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Proceedings of the
2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change
“Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition.
The Challenge for Social Science”
Edited by
Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, and Klaus Jacob
Global Governance Project
Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg
2004
ISBN 3-00-014956-2

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. p. iii.
Preface
The transition to more sustainable development paths
requires new advances in human knowledge:
knowledge about the social causes that affect global
environmental change and unsustainable production
systems, knowledge about the characteristics of the
earth system and the likely consequences of global
environmental change, and knowledge about policy
options that allow human societies to achieve the
transition to greater sustainability. The scientific
community has responded to this challenge through
the creation of new research programmes designed to
bring together global researchers with a variety of
backgrounds and from all world regions for joint
research, notably the International Human
Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental
Change (IHDP). Despite all efforts, however, the
existing knowledge base and its political
implementation remain insufficient. But how can we
do better? Do we need new kinds of knowledge or
new ways to generate knowledge? How can social and
scientific institutions be designed, and possibly
reformed, to generate sustainability-relevant
knowledge? And what are the implications of the
current knowledge base, and the ways it is generated
and distributed, on societal decision-making for
global environmental protection?
These themes stood at the centre of the 2002 Berlin
Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global
Environmental Change, held 6-7 December 2002 in
Berlin with the endorsement of two IHDP core projects,
Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change (IDGEC) and Industrial Transformation
(IT). The conference has been organised on
behalf of the German Political Science Association by
the joint Global Governance Project of the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Environmental
Policy Research Unit of the Free University of
Berlin and Oldenburg University (glogov.org), with
additional endorsement by the Federation of German
Scientists and the German Association for the United
Nations, Berlin-Brandenburg Chapter.
About 220 colleagues from 29 countries participated
in the Conference, with altogether 111 plenary and
panel presentations. Key note speakers included the
FRANK BIERMANN
Director, Global Governance Project,
and Head, Department of Environmental
Policy Analysis
Institute for Environmental Studies,
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
SABINE CAMPE
Research Fellow, Global Governance
Project, Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research
chairs of four major research and assessment programmes,
Rajendra Pachauri (IPCC), Coleen Vogel
(IHDP), Oran Young (IHDP/IDGEC) and John
Schellnhuber (IGBP/GAIM), as well as two leading
decision-makers and practitioners in this field, Christian
Patermann, director of the Environment and
Sustainable Development Programme of the European
Union’s directorate-general for research, and
Hansvolker Ziegler, the chair of the International
Group of Funding Agencies for Global Change Research.
The conference was supported by the German
Federal Ministry for Education and Research,
with additional contributions by the Volkswagen
Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation. A
luncheon in honour of Dr. Pachauri was hosted by
the Ambassador of India in Germany.
This Proceedings volume presents the thirty papers
of the 2002 Berlin Conference that we saw as the
most useful and valuable within the context of the
conference. All contributions have been reviewed for
publication, and not all papers submitted could be included
in the final Proceedings volume. We hope that
the Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference will
enrich the academic debate on generating sustainability
science and its influence on politics, and will carry
a flavour of the lively and thought-provoking debates
during the 2002 Berlin Conference. Last but not least,
we would like to thank Steffen Behrle and David
Wabnitz for their dedicated support.
We look now forward to the upcoming 2004 Berlin
Conference, which will be chaired by Dr. Klaus Jacob
of the Environmental Policy Research Centre of the
Free University of Berlin. It will address the theme
“Greening of Policies – Interlinkages and Policy
Integration” and will be held 3-4 December 2004.
KLAUS JACOB
Research Director
Environmental Policy Research
Centre, Freie Universitaet Berlin

CONTENTS
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference iv
Preface
by Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe and Klaus Jacob
Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition and the Challenge for Social Science – An
Introduction
by Frank Biermann
PART ONE: GENERATING SUSTAINABILITY KNOWLEDGE 13
How to Observe and Model Transitions towards Sustainability: the Geoscope Initiative
by Hermann Lotze-Campen and Wolfgang Lucht
When Accountants Create Knowledge: Learning from the International Standardization of
Greenhouse Gas Accounting
by Markus Ohndorf and Simon Schmitz
New Knowledge for Sustainable Governance: the SCENE Model
by Jasper Grosskurth and Jan Rotmans
Foresight for Sustainable Transport and Mobility
by Liana Giorgi, Esther Schroeder-Wildberg and Alexander Carius
Navigating the Sustainability Transition: The Future of Scenarios
by Paul Raskin, Rob Swart and John Robinson
The Precarious Role of Scenarios in Global Environmental Politics
by Harald Mieg
Social Learning and Sustainability Science: Which Role Can Stakeholder Participation
Play?
by Bernd Siebenhüner
Science-Stakeholder Dialogue and Climate Change. Towards a Participatory Notion of
Communication
by Ingmar Jürgens
Organising Research for Sustainable Development: An Assessment of National Research
Programmes
by Katy Whitelegg
Sustainability Science: Towards an Evaluation Methodology for Research Programmes
by Raimund Bleischwitz, Philipp Schepelmann and Jürgen Schäfer
PART TWO: SUSTAINABILITY KNOWLEDGE IN POLITICAL DECISIONMAKING 126
International Institutions, Sustainability Knowledge and Policy Change: The North
American Experience
by John Kirton
Imbued Meaning: Science-Policy Interaction in the IPCC
by John Robinson and Alison Shaw
Capacity Building and Sustainability Knowledge in the Climate Change Regime
by Joyeeta Gupta
iii
1
14
21
32
42
53
67
76
87
102
114
127
143
154
iv

v Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Civic Science for Sustainability -- Reframing the Role of Scientific Experts, Policy-makers
and Citizens in Environmental Governance
by Karin Bäckstrand
Knowledge or Participation for Sustainability? Science and Justice in Adaptation to
Climate Change
by Jouni Paavola and W. Neil Adger
Dissent about Scientific Uncertainties: Implications in Policy Arenas
by Frank Schiller and Dennis Tänzler
Power, Knowledge and Sustainability
by Stephen Healy
Potentials and Limits for Policy Change Through Governmental Self-Regulation – The
Case of Environmental Policy Integration
by Klaus Jacob and Axel Volkery
Trees, Science, and Public Processes: A Western Australian Experience
by Martin Brueckner
International NGOs as Knowledge Mediators: A Case Study on Decision-Making on
Hydrocarbon Refrigerators by a Japanese Appliance Maker
by Yasuko Matsumoto
Education, Science, and Environmental Organizations
by Gabriel Ignatow
Knowledge for Sustainability-governance: From Policy Advice to Policy-oriented
Knowledge Communication
by Harald Heinrichs
Diplomatory Science: Modeling the Hybrid Character of Policy-advisory Science for
Diplomacy
by Atsushi Ishii
The Belgian Nuclear Phase-Out as a Strategy for Sustainable Development: Unstructured
Problems, Unstructured Answers?
by Erik Laes, Gaston Mesken, William D’Haeseleer and Raoul Weiler
How to Design Interfaces Between Science and Society: Lessons From Platforms for
Knowledge Communication in Switzerland
by Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn, Ingrid Kissling-Näf and Christian Pohl
The Right to Know: Environmental Information Disclosure by Government and Industry
by Peter H. Sand
Coevolution of the Conceptual and Political Frameworks for Climate Change
Assessments
by Hans-Martin Füssel
PART THREE: NEW CONCEPTUAL FRONTIERS: SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE,
EARTH SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND THE CHALLENGE FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 321
Options & Restrictions: A Heuristic Tool in Transdisciplinary Research for an Effective
Implementation of Sustainable Practices
by Simone Maier and Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn
By-passing Barriers in Sustainable Knowledge Production
by Jurian Edelenbos, M.W. van Buuren and Geert R. Teismann
165
175
184
193
202
214
228
239
252
261
271
285
292
302
322
337
v

Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference vi
Creating Organizational Knowledge for the Transition to Sustainability
by Nancy P. Goucher and Sarah Michaels
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS OF THE 2002 BERLIN CONFERENCE 352
346
vi

