「天災」如何造成當年116 位學生死亡。再者，本研究者重新賦
予「災難教育學」定義與內涵，主要透過兩面向論證，包含哲學
面向採用H. Rolston, III 於生態倫理學的學說主張；歷史面向上則
採用G. McCulloch 對於教育發展與經濟表現之間關連所進行的批
判。最後，本研究透過艾伯凡災難的探究提出對於教育政策制訂
者、教育實務工作者以及教育研究者的相關啟示。
This anthology brings together a diversity of key texts in the emerging field of Existential Risk Studies. It serves to complement the previous volume The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies by providing open access to original research and insights in this rapidly evolving field. At its heart, this book highlights the ongoing development of new academic paradigms and theories of change that have emerged from a community of researchers in and around the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. The chapters in this book challenge received notions of human extinction and civilization collapse and seek to chart new paths towards existential security and hope.
The volume curates a series of research articles, including previously published and unpublished work, exploring the nature and ethics of catastrophic global risk, the tools and methodologies being developed to study it, the diverse drivers that are currently pushing it to unprecedented levels of danger, and the pathways and opportunities for reducing this. In each case, they go beyond simplistic and reductionist accounts of risk to understand how a diverse range of factors interact to shape both catastrophic threats and our vulnerability and exposure to them and reflect on different stakeholder communities, policy mechanisms, and theories of change that can help to mitigate and manage this risk. Bringing together experts from across diverse disciplines, the anthology provides an accessible survey of the current state of the art in this emerging field.
The interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary nature of the cutting-edge research presented here makes this volume a key resource for researchers and academics. However, the editors have also prepared introductions and research highlights that will make it accessible to an interested general audience as well. Whatever their level of experience, the volume aims to challenge readers to take on board the extent of the multiple dangers currently faced by humanity, and to think critically and proactively about reducing global risk.
In recent years, concerns about a crisis of expert authority have been expressed across the globe. Japan is no exception to this trend. Scandals surrounding the (mis)management of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster severely damaged public confidence in state institutions, posing an additional challenge for those engaged in radiological protection. This article examines how claims to expert authority are made in these conditions of low public trust. To this end, I offer an ethnographic account of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA) Workshop on Post-Accident Food Safety Science—an event staged at the request of the Japanese Cabinet Office with the aim of inspiring confidence in Fukushima produce. I analyse the practices through which the organizers craft a credible public persona using the idiom of dramaturgical improvisation; drawing attention to the ‘performed resourcefulness’ with which they adapted extant institutional scripts in response to a discerned crisis of public reason. Concretely, improvisation invites us to consider how and why nuclear policy actors have sought to demarcate two variants of the deficit model: the (psychological) discourse of ‘radiophobia’ and the (economic) discourse of ‘reputational damage’. Where prior scholarship has identified the continuities between the two discourses, an attention to this boundary work reveals the dramaturgical advantages of ‘reputational damage’ over ‘radiophobia’ in contesting critics’ claims to the mantle of victimhood, securing international support, and producing the expert’s body as a site of evidence.
In this article we review the literature, with a focus on cacti, about the role of cultivation in conservation. We examine in detail the case study of Lophophora williamsii, the peyote cactus, and present arguments that cultivation is not only a necessary conservation strategy for this particular species but is likely the only viable alternative for long-term survival of this cactus in the wild. Concerns about cultivation, as well as recommendations and conservation implications are also discussed.
Water is increasingly framed as a financial risk in equity markets. This article illustrates that this framing must be understood as a new aspect of the wider history of the financialization of the water sector. Unlike earlier instances, where water‐related services , or water risks are the primary subjects to be financialized, water itself is here being reformed to fit market logic. This article reviews, unpacks, and analyses the factors that have enabled, reframed, and defined water as a financial risk. As such, the article goes beyond simply reviewing what has happened, but also presents a critical analysis of why and how , and the potential effects this may have. Drawing on advanced theoretical perspectives from the social sciences, specifically building on the constitutive nature of language, the role of expertise in the knowledge‐policy interface, and the sociology of quantification, it proposes that the reframing of water into a financial risk is not a value‐free exercise. Critically, it shows that the value of water, at least as it relates to company activities, could be reduced to only embody those aspects which, in quantitative terms can be shown to affect Return on Investment. To alleviate this reductive process, an ambitious multi‐ and interdisciplinary research agenda must be developed moving forward to ensure that the multiple values of water are recognized and accounted for in equity markets and beyond.
This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water
Human Water > Water Governance
Invasions of aquatic invasive species have caused significant economic and ecological damage to global aquatic ecosystems. Once an invasive population has established in a new habitat, eradication can be financially and logistically impossible, motivating management strategies to rely heavily upon prevention measures to reduce the introduction and spread. To be productive, on-the-ground management of aquatic invasive species requires effective decision-making surrounding the allocation of limited resources. Watercraft inspections play an important role in managing aquatic invasive species by preventing the overland transport of invasive species between waterbodies and providing education to boaters. In this study, we developed and tested an interactive web-based decision-support tool, AIS Explorer: Prioritization for Watercraft Inspections, to guide AIS managers in developing efficient watercraft inspection plans. The decision-support tool is informed by a network-based algorithm that maximized the number of inspected watercraft that move from AIS infested to uninfested lakes within and between counties in Minnesota, USA. It was iteratively built with stakeholder feedback, including consultations with county managers, beta-testing of the web-based application, and workshops to educate and train end-users. The co-development and implementation of data-driven decision support tools demonstrate how interdisciplinary methods can be used to connect science and management to support decision-making. The AIS Explorer: Prioritization for Watercraft Inspections application makes optimized research outputs accessible in multiple dynamic forms that maintain pace with discovery of new infestations and local needs. In addition, the decision support tool has supported improved and closer communication between AIS managers and researchers on this topic.
Decision support systems (DSS) aim to provide evidence in a usable format for decision-makers, thereby improving the prospects for evidence-informed conservation policy and practice. These systems are usually software-based either in computer or app-form, but may exist in other formats such as on paper. Conservation decision-makers are typically faced with complex socio-environmental landscapes, competing stakeholder interests, and irreducible uncertainty. Consequently, conservation has been the focus for numerous decision support systems, which can help users to face the challenge of making trade-offs. Despite the many systems designed for conservation, there is not an accepted framework for how to develop systems that make an impact in practice. There is evidence, however, to suggest that some systems are failing to make an impact in practice. This chapter draws on lessons learned from conservation and related disciplines on how to design good decision support systems that are desirable to intended end users. To this end, we suggest a five-stage process for participatory user-centred design—(1) identifying the user, (2) proving system value, (3) assessing available infrastructure and focusing on ease of use, (4) adopting a good marketing plan, and (5) establishing a long-term legacy—a process which could be used by researchers and funders alike to ensure that systems will be used by their intended audiences. Above all, we need to change our own design behaviour to increase the relevance and usefulness of the systems we are building. Acknowledging the reality that decision support systems will be implemented in complex and potentially data-sparse environments, we also reflect on how decision support systems can help decision-makers to deal with uncertain information. This final element seeks to establish the value both of quantifying uncertainty and communicating it in accessible ways to decision-makers.
The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to an improved historical understanding of the challenges and complexities involved in constructing systems of governance of motor vehicle air pollution. The specific aim of the study is to explore the development of regulatory vehicle emission standards in Sweden between 1960 and the 1980s as well as to analyze this development within its broader European economic, regulatory and environmental policy context by adopting a transnational approach. The overarching research question concerns the historical dynamics and processes that created obstacles to implementation of stringent vehicle emission standards in Sweden from 1960 through the 1980s. To answer this question, the study focuses specifically on expert, business, and governmental actors’ interaction in the political process in Sweden, seeking to reveal these actors’ motivations, justifications, and power to influence the outcome.
The study concludes that one set of difficulties concerned the relationship between vehicle emission standards and international trade, in the sense that stringent emission standards, which in turn are dissimilar from internationally adopted norms, raise trade barriers with implications for trade and foreign relations. The Swedish government, however, implemented stricter standards than those in Europe on three occasions between 1968 and 1982. Both the Swedish and the international car industry were greatly opposed to the Swedish government’s implementation of standards that were more stringent than those adopted in Europe, though the Swedish industry was not opposed to the government’s environmental ambitions as such. On the international arena, since the late 1960s, the thesis shows that the car industry favored international harmonization of technical regulations and lobbied national governments toward this end, while the study further concludes that the Swedish car industry was unsuccessful in its attempts to oppose regulation at home. Another set of challenges was related to the knowledge creation process and the requirement that these standards should reflect technical, economic, and scientific knowledge. The thesis shows how Swedish techno-scientific experts were key actors in the Swedish system of vehicle emission governance, while techno-scientific knowledge was an important tool in justifying Swedish unilateral policies to industrial actors and foreign governments. Still, producing techno-scientific knowledge is a time-consuming process and requires considerable resources. For small countries, the relative costs of producing techno-scientific knowledge are higher than producing it in the immediate political, economic, and technical context – i.e., together with other European countries and car industries. However, the thesis further concludes that the knowledge created in the Swedish system for vehicle emission governance was an important tool for linking standards with other progressive countries: both in terms of implementing goals on air pollution control that were more ambitious than those adopted by most European countries and for coordinating implementation of these standards as well as new fuel infrastructures.
This thesis contributes new historical knowledge and perspectives of relevance to several bodies of literature. By displacing the EEC/EU from the center of analysis, the thesis offers the literature on European integration new perspectives. The thesis also adds knowledge regarding the construction of technical standards by shedding light on the role of knowledge creation in developing and implementing standards in a transitional setting. The thesis, moreover, contributes to the literature on the political power of business by closely tracing the car industry’s attempts to influence the regulatory development.