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg, pp. 1-11.
Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition and the Challenge for Social
Science: An Introduction
Frank Biermann *
1. Introduction +
Climate change, the loss of biological diversity at
unprecedented rates, the continuing emission of
thousands of persistent organic pollutants and the
staggering degradation of our soils and forests illustrate
a fundamental change in the relationship of
nature and humankind. Clearly, the world is far away
from the transition to sustainable development that
the Brundtland Commission urged in 1987—a development
that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs. 1
This transition to sustainability poses a special challenge
for the social sciences, since it will also require
new advances in knowledge about human societies—
knowledge about the social causes that affect global
environmental change and unsustainable production
systems, knowledge about the characteristics of the
earth system and the likely consequences of global
environmental change, and knowledge about policy
options that allow human societies to achieve the
transition to greater sustainability.
The scientific community has responded to this challenge
through the creation of new research programmes
designed to bring together global researchers
with a variety of backgrounds and from all world
regions for joint research. In 1990, the International
Social Science Council set up the Human Dimensions
Programme (HDP) as a global framework for interdisciplinary
international research on global change.
Since 1996 the programme has been supported by the
International Council of Scientific Unions. As the
International Human Dimensions Programme on
Global Environmental Change (IHDP) it now serves
as the main social science research network in the
field. The notion of ‘human dimensions of global
environmental change’ views societies as both cause
* Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Institute for Environmental
Studies. Contact: frank.biermann@ivm.vu.nl.
+ Many thanks to Klaus Dingwerth and Aarti Gupta for valuable
comments of previous drafts of this text.
1 World Commission on Environment and Development 1987.
and effect, as the drivers of global environmental
change and as the victims who are affected by looming
global disasters such as global climate change.
IHDP itself is supported by sub-programmes, or
‘core projects’, on specific questions, notably the
Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change project, 2 the Industrial Transformation project,
3 the Global Environmental Change and Human
Security project 4 and the Land-Use and Land-Cover
Change project. 5
Despite all efforts, the existing knowledge base and
its political implementation remain insufficient for a
worldwide transition to sustainability. But how can
we do better? Do we need new kinds of knowledge
or new ways to generate knowledge, for instance
through a fundamental overhaul of the way we conduct
scientific research? How can social and scientific
institutions be designed, and possibly reformed, to
generate sustainability-relevant knowledge? And what
are the implications of the current knowledge base,
and the ways it is generated and distributed, on societal
decision-making for global environmental protection?
These are the themes that stood at the centre of the
2002 Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions
of Global Environmental Change, held 6-7 December
in Berlin. In the following, I will, first, introduce
2 Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change
Programme 1999. For contributions from German political
science, see for example the work on international environmental
regimes (Bedarff et al. 1995; Biermann 1998, 2002,
Biermann and Wank 2000; Breitmeier 1996; Gehring 1994;
Gehring and Oberthür 1997; Grundmann 1997, 1999; Hasenclever
et al. 1997; Helm and Sprinz 2000; Jakobeit 1998; Oberthür
1997; Rittberger 1995; Simonis 1996; Ulbert 1997; Zürn
1998b), studies on trade and environment (Altemöller 1998;
Althammer et al. 2001; Biermann 2001b; Pfahl 2000), the edited
volume on institutional arrangements by von Prittwitz
(2000) or the research on comparative environmental politics
(for example Conrad 1998; Jänicke 1990, 1996; Jänicke and
Weidner 1997; Jänicke et al. 1997; Jänicke and Jörgens 1998,
2000; Jörgens 1996; Kern and Bratzel 1996; Zilleßen 1998.)
3 Industrial Transformation Programme 1999. Most German
research has focused on industrial transformation in industrialised
countries (see for example Binder et al. 2001; Jänicke et al.
1993; Jacob 1999), on national environmental planning
(Jänicke and Jörgens 1998, 2000; Jänicke and Weidner 1997)
or on diffusion processes (for example Jänicke and Weidner
1995; Kern 2000; Kern et al. 2001; Tews, Busch and Jörgens
2003).
4 GECHS 1999. For German contributions see the articles in
the book edited by Carius and Lietzmann 1999.
5 LUCC 1995.

2
into the manifold presentations that have been held
at the Berlin Conference, a representative sample of
which is included in this Proceedings volume (section
2). Second, since the conference was mainly centred
on political science while remaining open for dialogue
with other disciplines, I sketch below six propositions
on the particular challenges that global environmental
change poses for political science as a discipline (section
3).
2. The 2002 Berlin Conference
2.1 ORGANISATION OF THE CONFERENCE
All presentations at the 2002 Berlin Conference have
addressed one (or more) of three main themes, which
have structured the entire conference:
First, one group of papers has conceptualised the
knowledge base for the sustainability transition as
something that is affected by political decisionmaking.
They analysed ways in which national and
international politics and institutions influence the
way sustainability knowledge is generated, distributed
and used by actors, looking, for example, at ways in
which political systems influence scientific research
for the sustainability transition. Papers have examined,
for example, the distribution and use of knowledge,
from scientific information to technical expertise,
and sought to explain the influence of political
institutions and political and societal actors on these
knowledge-generating processes.
Second, and interrelated with the first theme, a number
of papers have viewed knowledge as a factor that
influences political decision-making. It has long been
argued that not only power and interests, but also
ideas, discourses or belief systems shape the outcome
of political decision-making. The 2002 Berlin Conference
has presented cutting-edge research on the ways
in which existing knowledge—from scientific information
to more general discourses or belief systems—affects
the ways in which political actors respond
to the global environmental crisis. Are there
dominant discourses and ideas that can facilitate or
prevent us from reaching a more sustainable development?
Does ‘science’ and modern technology in
itself lead to unsustainable development paths—and
how can democratic political institutions manage to
live with, for example, the Genie of modern nuclear
and molecular technologies?
Third, the 2002 Berlin Conference has featured presentations
from social scientists that respond to the
challenges raised by recent thinkers who argue for
fundamental changes in the way science is con-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
ducted—thinkers who have put forward integrative
concepts such as ‘earth system analysis’, ‘syndromes
of global change’ or ‘sustainability science’. It has
been maintained, for example, that a new ‘sustainability
science’ must bridge the local-global divide and
must include interdisciplinary research on multiple
scales and multiple actors. How would this affect
social science, for example the divide between scholars
of international relations and comparative environmental
politics?
Despite their division into the three themes above,
the 111 presentations at the 2002 Berlin Conference
have also highlighted the intense interaction between
knowledge, science and society at all levels. Scientists
and other producers of knowledge are part of their
societies, which shape the process of knowledge
generation, while in turn being influenced by the
continuous reorganisation and reinterpretation of
knowledge. Rather than creating artificial boundaries
that blur the co-evolution of science and society, this
introduction—and the organisation of the conference—is
intended to focus debate on different dimensions
of the science/society interface, without
denying their manifold interactions and mutual interdependencies.
2.2 THEME 1: GENERATING SUSTAINABILITY
KNOWLEDGE
Political decision-making requires knowledge about
the state of global environmental systems and about
political options. Such an assessment of global environmental
change and of the effectiveness of political
responses is particularly challenging for researchers.
The social sciences are involved in this field in a
twofold manner: as active participant in the integrative
assessment of global environmental change in
close collaboration with colleagues from the natural
sciences, and as a critic of these very assessment
processes from a social science perspective.
Most scientific assessments include measurements
that allow comparisons between objects of study or
between different points of time. A crucial challenge
here is the development of indicators for global environmental
change that can help explain variation
between regions or over time, thus assisting in the
formulation of political response strategies. One way
to include complex societal factors in the assessment
of global environmental change is the development
of specific indicators and indices for ‘sustainable
development’ that go beyond the mere assessment of
changes in natural systems—a challenge that several
papers of the 2002 Berlin Conference has been devoted
to. Presentations included a case study on
Belgian efforts or on sustainable development indica-