This two-part paper details the arguments and evidence that have been marshalled by both climate scientists and social scientists to critique the current procedures and methodologies deployed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to represent the risks of anthropogenic forcing and a continuation of business-as-usual. In the first part, the rationale for moving from an atmospheric stabilisation target to an average surface temperature target is explained. This is followed by a discussion of the IPCC’s representations of nonlinear behaviour in relation to climate forcing, and the problems associated with using a single temperature target in assessing climate risk. An outline is then provided of efforts to define what can or should constitute physical, biological and socio-economic indicators of dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI). The paper reviews the IPCC’s representations of sea-level rise to illustrate the argument that it continues to take insufficient account of the paleoclimate record and improved methods of modelling. Part 1 concludes by arguing that the IPCC continues to under-represent the risks associated with DAI. In the second part, the rationale and methodologies for reconfiguring international climate governance are discussed in more detail. Part 2 argues that the currently dominant model of international policymaking is primarily an outcome of compromises made by governments under pressure from powerful polluting industries and their business allies. It is argued that the political economy of international climate governance has produced systematic biases in the kinds of expertise and evidence that national governments deem appropriate for consideration via the IPCC and UNFCCC frameworks, along with the relative importance that is ascribed to them. Drawing on the research of climate scientists and social scientists, some suggestions for how to restructure and refocus the activities of the IPCC, UNFCCC and climate governance more generally are canvassed, including the necessity of creating far more interdisciplinary and democratically accountable structures of expertise for climate policy-making at the national and supra-national levels. Part 2 concludes with a discussion of the kinds of reforms which could be undertaken to reduce the ability of incumbent actors to shape climate policy and politics to their advantage.
In 2014, Inwood and Johns analyzed the policy legacy of ten Canadian commissions of inquiry. This article extends that analysis by incorporating the policy legacy as one element of the leadership legacy of the commission chairs; the other two elements are the chair’s expressive legacy and fiduciary legacy. The expressive legacy can be that of a conservator, consolidator, entrepreneur, or catalyst, and the fiduciary legacy is determined by the commission chair’s respect for the norms and conventions of commissions of inquiry. Using the case studies from Inwood and Johns’ analysis of the commissions’ policy legacies, we ascribe expressive and fiduciary legacies to the chairs of the ten commissions. Through analysis of the relationships among the commissions’ policy legacies and the chairs’ expressive and fiduciary legacies, we explore the ways in which chairs’ conduct of the inquiry produce a leadership legacy for the chair.
The aim of EKLIPSE is to develop a mechanism to inform European-scale policy on biodiversity and related environmental challenges. This paper considers two fundamental aspects of the decisionsupport mechanism being developed by EKLIPSE: 1) the engagement of relevant actors from science, policy and society to jointly identify evidence for decision making; and 2) the networking of scientists and other holders of knowledge on biodiversity and other relevant evidence. The mechanism being developed has the potential not only to build communities of knowledge holders but to build informal networks among those with similar interests in evidence, be they those that seek to use evidence or those who are building evidence, or both. EKLIPSE has been successful in linking these people and in contributing to building informal networks of requesters of evidence, and experts of evidence and its synthesis. We have yet to see, however, significant engagement of formal networks of knowledge holders. Future success, however, relies on the continued involvement with and engagement of networks, a high degree of transparency within the processes and a high flexibility of structures to adapt to different requirements that arise with the broad range of requests to and activities of EKLIPSE.
Changing personal mobility behavior in response to climate change represents a major challenge for social scientists and practitioners, given the embedded nature of mobility in daily life. Attempts to understand, govern, and promote more sustainable mobility have tended to focus on individual decision making and incremental shifts in behavior, such as reduced car use and increased walking, cycling, and public transport use. Indeed, these are progressively being woven into narratives of “smart” travel and the use of technology to enhance individual decision making. In this review, I respond to these developments by arguing that researchers and practitioners need to reframe their understanding of personal mobility to consider how travel can also be understood as an embedded form of practice, intimately connected to historic, economic, and cultural influences. In so doing, I propose that researchers need to focus their attention on two major challenges that constitute underpinning obstacles for promoting long‐term shifts in personal mobility: the ways in which cities are governed, designed, and regulated to promote hypermobility rather than dwelling; and the formidable problem of reducing personal carbon emissions from a growing international tourism industry. In addressing these two challenges, I argue for a new intellectual agenda that places personal well‐being at the center of efforts to promote shifts toward low carbon mobility practices. Such (radical) shifts include reducing the demand for travel, an emphasis on dwelling, and the promotion of “active” travel and “slow tourism.” In short, I ask why we travel so much, and why we don't travel well.
This article is categorized under:
• Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Behavior Change and Responses
The purpose of this paper is to explain the similarities and differences between Climate Law and Environmental Law in order to improve understanding of the concepts. Although these concepts cannot be studied separately, they are not completely the same. Thus finding conceptual connotations behind both concepts are sine qua non for unravelling the difficulties bedevilling enforcement and implementation of laws protecting the environment. Given that Climate Law and Environmental law have already met with serious opposition regarding its implementation in many developed countries of the world, it has become pertinent to explore deeper meanings into the laws that are meant to protect the environment and the atmosphere. Doing so requires an in-depth research into the contemporary understanding of the concepts of environmental law and climate law as opposed to the general perception that they mean one and the same thing at all times. Finally this paper suggests a balanced and conceptual approach to the interpretation of environmental law. It is hoped that this paper would provoke further critical debate in environmental law-making and a better informed public participation in the issues of climate change.
This paper gives one of the first in-depth ethnographic accounts of organisational learning in a public participation organisation, the UK Government-funded Sciencewise programme. It develops the concept of ‘organisational spaces’, highlighting the often diverse spaces found within organisational networks, and positing a co-productionist relationship between these different spaces and the kinds of learning processes that occur. The approach taken affirms the significant and active role of space in organisational learning processes, in a science policy context, as well as demonstrating the importance of connections between different organisational spaces in enabling more transformative learning processes. Two organisational spaces are described based on in-depth ethnographic and qualitative research in and around the Sciencewise programme 2013–2014. It is argued that informal, temporary and experimental organisational spaces have the potential to co-produce more transformative instances of learning, making an understanding of their connectedness to more formal and routinised organisational spaces vital for future research.
Scientific knowledge is considered to be an important factor (alongside others) in environmental policy-making. However, the opportunity for environmentalists to influence policy can often occur within short, discrete time windows. Therefore, a piece of research may have a negligible or transformative policy influence depending on when it is presented. These ‘policy windows’ are sometimes predictable, such as those dealing with conventions or legislation with a defined renewal period, but are often hard to anticipate. We describe four ways that environmentalists can respond to policy windows and increase the likelihood of knowledge uptake: 1) foresee (and create) emergent windows, 2) respond quickly to opening windows, 3) frame research in line with appropriate windows, and 4) persevere in closed windows. These categories are closely linked; efforts to enhance the incorporation of scientific knowledge into policy need to harness mechanisms within each. We illustrate the main points with reference to nature conservation, but the principles apply widely.
This article contributes to commission scholarship by exploring how and why chairs use their reports to shape their leadership legacies. It distinguishes two types of legacy – fiduciary and expressive – that chairs shape through their reports. The expressive legacy of the chair can be shaped through judgements about the scope of stakeholder engagement and agenda adjustment that generate four types of leadership identity: conservator, consolidator, advocate and catalyst. We explore the particular ways in which the chair of the Lyons Inquiry into Local Government in the UK used his three reports to shape his legacy. Through his distinctive integration of historical and contemporary perspectives into a leading vision for local government, he expressed a consolidator identity with his short-term recommendations and a catalytic identity with his far-reaching envisioning of the institutional space within which a greater place-shaping role for local government could be established.
Aquatic monitoring programs are imperative for the functioning of the environmental
impact assessment (EIA) process and a cornerstone for industrial compliance in Canada.
However, in 2012 several leading pieces of federal environmental legislation (e.g.,
Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 [CEAA 2012]) were drastically altered,
effectively weakening levels of environmental protection for aquatic ecosystems during
project developments. This paper assesses the impact of CEAA 2012 on aquatic
monitoring programs (and subsequent monitoring data reporting) across Canada for ten
projects (five completed pre- and five completed post-CEAA 2012). Projects included
four energy and six mining projects and were selected based on the following criteria: (i)
representative of Canada’s resource economy; (ii) project information was publicly
available; and (iii) strong public interest. Projects pre- and post-CEAA 2012 exhibited
few apparent differences before and after environmental regulatory changes. However,
wide discrepancies exist in numbers and types of parameters reported, along with a lack
of consistency in reporting. Projects pre-CEAA 2012 provided more follow-up
monitoring commitments. Although qualitative differences remain inconclusive, this
paper highlights requirements for further assessment of aquatic monitoring and follow-up
programs in Canada. Recommendations for the government to consider during reviews of
the federal environmental assessment processes include: (i) improved transparency on the
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency website (https://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/); (ii)
creation of a legally binding standardized aquatic monitoring program framework to
ensure that all Canadian aquatic ecosystems are monitored with equal rigour; and (iii) commitments and justification related to frequency of aquatic monitoring of water
quality. Available here from Springer Nature http://rdcu.be/pku4
This article identifies notable trends in environmental policy surrounding oil and gas development in Canada's leading producing provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan) in the period from 2009 to 2014: environmental policy streamlining in particular via the consolidation of environmental policymaking in development-oriented agencies, the continuation and raising of barriers to public involvement in decisions on oil and gas activity, and the avoidance of cumulative impact assessment. These trends signal policy convergence facilitating oil and gas development during a period of accelerating extraction and weakening federal environmental policy. More broadly, this confirms a pattern of conventional politics in energy-dependent subnational governments.