tors in marine fisheries. Other case studies that link
social and natural science in assessing global environmental
change focussed on an Indonesian participatory
model of satellite-based monitoring for community
plantation forests, a recent non-state initiative
to account for greenhouse gas emissions, and different
political functions and potentials of environmental
indicator systems.
Eventually, much of the indicator data acquired in
these studies could be used in computer-assisted
quantitative or qualitative modelling exercises. A
number of such advanced models have been presented
and discussed at the 2002 Berlin Conference,
not only with a view to the actual information they
provide but also as possible means of knowledge
generation. Some participants presented their research
on foresight methodologies to assess future
European transportation systems, on participatory
scenario analysis and on participatory technology
assessment methodologies. Other researchers elaborated
on scenarios for improving regime effectiveness
for decision-making in multilevel political environments
or reported new advances in computer-based
modelling.
Any meaningful understanding of global environmental
change cannot be generated and used without
involving relevant stakeholders. While many studies
presented at the 2002 Berlin Conference have addressed
the role of stakeholders and dialogues between
researchers and stakeholders, two panels have
been explicitly focused on this question. Here, participants
presented research on experiences with
participatory approaches in scientific knowledge
generation, on new practices for linking stakeholders
and scientists (also with a view to integrating participatory
methods into economic analysis and their role
in climate impact assessment), on combining computer
modelling with deliberative methods in assessing
the transition to sustainable energy systems, on
the role of civil society within sustainability science,
or on participatory approaches.
Sustainability knowledge is, in most cases, no longer
created by individual academics and by isolated professors
in vaulted ivory towers. Instead, most advances
in knowledge today are part of larger research
groups and research programmes, ranging from
multi-institutional or multinational research consortia
to national research programmes and to global programmes
that comprise thousands of researchers,
such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (which assesses and synthesises existing
knowledge) and the International Human Dimensions
Programme on Global Environmental Change.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 3
These networks of researchers have, however, themselves
become the object of intense academic debate.
One panel at the 2002 Berlin Conference has therefore
been devoted to the analysis of national research
programmes, including case studies on Israel, on the
European Union and its research programmes and a
comparison of programmes in some member states.
Furthermore, the major research programmes have
been directly or indirectly addressed in most plenary
sessions. One plenary session featured the chairs of
two major research and assessment programmes, Dr
Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change and Professor Coleen Vogel of the International
Human Dimensions Programme on Global
Environmental Change. Another plenary panel has
presented the chairs of two important subprogrammes,
Professor Oran Young of the Institutional
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change
project of IHDP, and Professor John Schellnhuber of
the Global Analysis, Integration and Modelling project
of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.
A third plenary panel featured two leading
decision-makers and practitioners in this field: Dr
Christian Patermann, the director of the Environment
and Sustainable Development Programme of
the European Union’s directorate-general for research,
and Hansvolker Ziegler, the chair of the International
Group of Funding Agencies for Global
Change Research and special advisor on sustainability
in the German Federal Ministry for Education and
Research.
2.3 THEME 2: SUSTAINABILITY KNOWLEDGE IN
POLITICAL DECISION-MAKING
Most scientific effort in the field of global environmental
change will eventually inform decision-makers
in the public and private spheres and the general
public. The transition to sustainable development
inevitably requires a ‘knowledge transition’ among
various actor groups to enable them to better understand
the dynamics of the earth system and the available
policy options. However, the processes by which
sustainability knowledge generated within science can
reach societal actors remain insufficiently understood
and have thus been a key concern of one of the
‘Knowledge Conversations’ at the 2002 Berlin Conference.
The studies on stakeholder dialogues and participatory
approaches show how non-scientific actors and
non-academic knowledge influence academic research
programmes. In turn, the influence that these research
programmes and their findings have on societies
and, in particular, on political actors has been at
the centre of a number of panels that analyse knowl-

4
edge flows in governing global environmental change.
Some presenters, for example, examined the role of
international and transnational institutions in the
dissemination of sustainability knowledge, including
the transnational network of local governments,
Cities for Climate Protection, the Commission for
Environmental Co-operation under the North
American Free Trade Agreement, and the role of
international organisations (such as convention secretariats
or international agencies) in the generation and
distribution of sustainability knowledge.
Others were particularly interested in the role of
international institutions in raising the credibility of
knowledge. This included case studies on the credibility
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change and the scientific assessments under the longrange
transboundary air pollution convention of
1979, as well as a study that focused on the North-
South dimensions of knowledge transfer by international
agencies. Some participants have presented
research on the influence of scientific knowledge on
environmental policy, including case studies on the
impact of conflicts over values for the process of
knowledge generation and the link between science
and policy in various environmental policy areas.
Depicting another strand of research, some participants
adopted a constructivist perspective and presented
research on ‘epistemological pluralism’ based
on the third assessment report of IPCC, on discourses
in the Norwegian response to the global
climate negotiations, and on the politics of climate
change and the release of genetically modified organisms.
As with the global level, scientific and other systematic
knowledge influences national and local environmental
policies as well. Accordingly, a number of
panels have been devoted to these issues. Participants
focused on the role of knowledge in the integration
of environmental policies in Germany, the European
Union and the United States, and in the integration of
biodiversity and climate policies. Others focused on
capacity building for knowledge-generation through
public agencies, with case studies on regions as diverse
as Lower Saxony, western Australia and northeastern
Asia. Knowledge flows reach beyond public
authorities. Private actors, too, are important consumers
of sustainability knowledge. Through their
own dissemination activities, and their involvement in
knowledge-generating processes, they are also part of
the process of knowledge generation. The 2002 Berlin
Conference hence included several panels on the
role of civil society in the generation, synthesis and
dissemination of sustainability knowledge. Non-state
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
actors to which specific panels have been devoted
include groups and associations of nongovernmental
activists groups, the media, education institutions,
national advisory boards, and local decision-makers.
Participants analysed, for example, the role of Greenpeace
as a knowledge mediator in Japan’s response to
stratospheric ozone depletion, the interpretations of
climate-change knowledge by business leaders in
New Zealand, and the role of civil society in global
environmental governance. In the panel on the role
of the media, discussion focused on global climate
change in the major national newspaper in the United
States, the role of the media in the Czech republic
and the role of specific communication strategies and
the new media for knowledge transfer.
Similar to the media, education institutions play a
crucial role in disseminating sustainability knowledge
and in promoting sustainable life-styles. The 2002
Berlin Conference included detailed case studies in
this field, on consumer citizenship education, on an
event count analysis of the founding of scientific
ecological organisations in 46 countries, and on the
role of French business schools in surveying the
dissemination of environmental knowledge. Important,
too, are national advisory bodies, which are
often mixtures of scientific self-administration and
government-controlled scientific entities. Here, presentations
at the conference examined national scientific
advisory bodies in Belgium, Germany, the United
Kingdom and the United States.
Other case studies explicitly focused on the local
level, examining, for example, local platforms to
promote scientific knowledge about biological diversity
and other global change issues in Switzerland, the
uptake of scientific information by local governments
in New Zealand and the knowledgeable consumer as
a precondition for sustainable development. Civil
society can only make use of sustainability knowledge
generated by experts, scientists or public agencies if
the information is publicly available. This makes the
‘right to know’ ever more important. Its importance
has been enshrined in several pieces of recent national
and global legislation, including the 1966
United States Freedom of Information Act and the
Aarhus Convention, as well as in the spread of voluntary
or mandatory pollutant release and transfer registers.
As argued by Professor Sand at the conference,
these new forms of access to information have led to
a new third wave of environmental regulation that is
replacing or supplementing traditional commandand-control
and market-based instruments.
Access to information is also key to the uptake of
new technologies—be they environmentally benign