Recent research in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and related fields has scrutinized UK policy institutions’ governance of technical policy domains, revealing the prevalence of naïve assumptions about citizens’ engagement with science and technology. Government officials are characterized as wedded to institutional commitments and averse to criticism. From that perspective, technical policy issues such as energy and climate change are addressed without the sufficient interrogation of assumptions about citizens. This study, based on an analysis of 15 interviews with civil servants and over 40 documents (including evidence reviews, policy reports, stakeholder publications and parliamentary records), presents a more varied picture within the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) during the years of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government (2010–2015). It focuses on two priority policy areas of the time: the Green Deal and the installation of smart meters in UK homes. It is shown that government social researchers in DECC have aided policy officials to rethink their understandings of citizens. Social researchers have achieved this through their institutionalized commitment to providing an evidence-based “challenge function”. I conclude that policy development on technical topics is more likely to be effective if policy officials engage with social researchers at an early stage, and if social researchers receive senior civil service representation and support. This article is published as part of a collection on scientific advice to governments.
There has emerged in recent years an increased industry and regulatory demand for the streamlining of environmental assessment (EA), and at the same time, persistent expectations by Aboriginal communities for more effective and meaningful engagement in development decisions. This paper examines the extent to which scholarly research has contributed to solutions for meaningful Aboriginal participation amidst demands for more efficient and shorter timelines for participation and decision-making. Three research priorities are identified from our assessment of peer-reviewed EA scholarly research: the need for empirical-based research assessing the impacts of streamlining on participation and the impacts of meaningful Aboriginal participation on EA efficiencies; the need for better defined scope of issues that should be addressed inside the EA process versus those that are best addressed external to EA; and the need to develop and test alternative mechanisms for Aboriginal participation at the regional and strategic levels, and their contributions to regulatory-based EA decisions.
This article is about socio-cultural expertise and knowledge in the context of environmental hearings in Alberta, Canada, to determine whether or not new oil sands projects should be approved. It identifies serious problems with cultural assessments about potential impacts on Aboriginal peoples done by consultants for oil sands hearings in Alberta and proposes that consultants doing cultural assessments should have qualifications equivalent to those of expert witnesses for the courts. It also raises the concern that the review panel members who preside over such hearings and their staffs may also lack expertise in socio-cultural matters concerning Aboriginal people. Both gaps impact directly on the recommendations made by review panels to the governments that make final decisions.
Environmental Practice 18: 148–165 (2016)
Dans le monde anglophone, la relation de la discipline géographique aux aspects politiques des problèmes environnementaux a su évoluer en tant que domaine de recherche et mode d’engagement. Un certain nombre des changements générationnels et disciplinaires clés ne relèvent pas seulement de changements de paradigme tels que les a définis Thomas Kuhn, mais aussi du contexte social plus large dans lequel s’inscrivent les idées et les savoirs. Si, au début des années 1970, la discipline échoua à s’impliquer dans le champ interdisciplinaire émergent des études environnementales, dans la décennie suivante la combinaison des préoccupations écologiques et d’un souci de justice sociale a conduit à la naissance d’un nouveau sous-domaine particulièrement pertinent pour l’action face aux problèmes d’environnement, la political ecology. Les géographes anglophones s’inscrivant dans ce courant sont aujourd’hui en position de mener des recherches couvrant la science des changements environnementaux et les dynamiques sociales qui les causent – ce qui ouvre des perspectives de collaborations plus étroites avec leurs collègues français.
Ours is not the first call to reform or rethink the way that we conceptualise and address cumulative impacts. Indeed, this subject has received much attention from both scholars and practitioners with near universal criticism of how we measure, assess, and regulate cumulative impacts. Progress has been made in Canada to rethink cumulative impacts, but there is still much room for improvement. In particular, the overwhelming emphasis in natural resource policy and practice has been how the cumulative impacts of industrial development influence only the environment. There has been little focus on the other elements of sustainability, our economy, and the social well-being and health of human populations. We argue that new directions forward must include a formal recognition of the health of ecosystems in combination with the needs of communities. In the final chapter, we provide a synthesis of key points that have emerged from earlier chapters and supporting literatures. We build on those past criticisms and recommendations and present a general framework for an integrative and regional approach to the assessment and management of cumulative impacts. We propose six principles and five elements that provide the structure for conceptualising an integrative regional cumulative impacts framework that can be adapted to unique regional circumstances. Even failing full construction and implementation of such a framework, we feel that these principles and elements are the starting point for dialogue on how to better address the broad suite of cumulative impacts that are occurring at ever greater rates across developing landscapes.
Concern about cumulative effects and impacts is not new, and considerable research and practical effort has been directed to improving both assessment processes and understandings. Despite progress in the understanding, research, and measurement of cumulative impacts, there are increasing numbers of cracks apparent in both processes and outcomes. These include concerns about the limited spatial and temporal scale of assessments, the inadequacies that arise when environmental, social, and health impacts are reviewed separately or are translated into regulatory or legislative frameworks that become highly prescribed and legalised, and the limitations of focusing only on large mega-projects to the exclusion of the many small projects and activities that occur much more routinely, and often in the same areas. Despite considerable experimentation and evolution, current approaches to impact assessment (spanning environmental, social, and health dynamics) are all found to be wanting, especially in relation to cumulative concerns. In this Chapter we draw upon the lesson of Justice Thomas Berger’s Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry in the 1970s, to describe a relational and integrative imperative for change that demands a fundamentally new approach to impact assessment. We argue for a revolutionary change, guided by lessons from the past, towards a more integrative and regional cumulative impacts assessment framework.
This study explores how to reconcile science and policy in the wind energy sector by providing a conceptual framework for better understanding evidence-based policymaking (EBPM). Regarding this framework, the core issue is to discover how knowledge is formed over time, and which factors affect this knowledge formation. Comparative cases of wind industry emergence in Spain and Britain are examined. This analysis shows that knowledge formation initially starts in the scientific arena in parallel with its formation in the practical , and is followed by political knowledge formation near the beginning of commercial projects. Regarding knowledge formation, three more comparisons are made between wind industry emergence in Spain and Britain: the different approaches to R&D projects, the different adoptions of supporting measures, and the different ways of coping with public opposition. The factors affecting the comparisons are mainly perceptions of energy supply, nuclear power, environment and science and technology. Communication and unfamiliarity are likely to affect the comparisons in EBPM. 147 1 Science is known knowledge, and supports evidence because evidence is verified facts. Therefore, science can refer to scientific evidence when it is written to address the gap between scientific evidences and policies. Hereafter, science is used with evidence interchangeably. 2 This paper applies data, policies, activities and events (central-or local policies, industrial-, academic-and environmental-activities and events), from a case study of Ahn's thesis. However, this paper analyses the secondary data with totally different research framework based on different literature review for the different research objective and questions. For example, Ahn's research uses concepts of entrepreneurship literature while this study utilizes EBPM concepts. Therefore, while Ahn's research presents the role and nature of entrepreneurship in the emergence of wind industry, this paper shows significant elements of EBPM for wind industry creation.
Valued ecosystem component (VEC) selection is a core component of cumulative effects assessment (CEA) and gives direction to impact analysis, mitigation and monitoring. Yet little is known about CEA VEC selection practices. This paper examines 11 Canadian road infrastructure project CEAs completed between 1995 and 2011 to determine how VEC selection in CEA is performed, and whether these practices are sensitive to the linear project development context. Document review and semi-structured interviews reveal an absence of VEC selection guidance, late timing of cumulative effects considerations in impact assessment, lack of sensitivity in CEA VEC selection to the unique, linear nature of the road construction projects and a general lack of insightful, creative approaches to CEA VEC selection - ones that better reflect potential impacts to social and economic aspects of the environment - despite it being shown to be a values-driven, subjective process. There is a clear need for regional databases to support consistent CEA VEC selection processes, and the development of CEA-specific VEC selection guidance.
Scientific advice has never been in greater demand; nor has it been more contested. From climate change to cyber-security, poverty to pandemics, food technologies to fracking, the questions being asked of scientists, engineers, social scientists and other experts by policymakers, the media, and the public continue to multiply. At the same time, in the wake of the financial crisis and controversies such as 'Climategate', the authority and legitimacy of those same experts are under greater scrutiny. To mark the transition in April 2013 to Sir Mark Walport as the UK's chief scientific adviser, this collection brings together new essays by more than 20 leading thinkers and practitioners, including Sir John Beddington, Sheila Jasanoff, Geoff Mulgan, Roger Pielke Jr., Jill Rutter, Mike Hulme and Sir Bob Watson.
The increased salience of how to value ecosystems services has driven up the demand for policy-relevant knowledge. It is clear that advice by epistemic communities can show up in policy outcomes, yet little systematic analysis exists prescribing how this can actually be achieved. This paper draws on four decades of knowledge utilisation research to propose four types of `possible expert' who might be influential on ecosystems services. Broad findings of a literature review on knowledge use in public policy are reported, and the four-fold conceptualisation pioneered by Carol Weiss that defines the literature is outlined. The field is then systematised by placing these four modes of knowledge use within an explanatory typology of policy learning. With how, when, and why experts and their knowledge are likely to show up in policy outcomes established, the paper then proposes the boundaries of the possible in how the ecosystems services epistemic community might navigate the challenges associated with each learning mode. Four possible experts emerge: with political antenna and epistemic humility; with the ability to speak locally and early to the hearts and minds of citizens; with a willingness to advocate policy; and, finally, with an enhanced institutional awareness and peripheral policy vision. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the utility of the analysis.