or risky—in the domestic context. Within North-
South relations, it remains critical to consider how a
transition to global sustainability could be slowed
down by ‘knowledge divides’ between North and
South. Substantial attention has focused on greater
access to new technologies as a way to bridge such
divides.
Finally, understanding the interaction of all actors
within a particular national setting, along with crossnational
interlinkages, is at the centre of discourse
studies, a number of which have been presented at
the 2002 Berlin Conference. One panel discussed
discourses in the field of energy and climate policy,
with two regional case studies on South Africa and
Australia and two studies on the role of assessments
in global climate change policy.
2.4 THEME 3: NEW CONCEPTUAL FRONTIERS:
SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE, EARTH SYSTEM
ANALYSIS AND THE CHALLENGE FOR THE
SOCIAL SCIENCES
The challenge of global environmental change has
given rise to a variety of proposals for how the global
scientific endeavour in this field could better be structured.
6 Researchers have advanced novel approaches
to global change science, which call, among others,
for a new integration of academic disciplines—in a
sense a step back to the traditional universitas of the
facultates as prescribed by the medieval ideal.
One such new approach is the Syndromes of Global
Change concept advanced by the German Advisory
Council on Global Change. Since its early versions in
1993, 7 the concept has been refined and empirically
applied, 8 and in 2001, the United Nations Environment
Programme has advised governments at its
Global Ministerial Environment Forum to adopt the
syndrome approach ‘to re-arrange the perspective and
the perception of land use and land/soil degradation’.
9 The approach integrates different disciplines
by reducing global change to a limited number of
socio-economic and natural variables, which are
conceived of as the symptoms of global change that
interact with each other. Proponents of the approach
assume certain dynamic patterns of interactions between
symptoms, which are defined as the syndromes
of global change. The assumption is that there are at
least sixteen such syndromes. 10 These are clustered
6
Sections V and VI of this introduction draw on Biermann and
Dingwerth 2001 and forthcoming (in German).
7
German Advisory Council on Global Change 1993.
8
Schellnhuber et al. 1997.
9
UNEP 2001, para. 16.
10
See in more detail German Advisory Council for Global
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 5
into three classes that are related either to the overexploitation
of nature, 11 to failed development processes
12 or to the misuse of nature as a sink for pollutants.
13 In a sense, the syndromes of global change are
a representation of typical place-based socioeconomic
and natural mechanisms of un-sustainable
development with an interesting potential to guide
interdisciplinary research.
Another comprehensive concept is earth system
analysis, which has been presented by Hans-Joachim
Schellnhuber at the 2002 Berlin Conference. 14 This
approach focuses on a better understanding not of
isolated elements of global change but of the totality
of processes in nature and human civilisation. It
eventually aims at developing analytical and political
tools and instruments to assist in the challenge of
global environmental governance and, particularly, to
find ways to guarantee an acceptable long-term coevolution
of nature and civilisation. 15 Schellnhuber
sees earth system analysis as ‘a science in statu nascendi’,
arguing that:
It is a science as it has 1. a genuine subject,
namely the total Earth in the sense of a fragile
and ‘gullible’ dynamic system, 2. a genuine
methodology, namely transdisciplinary systems
analysis based on, i.a., planetary monitoring,
global modelling and simulation, 3. a
genuine purpose, namely the satisfactory (or at
least tolerable) coevolution of the ecosphere
and the anthroposphere (vulgo: Sustainable
Development) in the times of Global Change
and beyond. 16
At the highest level of abstraction, the basic formula
of earth system analysis is E = (N, H), with E being
the earth system, N being the ecosphere (a function
of atmosphere, biosphere et cetera), and H being
human civilisation. H consists of the anthroposphere
(A)—the totality of human life, actions and products
that affect other components of the earth system—
and the ‘global subject’ (S), which is, translated into
social science language, the political system at the
global level including its national and subnational
subparts, all of which have collectively the ability to
Change 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999.
11
Sahel Syndrome, Overexploitation Syndrome, Rural Exodus
Syndrome, Dust Bowl Syndrome, Katanga Syndrome, Mass
Tourism Syndrome and Scorched Earth Syndrome.
12
Aral Sea Syndrome, Green Revolution Syndrome, Little Tiger
Syndrome, Favela Syndrome, Suburbia Syndrome and Disaster
Syndrome.
13
Smokestack Syndrome, Waste Dumping Syndrome and
Contaminated Land Syndrome.
14
See in more detail Schellnhuber 1998, 1999.
15
Schellnhuber 1998, 9.
16
Schellnhuber and Wenzel 1998, vii.

6
bring the ‘human impact’ in line with the needs of the
ecosphere. 17 Based on these ideas, Schellnhuber has
advanced five paradigms of sustainable development
as groundwork for further refinement in modelling
and simulation exercises: 18 standardisation, the identification
of long-term corridors for the co-evolution
of nature and humankind; optimisation, the maximisation
the nature-humankind welfare function
through selection of an appropriate co-evolution
segment; pessimisation, the acceptance of a certain
distance to danger zones in order to leave room for
mismanagement; equitisation, the preservation of
options for future generations; and eventually stabilisation.
19
For political science and other social sciences it seems
difficult to relate to the model-oriented, integrated
and interdisciplinary approach of earth system analysis,
given that quantifiable hypotheses and computerbased
modelling still pose severe challenges for many
branches of social sciences. A link to political science
could be the notion of a ‘global subject’ as an agent
of earth system management, which is an area where
political scientists can contribute their research on
international regimes and organisations, as well as on
national political systems. 20 However, since earth
system analysis is still in its early stages, its specific
information needs for the social sciences remain only
vaguely defined.
One possible institutional link is the Earth System
Science Partnership 21 —which includes the social
science programme IHDP—and in particular the 23
GAIM questions that are seen, from the perspective
of the Global Analysis, Integration and Modelling
project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere
Programme, as a set of overarching questions designed
to challenge the entire global change research
community. Some of these questions directly relate to
the social sciences, for example analytical questions
such as no. 23, ‘What is the structure of an effective
and efficient system of global environment and development
institutions’, 22 or normative questions
such as no. 18, ‘What kind of nature do modern
societies want?’
Sustainability is also at the centre of a the concept of
17
Schellnhuber 1999, C20-C22.
18
Schellnhuber 1999, C23.
19
Schellnhuber 1998, 176-81.
20
Schellnhuber and Biermann 2000.
21
See for a funder’s perspective Ziegler and Röser 2002.
22
GAIM puts this question in the cluster of the ‘strategic’, not of
the ‘analytical’ questions. From a social science perspective,
this question would well qualify as an analytical puzzle.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
‘sustainability science’. The assumption of Robert
Kates, William C. Clark and a number of other leading
natural and social scientists is that the challenge
of sustainable development is so daunting and complex
that it has led to the emergence of a sustainability
science as a new integrative field of study. 23 Sustainability
science is, Kates, Clark and colleagues
argue, different from traditional science in many
respects. Ideally, sustainability science derives its
questions and puzzles less from internal theoretical
development than from actual problems of global
change (in which it does not differ much from many
branches of social science, with a its long history of
responding to day-to-day political problems, for
instance in the study of international relations). To
answer the core question of sustainability science—
how to make human-nature interactions sustainable—proponents
of this concept call for several
modifications and alterations of the traditional model
of knowledge generation: They argue that cooperation
between natural and social scientists needs
to be improved and made more intense. Analysis
should better strive to integrate all scales from local
to global within one research design. Sustainability
science shall integrate economy and ecology, global
trends and local diversity, basic academic research
and applied management. 24 It should resolve the
dichotomy of scientific research and practical action
and rather advance the notion of social learning
through critical-reflexive practice. 25
Proponents of sustainability science link this argument
to explicit institutional reform proposals, especially
with a view of the needs of developing countries,
which are so far underrepresented in global
expert networks. 26 Advocates of the concept emphasise
that we need new initiatives to better integrate
colleagues from developing countries and build-up
independent research capacities in the South (which
raises the question of how this would affect the way
social science is conducted in the North). Likewise,
sustainability science would require joint efforts of
experts and stakeholders from a variety of regions
and backgrounds.
All these challenges have been addressed at the 2002
Berlin Conference from a wide array of angles. One
analysis, for example, focused on three aspects of the
debate—interdisciplinarity, participatory research and
development, and science-policy interlinkages. Others
23
Kates et al. 2001.
24
Kates et al. 2001.
25
Clark 2001.
26
Biermann 2001a and 2002; Siebenhüner 2002a, b.

discussed appropriate research strategies in the field
of sustainable farming and elaborated on the ‘options
and restrictions’ tool developed in Switzerland. Two
panels took up the challenge of sustainability science
by elaborating principles for social science to assist in
achieving sustainable development; conceptualising
sustainable development as a joint fact-finding process;
applying the idea of place-based sustainability to
the Rio Grande basin in North America; analysing
the separation of utility and truth of scientific knowledge;
and analysing the flow of sustainability knowledge
through a Canadian conservation authority. The
conceptualisation and application of sustainability
science and earth system analysis has also been at the
centre of the second ‘Knowledge Conversation’ at
the 2002 Berlin Conference, Sustainability Science: What
on Earth for?
3. Global Environmental Change: Six
Propositions on the Challenges for Political
Science as a Discipline
What are the specific challenges that global environmental
change poses for political science as an academic
discipline? Both the looming prospect of farreaching
worldwide ecological perturbations and new
integrative concepts with their calls for academic
reform push political science to re-visit existing
methods and research approaches in order to better
contribute to the analysis of global environmental
change. The final section of this introduction
sketches six propositions on how political science
could (and should, in my view) respond to this challenge.
They focus on developing a separate field of
study within political science—world environmental
policy—that would enable political science to better
link to the interdisciplinary research networks that
have emerged.
3.1 THE STUDY OF WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY ENCOMPASSES, BUT NEEDS TO GO
BEYOND TRADITIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY
World environmental policy, as an object of study,
integrates the field of traditional environmental policy,
but needs to go beyond it. Environmental policy
as an area of study within political science has
emerged in the 1970s 27 and is had long been understood
as identification and management of environmental
problems of industrialised countries. 28 Such
analyses have long required an interdisciplinary per-
27 For Germany see in particular Jänicke 1978.
28 Jänicke et al. 1999, 14.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 7
spective that included insights from economics, sociology
or law. The IHDP research plan as well as
much of the literature on global change reveals, however,
that research in this field encompasses more
puzzles and problems than have been traditionally
examined within the study of environmental policy.
The analysis of the much broader problems of global
change, which range from changes in geophysical
systems to the loss of biological diversity, calls for a
focus on a much wider set of issues. Key questions—
such as how Bangladesh should adapt to raising sealevels,
how deterioration of African soils should be
halted, how land-use changes in Brazil should be
analysed or how the global transition to a solar society
could be achieved—have barely been covered by
environmental policy research so far, but will inevitably
become part of the emerging field of the study of
world environmental policy.
3.2 THE STUDY OF WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY NEEDS TO BRIDGE INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS RESEARCH AND ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY
A similar argument applies to the academic discipline
of international relations (IR) within political science.
Whereas all environmental problems are local in their
causes and consequences, many now require recourse
to intergovernmental and eventually to global political
solutions. Almost nine hundred international regimes
have been set up to regulate the environmental behaviour
of governments, and understanding these
regime processes has become ever more important.
Governance without government in the state system
is a core problem not only of IR, but also of the
study of world environmental policy. The IR community
has produced a wide array of studies in this
field. However, these have often been related to
theory development within IR, not to the community
of political scientists working on (national) environmental
policy and to the global environmental change
research community.
According to the emerging sustainability science
paradigm, it is especially the bridging of the global
with the local that is seen—for instance by Kates,
Clark and colleagues 29 —as a crucial challenge that
needs to ‘span the range of spatial scales between
such diverse phenomena as economic globalization
and local farming practices’. Political science has not
taken up this challenge sufficiently. 30 The German
Political Science Association attempted to address the
relative lack of interaction between IR and the envi-
29
Kates et al. 2001, 641.
30
Biermann and Dingwerth 2004ba.