Effectiveness is a long-standing issue in impact assessment (IA) practice and research – the theme is fundamental to the continued development and improvement of IA, and is essential to understanding its impacts on and contributions to environmental management. Understanding effectiveness not only requires attention to the variables that shape the context within which an IA system operates, but it also requires gauges for evaluation. In this paper, we present the results of a Delphi study conducted to develop criteria that can be used in appraisal or audits of IA effectiveness. Involving 55 IA experts, the Delphi resulted in 49 criteria, organized into nine themes. Although the framework of criteria was developed for analysis of the Canadian assessment setting, the criteria can have value to other jurisdictions. The Delphi wove sustainability throughout the criteria rather than set it as a single criterion. While context remains a key theme in evaluation, the Delphi demonstrates that there may be universal qualities that IA should possess if it is to be an effective environmental management tool, and these may transcend context.
Several different explanations of policy change based on notions of learning have emerged in the policy literature to challenge conventional conflict-oriented theories. These include notions of political-learning developed by Heclo, policy-oriented learning developed by Sabatier, lesson-drawing analyzed by Rose, social learning discussed by Hall and government learning identified by Etheredge. These different concepts identify different actors and different effects with each different type of learning. Some elements of these theories are compatible, while others are not. This article examines each approach in terms of who learns, what they learn, and the effects of learning on subsequent policies. The conclusion is that three distinct types of learning have often been incorrectly juxtaposed. Certain conceptual, theoretical and methodological difficulties attend any attempt to attribute policy change to policy learning, but this does not detract from the important reorientation of policy analysis that this approach represents.
Providing environmental information and framing the discourse – the EEA's tasks and institutional settings The European Environment Agency (EEA) is a specialised agency of the European Union (EU), dedicated to supporting sustainable development and to helping achieve significant and measurable improvements in Europe's environment, through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information on the environment (EEA 2004). Main clients of the Agency's indicator- and case study-based assessments are the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union – especially through the EU-presidencies – and the thirty-two member states of the EEA (membership of the EEA is also open to countries that are not among the twenty-seven member states of the EU). Its seat is in the Danish capital Copenhagen. The EEA currently has an annual budget of circa €40 million and approximately 180 staff members. The EEA has been operational since 1994. Its founding regulation's Article 1 (EEC 1990) defines its role as follows: To achieve the aims of environmental protection and improvement laid down by the Treaty and by successive Community action programmes on the environment, the objective [of the EEA] shall be to provide the Community and the Member States with: objective, reliable and comparable information at European level enabling them to take the requisite measures to protect the environment, to assess the results of such measures and to ensure that the public is properly informed about the state of the environment, to that end, the necessary technical and scientific support …
The study of risks and the impact of new technological systems in our society and environment is now accepted as a legitimate subject of research.
Modern social sciences have been committed to the improvement of public policy. However, doubts have arisen about the possibility and desirability of a policy-oriented social science. In this book, leading specialists in the field analyse both the development and failings of policy-oriented social science. In contrast to other writings on the subject, this volume presents a distinctively historical and comparative approach. By looking at earlier periods, the contributors demonstrate how policy orientation has been central to the emergence and evolution of the social sciences as a form of professional activity. Case studies of rarely examined societies such as Poland, Brazil and Japan further demonstrate the various ways in which intellectual developments have been shaped by the societal contexts in which they have emerged and how they have taken part in the shaping of these societies.
The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways.