8
ronmental policy community through the 2001 Berlin
Conference on ‘Global Environmental Change and
the Nation State’, which was meant to bring together
specialists from IR and from environmental policy
research. 31
3.3 THE STUDY OF WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY NEEDS TO ADDRESS MORE THAN
‘GLOBAL’ PROBLEMS
Third, the study of world environmental policy must
be more than research on problems that require solutions
at the global level. Although ‘global’ is used in a
variety of ways, in most cases it denotes systemic
global interdependencies, for instance in the conceptualisation
of the climate as a ‘global common’.
World environmental policy, however, needs to go
beyond global problems. This is why I suggest using
the term ‘world environmental policy’ instead of
‘global environmental policy’. The Global Environment
Facility of the World Bank, for example, has
been tasked only with ‘global’ environmental problems,
defined as climate change, biodiversity loss,
stratospheric ozone depletion and the protection of
international waters (a list to which soil degradation if
related to the first four global environmental problems
and persistent organic pollutants have been
added). This excludes key environmental problems
that must form part of a world environmental policy:
issues such as local air pollution, the preservation of
local waters, waste treatment, or desertification and
soil degradation in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The difference is apparent when the Global Environment
Facility is compared to agencies that use the
word ‘world’, such as the World Health Organisation,
which fights local and global health problems. Soil
degradation and urban smog are local, whereas climate
change and stratospheric ozone depletion are
global environmental problems: the study of world
environmental policy needs to include both.
3.4 THE STUDY OF WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY AS WORLD-WIDE RESEARCH PRACTICE
Fourth, the study of world environmental policy
needs to adopt a holistic perspective that focuses on
the entire globe, which also requires a global and
holistic approach to the organisation of research.
Understanding the political dimensions of the climate
change problem, for example, requires synthesising a
mosaic of local, national, regional and global political
processes. While the traditional study of environmental
policy has been devoted to cross-national
31
See Biermann, Brohm and Dingwerth 2001, and Biermann
and Dingwerth 2004a, 2004b.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
comparisons, 32 this is even more important for the
study of world environmental policy. The implications
for research practice are particularly key: the
study of world environmental policy needs not only
to encompass all the world’s regions, but must also
be internationally organised to make use of the comparative
advantages of the local knowledges of particular
regions and processes. This applies especially
to the relation between development studies and
African, Asian and Latin American area studies, on
the one hand, and traditional environmental policy
research that has focused on the rich countries in the
North. Kates, Clark and colleagues have argued, in
their blueprint of a sustainability science:
Generating adequate scientific capacity and institutional
support in developing countries is particularly urgent as
they are most vulnerable to the multiple stresses that
arise from rapid, simultaneous changes in social and
environmental systems. … a comprehensive approach
to capacity building will have to nurture … global institutions
in tandem with locally focused, trusted, and stable
institutions that can integrate work situated in particular
places and grounded in particular cultural traditions
with the global knowledge system. 33
This call for diversity within the research community
together with stronger networking applies also to
world environmental policy as a specific field of study
in political science. The globalisation of problems can
only be countered by the globalisation of political
science research.
3.5 THE STUDY OF WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICY CANNOT ADDRESS EVERYTHING
LINKED TO THE SUSTAINABILITY CONCEPT
Fifth, a caveat. Research practice requires the delineation
of the study of world environmental policy from
other neighbouring fields and terms. This is the case,
in particular, with the term sustainable development,
which usually describes the both normative and empirical
triangle of an ecologically, economically and
socially sustainable development. We need a sustainability
transition as well as the guiding idea of an allencompassing
sustainability science, and in the long
run, political science will need to play a major role in
this endeavour. Yet it would be premature today to
strive for the establishment of a counterpart to sustainability
science within the discipline of political
science and policy studies, such as the idea of ‘sustainability
policy/politics’ as a separate sub-field. It
seems more feasible, at this moment, to accept the
sustainability transition as a normative leitmotif, even
32 On German contributions, see for example Conrad 1998;
Jänicke 1990, 1996; Jänicke and Weidner 1997; Jänicke et al.
1997; Jörgens 1996; Kern and Bratzel 1996.
33 Kates et al. 2001, 642.

if one continues to focus on the political analysis of
discrete elements such as economic, social and ecological
sustainability. On the other hand, the study of
world environmental policy emphasises the need to
take into account the interdependencies of policies.
At the core of the study of world environmental
policy should be socio-economic causes and consequences
of local and global environmental change,
including options for political reform. But this requires
multi-scale and multi-disciplinary analyses that
go beyond the traditional field of environmental
policy.
3.6 REFORMING GERMAN SOCIAL SCIENCE:
INTERNATIONALISATION, INTER-
DISCIPLINARITY, PROFESSIONALISATION
Finally, I want to add a short remark on the host
country of the 2002 Berlin Conference, Germany. 34 It
seems that the analysis of world environmental policy
requires specific reforms in the way in which political
science is conducted in Germany and, arguably, also
in other European countries.
First, German research contributes little to the global
discourse on sustainability and world environmental
policy compared to its potential, for most German
research in the field is published in the German language
and thus inaccessible to non-German readers.
Global language diversity within academe might have
benefits. For instance, it might allow for the decentralised
emerging of new innovative ideas among the
French, Italian, Arabic, Spanish or German research
communities that later contribute, in English, to the
global debate. However, it seems that the costs outweigh
the benefits, and much work on global issues
in Germany—and in other non-English language
countries—is effectively lost to the larger academic
community. I see here the need for reforms in the
German research community as well as in its funding
community. Therefore, the new series of Berlin Conferences—held
as annual conventions of the Environmental
Policy and Global Change section of the
German Political Science Association, in co-operation
with the Federation of German Scientists and others—are
also meant to contribute to this internationalisation
of German research.
Second, the study of world environmental policy
must be interdisciplinary by design. Within the field
of environmental policy, German research has already
begun to link political science with economics and
law; one example is the German-language standard
text book on environmental policy written by the
34
In more detail, see our German-language study Biermann and
Dingwerth 2001 and forthcoming.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 9
political scientist Jänicke, the lawyer Kunig and the
economist Stitzel. 35 With a view to the study of world
environmental policy, however, the circle must be
expanded. It must also include, at the least, insights
from development studies, area studies and international
relations research. Again, reforms are needed.
One option could be multidisciplinary and international
master degree programmes at German universities
that unite a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds
under the overall theme of the study of
world environmental policy.
Third, Germany lacks a sufficiently elaborated policy
science community within its university system,
which is still structured along the three traditional
political science chairs of political theory, domestic
politics and international relations. In Germany there
is no equivalent to the interdisciplinary schools of
public policy and government that are common in
many countries, and it is doubtful whether the German
non-university research institutes can fully compensate
for this lack of policy science in German
university education.
4. Conclusion
Taken together, global environmental change challenges
the way in which knowledge is generated,
synthesised and distributed. This holds, too, for political
science as an academic discipline. The role of
knowledge in the societal response to global environmental
change thus stood at the centre of the
2002 Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions
of Global Environmental Change.
This conference has been part of the series of Berlin
Conferences, which we conceive of as a string of
multidisciplinary dialogues among experts from all
major regions of the world, with political science at
its core and as its centre of gravity, and with a view to
the solution of societal problems and to the adaptation
of political science to the new challenges of
global environmental change. Future Berlin Conferences
will, we hope, remain faithful to this research
programme. After a third successful Berlin Conference,
in 2003, on the subject of industrial transformation,
we are now in the process of planning the 2004
Berlin Conference on the theme of ‘Greening of
Policies—Interlinkages and Policy Integration’ (3-4
December 2004). We hope that as many of our colleagues
from abroad and from Germany will continue
to participate as enthusiastically as they have in 2001,
2002 and 2003.
35 See Jänicke et al. 1999.

10
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12 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Part I
Generating Sustainability Knowledge

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 14-20.
How to Observe and Model Transitions Towards Sustainability:
the Geoscope Initiative
Hermann Lotze-Campen and Wolfgang Lucht ∗
1. Introduction
The 21st century will be characterized by global
change at an unprecedented scale. Human activity on
the planet has reached a dimension which alters the
earth system as a whole, mainly as a combination of
population growth, resource use, waste disposal, and
technological advances. In order to meet the challenges
of global change, human society has to develop
a more comprehensive global information base
to guide informed economic, social and environmental
action in transitions to sustainability. This
requires new theoretical concepts, continuous data
streams with sufficient spatial coverage, and improved
modelling activities for simulating complex
scenarios of human-environment interactions. Major
issues with a strong need for interdisciplinary approaches
include transitions in the global energy
system, regional and global water use, land use dynamics
and soil erosion, and biodiversity loss.
First steps towards an integrated assessment of the
earth system have been taken, based on research
experience from global climate change and the International
Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP).
These efforts were made possible through the development
of global observation systems based on satellite
remote sensing, weather stations and other monitoring
tools. However, coverage of human activities
and economic developments, especially technological
change and lifestyle issues, have been unsatisfactory.
The International Human Dimensions Program on
Global Environmental Change (IHDP) has initiated
several research projects to fill these gaps. In terms of
economic modelling, the Global Trade Analysis Project
(GTAP) provides an example of a joint international
effort which has over the last years created a
common database and a modelling framework for
consistent global economic analysis. One of the major
virtues of GTAP is the establishment of a harmonized
economic information base on a wide range of
diverse countries and data sources. So far, however,
coverage of environmental factors has been rather
∗ Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany.
Contact:: lotze-campen@pik-potsdam.de.
limited, thus restricting the application of truly integrated
modelling approaches.
An emerging sustainability science and its crossdisciplinary
theoretical concepts will require more
integrated data sets and modelling tools to provide
systematic, structured analyses of global transitions
towards sustainability. Integrated modelling efforts
will contribute to bridging the traditional gaps between
natural and social sciences, and this will in turn
raise the demand for data of a new quality, especially
in economics and social sciences. At the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) recently
the idea of a “Sustainability Geoscope” has evolved.
The Geoscope will provide a framework for an observation
and monitoring system on a global scale,
comprising economic, social, environmental and
institutional issues. It will be built upon well established
efforts and experiences in economics and social
sciences, like IHDP and GTAP, and the natural
sciences, like IGBP, as well as numerous activities for
the development of sustainability indicators. Data
sources will be a combination of satellite remote
sensing with on-the-ground observations.
The objective of this paper is to discuss challenges in
analysing transitions to sustainability and present the
Geoscope concept as a tool for understanding and
managing these transitions.
2. Challenges in understanding transitions
to sustainability
The present global economic and social development
path is in many respects not sustainable. It cannot be
maintained in this form without irretrievably destroying
the natural life support systems for human society.
Humankind has entered the "Anthropocene", an
era in which the tight inter-linkages between human
society and the natural environment have become
inseparable and are being taken into consideration in
an integrated worldview (Crutzen, 2000).
The following list provides examples of unsustainable
society-nature interactions which are usually confined
to certain regions, but which are embedded in global
change processes:
• Water use beyond recharge levels and water
quality

• Food insecurity, land use and soil erosion
• Biodiversity loss
• Public health
• Urbanization and mega-cities
• Fossil-fuel based energy systems and increase
in global mobility
• Technology development and global technology
diffusion
• Changes in lifestyles and their global diffusion
• Dynamics of conflicts
In order to better understand these interactions and
to identify sustainable development paths, human
societies need appropriate instruments and methods
which go beyond the tools that are presently available.
These new methods are being developed and
combined under the umbrella of an emerging "sustainability
science". Sustainability science seeks to
understand the fundamental character of interactions
between nature and society (Kates et al., 2001).
Hence it understands and treats the Earth system as a
whole. This requires that the Earth system is being
observed in its entirety, that there are methods for an
integrated analysis of the Earth system, and that –
proceeding from this analysis – recommendations can
be given to politics and the wider public which will
lead to sustainable development once they are applied
(Schellnhuber and Wenzel, 1998; Schellnhuber, 1999).
Some kind of integrated “Earth system management”,
which is not necessarily meant in a centralized
manner, may be the overall objective.
Earth system observation can build on a wide range
of diverse methods that have been developed in
different scientific disciplines, including remote sensing,
weather stations, national economic accounting,
surveys and household panels. The combination of
these methods in a meaningful way is a major task in
itself. A thorough Earth system mapping would be
required, because spatial extension and explicitness
matters when it comes to analysing nature-society
interactions. Geographical information systems (GIS)
provide a powerful toolkit for combining a wide
variety of data and qualitative information and for
conducting multi-layered analyses. Based on this
information, Earth system analysis may provide a new
understanding and new images of our world. This
may create a new mindset and something like a
"global subject" which is already emerging
(Schellnhuber, 1999). Humankind has developed a
range of models and simulation tools and begins to
understand the Earth system as a whole. The emerg-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 15
ing "global subject" manifests itself e.g. in new global
treaties on climate protection. Eventually, this will
lead to a new form of global decision-making or
Earth system management which will have to deal
with questions like: "What kind of world do we want
to live in?" Decisions on required actions involve all
levels, from individuals and small social groups to
nations and ultimately the global society. The "global
subject" will express itself in numerous political activities
and measures with global relevance.
Any kind of Earth system management has to deal
with the necessary transition processes. Humankind
has to decide on how to actually achieve sustainability,
i.e. what are the paths available and what could a
transition to a sustainable state of the Earth look like.
A structured analysis of the related transition processes
is required which deals specifically with the time
dimension, i.e. the connections and switching points
between different phases of transition. Even if the
achievement of sustainable development remains only
a long-term perspective, starting points of the required
transitions can already be observed now and
should be identified and studied, as the path dependence
of our current actions could have significant
impacts in the medium and long run.
Since the future remains uncertain and even the most
sophisticated and theory-based computer models will
never provide exact predictions of future developments,
human society should continuously observe
the presence and learn from the past, in order to
decide on appropriate future steps. This iterative
learning-by-doing approach to finding a sustainable
development path may include the following questions
and steps which have been developed during a
recent workshop on the emergence of a sustainability
science (ISTS, 2002):
• Where and how do transitions start? Are
there triggers to be observed which should
not be ignored?
• Do transitions follow certain underlying
rules and patterns which can be identified
and which repeat themselves over time or
under different circumstances?
• Are there typical barriers to transitions
which prevent or delay required changes?
• What kind of actions and interventions can
be taken to direct, accelerate or slow down
transitional changes according to social objectives?
The study of transition processes with respect to
important society-nature interactions will be a key
challenge and research task for an emerging sustain-