Georgina Downs, a pesticide campaigner with personal experience of exposure to pesticides in crop sprays, sought review of the Government’s approach to the assessment of harm to residents and bystanders in its process of authorisation of pesticides. Collins J allowed the application and ordered the Secretary of State to reconsider and amend his policy as necessary. He found that she had justified her allegation that the risk model was inadequate and was supported in this respect by the report of Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Furthermore, the Secretary of State’s policy was in breach of the Plant Protection Products (Pesticides) Directive because compliance with Annex VI, which sets out uniform principles for evaluation, could only be achieved if the policy adequately protected residents, which it did not. On appeal, the Secretary of State contended that the judge had erred in (i) rejecting Defra’s submission that compliance with the uniform principles set out in Annex VI of the Directive was sufficient to ensure compliance with the requirements of Article 4.1(b); and (ii) substituting his own evaluation of the scientific evidence for that of the Secretary of State. The appeal was allowed. As to the first claim, compliance with the uniform principles in Annex VI was a sufficient test of the harmful effects of a pesticide on human health. If no harmful effects were found by applying these principles, authorisation would be in compliance with Article 4.1. The uniform principles were designed to provide a comprehensive code for all Member States to apply. The purpose of the Directive was to harmonise authorisation procedures and it would frustrate this purpose if Member States were able to introduce their own principles or policies for the purpose of establishing whether a pesticide had harmful effects on health. The Secretary of State had applied the uniform principles and Defra’s crop spraying authorisation policy was therefore compliant with the Directive. As to the second claim, the Court found that Collins J had substituted his own evaluation for that of the Secretary of State. It was for the Secretary of State, having considered the Report of the RCEP and the advice of the ACP, to decide whether the evidence raised real doubts as to the safety of the pesticides or whether it amounted only to a possible link that had not been scientifically confirmed. While the Secretary of State’s decision was not immune from review, the hurdle for establishing review was high and required a demonstration of ‘manifest error’. The disagreement between the RCEP and the ACP was evidence to there not being such a manifest error. The Secretary of State’s decision was not therefore erroneous in law.
This article examines the model of social learning often believed to confirm the autonomy of the state from social pressures, tests it against recent cases of change in British economic policies, and offers a fuller analysis of the role of ideas in policymaking, based on the concept of policy paradigms. A conventional model of social learning is found to fit some types of changes in policy well but not the movement from Keynesian to monetarist modes of policymaking. In cases of paradigm shift, policy responds to a wider social debate bound up with electoral competition that demands a reformulation of traditional conceptions of state-society relations.
The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) was developed to provide a causal theory of the policy process which would serve as one of several alternatives to the familiar stages heuristic, with its recognized limitations. This paper first summarizes the central features of the ACF, including a set of underlying assumptions and specific hypotheses. We next review the implications for the framework of six case studies by various authors dealing with Canadian education and with American transportation, telecommunications, water, environmental, and energy policy. While generally supportive of the ACF, the case studies also suggest several revisions.
Adopting a ?knowledge perspective?, in which policy-making is seen as a process of collective learning through argument and persuasion, this paper assesses the record of the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution as an advocate of concepts and reforms associated with ecological modernization. Drawing on extensive empirical research, it considers how the social and political climate in which the Commission has operated, as well as certain characteristics of the Commission as an advisory body, have conditioned its degree of influence over time. It argues that in various roles?as knowledge broker, policy entrepreneur and persuasive advocate?the Commission has been able to exert a significant influence on environmental policy in the UK and beyond. The paper also reflects on the utility of different approaches in theorizing the role of advisory bodies in the policy process. Copyright ? 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Environmental policy in the United States has always been characterized by high levels of political conflict. At the same time, however, policy makers have shown a capacity to learn from their own and others' experience. This article examines U.S. environmental policy since 1970 as a learning process and, more specifically, as an effort to develop three kinds of capacities for policy learning. The first decade and a half may be seen in terms of technical learning, characterized by a high degree of technical and legal proficiency, but also narrow problem definitions, institutional fragmentation, and adversarial relations among actors. In the 1980s, growing recognition of deficiencies in technical learning led to a search for new goals, strategies, and policy instruments, in what may be termed conceptual learning . By the early 1990s, policy makers also recognized a need for a new set of capacities at social learning, reflecting trends in European environmental policy, international interest in the concept of sustainability, and dissatisfaction with the U.S. experience. Social learning stresses communication and interaction among actors. Most industrial nations, including the United States, are working to develop and integrate capacities for all three kinds of learning. Efforts to integrate capacities for conceptual and social learning in the United States have had mixed success, however, because the institutional and legal framework for environmental policy still is founded on technical learning.
This paper is concerned with environmental governance and policy formation in the area of climate change. Specifically, it examines a decision by the UK Government in 2003 to adopt a demanding, long-term CO2 emissions reduction target, following the advice of one of its longest standing environmental advisory bodies, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. It explores the origins of the Commission's recommendation and the reasons for its relatively rapid uptake in public policy. It argues that in both cases, a complex mix of structural and contingent, cognitive and non-cognitive factors can be identified, operating at different levels of governance. Finally, the paper reflects on what we might learn from this particular case about policy processes and the role of knowledge and expert advice within them.
Within twelve months of the discovery of x rays, papers appeared in the literature reporting adverse effects from high exposure. By the time of the First World War, several countries were proposing restrictions for the exposure of radiation workers. In 1925, the first International Congress of Radiology, held in London, considered the need for a protection committee, which it established at its second Congress in Stockholm in 1928. This paper traces the history of the development, by ICRP, of its policies and the personalities involved in their development from its inception up to the modern era. The paper follows the progress from the early controls on worker doses to avoid deterministic effects, through the identification of stochastic effects to the concerns about increasing public exposure. The key features of the Recommendations made by ICRP from 1928 up to the current 1990 version are identified.