16 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
ability science. This will have to be a science of design,
i.e. instead of providing engineering-type blueprints
for sustainability, it will rather build on successful
examples and learn from instructive failures in the
past. By pursuing a learning-by-doing approach it will
continuously observe human actions and try to identify,
document and analyse patterns of sustainable
development. Martens and Rotmans (2002) provide a
conceptual framework for describing and analysing
transitions by distinguishing phases of predevelopment,
take-off, acceleration, and stabilisation. Recent
research efforts on syndromes of global change as
well as vulnerability and adaptation provide first
insights in this direction (Kates et al. 2001).
3. Critical aspects in Earth system
modelling and analysis
The concept of "sustainability" is difficult to define
and is not rooted in a homogeneous theory. This
concept was created in a public-political process and
is dynamically progressing in a way that the requirements
with respect to explanation patterns for sustainability
are likely to change constantly in the future.
Nevertheless, a sound observation of the Earth system
requires a theoretical background which puts
society in a position to ask relevant questions and to
manage the complexity of the object of observation –
the Earth system as a whole.
In different scientific disciplines, prevailing theories
are reflected in formalized models. These formalized
models usually have well-defined information requirements
in order to represent certain aspects of a
more complex formulation of a problem. Models are
important to comprehend complex chains of argumentation.
In sustainability science, the integrated
modelling of nature-society interactions is of special
importance. However, integrated modelling, with
both natural and social scientific methods being included,
is not a trivial process. In the relatively new
field of Integrated Assessment studies strong efforts
have been made to develop integrated modelling
tools, primarily for analysing effects of energy consumption
and global climate change. In the future,
these efforts have to be extended to new thematic
fields, like the ones mentioned in the previous chapter.
At the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research (PIK) a core project deals with the development
of a next generation of Integrated Assessment
modules, which comprise a range of modelling
tools from both natural and social sciences that may
be combined in various constellations according to
the actual problem to be analysed (Jaeger et al. 2002).
This decisively modular approach is in contrast to the
construction of a single mega-model. The crucial
challenge here is to come up with efficient methods
for consistent coupling of a variety of models, from
comparative-static economic models to fully dynamic
models of vegetation development or climatic
change.
Truly integrated modelling means that e.g. models of
the biosphere have to take human action explicitly
into account, while in the other direction socioeconomic
models have to treat the natural environment
as more than just a static set of boundary conditions
and constraints. The current state of the art in
global dynamic vegetation modelling does not include
any human management decisions, e.g. in agriculture,
forestry or urban development. However, it is obvious
that human action is considerably shaping the
Earth surface and there are no longer distant places
to refer to as "fully natural". On the other hand, most
economic models do not take the natural environment
endogenously into account, but rather as exogenous
constraints to human behaviour. This shows
that by lowering the disciplinary boundaries and
approaching each other in a constructive manner,
both sides could benefit from the knowledge gained
in the other research community.
The following issues are of special concern for future
integrated modelling efforts:
- Spatial explicitness: one of the major differences
between biosphere and climate models
on the one hand, and socio-economic
models on the other is the treatment of spatial
dimensions. Whereas economic analysis
is mostly agent-based and usually takes
transportation costs as the only spatial aspect
into account, models of the biosphere
and climate conditions put a strong focus on
spatial distribution and dynamics, placebased
phenomena and scaling problems.
This goes down all the way to data gathering
and observation, as economic data are usually
only available as summary indicators related
to specific administrative units,
-
whereas environmental data are regularly
collected in a GIS compatible format at
various grid sizes all over the globe.
Long-term dynamics: the definition of
“long-term” differs significantly between e.g.
climate models and economic models. While
climate projections over a century or more
are regularly conducted, the forecast of political
and economic trends beyond a decade
quickly enters the area of pure speculation.
- Equilibrium theory vs. Critical thresholds: is

-
it realistic to model the interactions between
the human sphere and the environment as a
system which always returns to a stable equilibrium?
Or are there critical thresholds
which must not be surpassed without the
risk of irreversible damages to natural life
support systems for humankind? Recent advancements
in economic theory and modelling
which deal with lock-in effects, path dependence
and bifurcations should be further
explored in order to become more compatible
with modelling approaches on biosphere
and climate dynamics which include possible
structural breaks and necessary guardrails.
Diffusion of lifestyle patterns: individual
preferences and lifestyles have a strong influence
on human action and hence their effects
on the natural environment. However,
“lifestyle” is a rather diffuse concept which
is not easily defined and consistently modelled.
It is clear that changes and diffusions
of lifestyles are at the heart of all globalisation
processes which heavily shape our present
state of the world. But very little is understood
of how certain preference changes
emerge, how they are amplified and how
they spread locally as well as on a global
scale. It may be the case that any kind of
transition which involves human action can
only be understood if the underlying causes
of preference changes can be explained.
- Induced innovation: The true nature and
potential of technological change and innovation,
including institutional design, has to
be further explored as it crucially defines the
adaptive capacity of human society to global
environmental problems and challenges.
This aspect has by far not fully taken into
account in the assessments of global environmental
impacts on human welfare. The
question of how resilient social and economic
systems are to external shocks from
changing environmental conditions, is
-
viewed very differently in the socioeconomic
disciplines and the natural sciences.
Optimising behaviour vs. learning-by-doing:
In the past a worldview has dominated human
action, which was based on the assumption
that, based on scientific theory
and the derived measures and technologies,
most problems could be solved by some
kind of engineering solution to be con-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 17
structed on the drawing board. This also
corresponds with economic models which
centre around human actors with perfect
foresight and a set of preferences which are
applied to optimise their behaviour in a
given environment. While this approach is
very powerful in explaining economic processes
under many different circumstances, it
is questionable whether this style of thinking
will suffice to guide political and economic
action in a transition to sustainability. The
challenges ahead imply high uncertainty
about future conditions and potential critical
thresholds. It is likely that instead of a “geoengineering
approach” humankind needs to
cope with continuous transitions and needs
to adopt an adaptive management attitude
which involves learning by doing, trial and
error as well as permanent feedback loops
between decision-making, observation, and
analysis or assessment.
4. The concept of a Sustainability Geoscope
The prerequisite for a better analysis and understanding
of long-term transition processes is an appropriate
empirical base, i.e. long time series of key variables
describing all relevant aspects of society-nature
interaction. Currently available observation and monitoring
systems are often restricted to a specific disciplinary
background, e.g. weather stations and remote
sensing satellites collect spatially explicit global information
for the natural sciences, while statistical
data for the social sciences are often confined to
nation states. Moreover, key indicators are not available
at all, or only with insufficient coverage over
time or space. For example, global data on water use
are often spotty or based on rough estimates, in rich
and poor countries alike (Brown, 2002). For the
analysis of transitions to sustainability the existing
gaps have to be overcome and integrated observation
procedures have to be developed.
Such a global monitoring and observation system
which covers environmental as well as social and
economic conditions has been proposed as a "Sustainability
Geoscope" (Lucht and Jaeger 2001). The
Geoscope vision aims at an instrument for systematic
collection and analysis of congruent natural-scientific
and socio-economic data that enable a validation of
integrated views of society-nature dynamics. In brief,
the Geoscope shall investigate selected regions on a
global scale with regard to actions related to sustainable
development by using remote sensing as well as

18 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
observations on the ground.
The process of "geoscoping" transitions to sustainable
resource use would involve the following steps
and actions. In order to facilitate a well-structured
learning process, a sufficient set of comparative regional
case studies has to be defined which covers the
global hot spots of unsustainable nature-society interactions.
Within these sample regions a common protocol
for empirical research has to be established with
a focus on key actors, i.e. who are they, what are their
intentions and constraints, what are the consequences
of their actions, and what mechanisms and patterns
can be identified among different regions.
Figure 1 illustrates a possible structure of such a
monitoring system. It consists of regional nodes,
where various thematic issues are investigated using a
wide range of methods which are applied to the same
regional context. Thematic nodes will focus on a
certain topic and methodology, but will apply these to
various regions in a comparative manner. Integrative
nodes will summarise thematic research, provide
overall evaluations, establish the necessary research
infrastructure like database management and coordination,
as well as communicate results.
The organising principle for measuring material and
energy flows between society and the environment
may be provided by the concept of socio-economic
metabolism (Fischer-Kowalski and Weisz 1999). This
could be used as a unified accounting standard for
nature-society interactions. For practical reasons, in
the initial phase thematic areas of investigation may
be restricted to certain topics, like regional water use,
land use change, and biodiversity loss. To give an
example of water-related problems, possible parameters
to be continuously observed may be related to
human lifestyles and preferences, general education,
perception of water shortages and risks, access to
water-saving technology, technology adoption and
diffusion, allocation of water abstraction rights,
demographic changes and other early warning signs,
Integrative nodes
Thematic nodes
Regional nodes
Figure 1: Structure of a Geoscope for conducting comparative regional case studies
specific agricultural production and market conditions,
and management of irrigation and water distribution.
In addition to these sampled ground-based
observations, continuous large-area monitoring of
water use, especially agricultural irrigation activities,
has to be intensified through remote sensing satellites
(Droogers 2002). Ground-based and remotely sensed
observations should be combined, in order to link
social and economic activities to the spatial dimension
of specific environmental changes and to determine
society's adaptive capacity in view of these
changes.
If the envisaged comparative regional case studies are
chosen carefully and a sufficient time period will have
been covered, it should be possible to identify certain
patterns of sustainable development. In a next step,
these results would have to be linked to simulation
models on different scales, so as to allow for generalisation
and comparison. This will in turn create the
demand for even more advanced, operational methods
of monitoring and observation with global cover-

Thematic integration
First
Approach
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 19
Time
Mature
Geoscope
Figure 2: Step-by-step approach to developing a Sustainability Geoscope
age over extended time periods. A major challenge
will be the combination of a synoptic global worldview
with a local, site-specific, case-dependent perspective.
Top-down and bottom-up approaches have
to be combined through a suitable connection of
global models with inter-linked regional case studies.
Similar approaches can be found in projects like
LUCC, HERO or DEVECOL. The development of
corresponding data sets from satellite remote sensing
on the one hand and ground observations on the
other is generally desirable, however, it is still a great
challenge to actually implement it.
From the very beginning, the Geoscope has to prepare
for two different tasks. First, it has to provide
data for integrated scientific analysis of Global
Change processes (theory building, modelling, scenario
development) and, second, it has to support
public and political decision processes within the
framework of Earth system management activities
(communication of results, highly aggregated representations,
decision support tools). Since these two
areas may have very different information requirements,
it has to be clarified more precisely how this
can be organized within the framework of a potentially
multi-stage Geoscope or even several Geoscopes.
Given the vision of a Geoscope as it has been out-
Space
lined here, it is clear that such an endeavour can only
be achieved in a step-by-step approach which might
take several decades to be completed. The design and
construction process itself will involve a lot of uncertainty
and requires continuous learning by doing in
addition to well-structured planning. In any case, a
start has to be made with a core set of activities and a
clear focus on manageable problems. Over time this
core set of activities may then be extended in the
dimensions of temporal and spatial coverage as well
as disciplinary and thematic integration (see Figure 2).
An important task for creating the necessary resource
base is to define appropriate funding structures in an
international context. In the initial phase, this will be
a pure research effort which will have to coordinate
various funding sources on the national level. The 6 th
Framework Programme as initiated by the European
Union will be an important initial step for a supranational
funding structure. In the long term, possibilities
for continuous funding through infrastructure investments
have to be explored, if such a global information
and monitoring system is to become fully
operational.
In parallel to these structural efforts which have been
recently initiated around the Geoscope idea, a research
team at the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research has announced an Internet-based

20 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
competition for Geoscope-related ideas and findings.
1 In the spirit of the famous mathematician
Stefan Banach, who in the early 20th century announced
symbolic prizes for the solution of various
mathematical problems he had defined, several international
institutions have agreed to sponsor a similar
procedure to create a research community around the
Geoscope. A number of symbolic prizes have been
made available and will be awarded to individuals or
institutions who contribute substantially to the development
of the envisaged monitoring instrument.
Achievements to be accepted for the award will include
project ideas, recent findings and completed
studies, or relevant data sets, which relate to comparative
regional case studies on sustainability questions
on a global scale.
The Geoscope initiators hope that this competition
will create the right spirit and scientific atmosphere,
in which fundamental inter-disciplinary discoveries
related to Global Change are being made and important
contributions to an emerging sustainability science
may evolve.
References
Brown, K.: Water scarcity: Forecasting the future with spotty data,
Science, 297, 926-27, 2002.
Crutzen, P.J., Stoermer, E.F., The Anthropocene, IGBP Newsletter
41, May 2000. (http://www.mpchmainz.mpg.de/~air/anthropocene/
)
Droogers, P.: Global irrigated area mapping: Overview and recommendations,
Working Paper 36, International Water Management Institute,
Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2002.
Fischer-Kowalski, M., Weisz, H.: Society as hybrid between material
and symbolic realms – towards a theoretical framework of
society-nature interaction, in: Advances in Human Ecology, 8, 215-
251, 1999.
Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability (ISTS):
Report on the Bonn Regional Workshop on Science for Sustainability,
Walberberg, 27 Feb – 01 Mar, 2002.
(http://sustsci.harvard.edu/ists/docs/ists_regws_walberberg.pd
f ).
Jaeger, C.C., Leimbach, M., Carraro, C., Hasselmann, K., Hourcade,
J.C., Keeler, A., Klein, R.: Integrated Assessment Modeling:
Modules for Cooperation, Nota di lavoro 53-2002, 2002.
(http://www.feem.it/web/activ/_wp.html )
Kates, R.W., et al.: Sustainability Science, Science, 292, 641-42, 2001.
Lucht, W., Jaeger, C.C.: The Sustainability Geoscope: a proposal
for a global observation instrument for the Anthropocene, in:
Contributions to Global Change Research: A Report by the German National
Committee on Global Change Research, 138-144, 2001.
(www.sustainability-geoscope.net > Information > Downloads)
Martens, P., Rotmans, J. (eds.): Transitions in a globalising world, Swets
& Zeitlinger, Lisse, 2002.
Schellnhuber, H.J.: Earth System Analysis and the Second Copernican
Revolution, Nature, 402, C19-C23, 1999.
Schellnhuber, H.J., Wenzel, V. (eds.): Earth System Analysis,
Springer, Berlin, 1998.
1 For more details see www.sustainability-geoscope.net .

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 21-31.
When Accountants create Knowledge. Learnings from the International
Standardization of Greenhouse Gas Accounting
Markus Ohndorf ∗ and Simon Schmitz +
Introduction: The GHG Protocol in the context
of knowledge and sustainability
The problem of human induced climate change involves
complex interdependencies between the climatic
and the socio-economic system that are still far
from being understood in all details. In order to deal
with this problem not only scientific understanding of
all underlying relationships between these systems
will be needed, but this knowledge needs also to be
translated into practical and technical knowledge that
enables mankind to apply mitigation measures.
In order to reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) in a
cost-effective way, ”affordable” reduction potentials
have to be identified and realized. In this article we
present the GHG Protocol, an evolving international
GHG accounting standard. To put it into the context
of knowledge and sustainability, we argue that it
represents an institution, which diffuses information and
knowledge and thus serves several societal functions.
Most importantly, it helps identify reduction potentials
on the company and project level, as well as to
implement policy measures to reduce GHG emissions.
Furthermore, the GHG Protocol links in another
important way to the research field of ”knowledge
and sustainability”, as the process of standardization
is to some extent always a ”coagulation of knowledge”.
Knowledge on GHG Accounting is of rather technical
and practical nature. The amount of pure scientific
or academic knowledge directly applicable to the
problem is quite low. It is therefore not to be expected
that a standardization of GHG accounting
would lead to completely new findings. The challenge
is rather to recombine and apply knowledge assets
spread out over a large variety of actors. The larger
the number of experts from different fields with
different backgrounds participating in the development
process of the standard, the better will the final
∗ Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland.
Contact: ohndorf@wif.gess.ethz.ch.
+ World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Switzerland.
Contact : schmitz@wbcsd.org
standard represent the best available technical knowledge.
As the different actors in the standardization process
have different institutional backgrounds (companies,
regulators, NGO’s) and therefore different – potentially
conflicting – interests, this process includes
necessarily aspects of ”institutional bargaining”. The
importance of this bargaining aspect becomes apparent
when the two accounting ”modules” that the
GHG Protocol Initiative set out to develop are juxtaposed
(i.e. the already published standard on corporate
accounting, and secondly the currently evolving
standard on accounting for GHG reductions) .
In what follows, the second section presents the
GHG Protocol and the political background that
makes a common standard for GHG accounting
necessary. The third section examines the knowledgerelated,
societal functions of a GHG accounting
standard from an economist’s point of view. The
fourth section examines the institutional structure of
the development process and discusses the importance
of this structure for the ”coagulation of knowledge”
within the GHG Protocol Initiative. The fifth
section deals with the problems of ”institutional
bargaining” encountered during the development
process and showcases the limits of a multistakeholder
process by comparing the two different
modules of the GHG Protocol. The concluding section
summarizes the arguments presented and draws
a conceptual picture of the different roles that the
GHG Protocol plays in the knowledge context.
GHG accounting and the GHG Protocol
Initiative
The signing of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) has underlined the commitment
that many, not all, industrialized countries have made
to reduce their GHG emissions.
In implementing the principle of cost-effectiveness
the KP aims to minimize the overall economic costs
of action against climate change. This implies that
emissions should be reduced wherever it is cheapest
to do so, ideally resulting in the well-known efficient
outcome where all countries have the same marginal
costs of mitigation.

22
Hence, the institutional framework of the KP includes
the idea of emissions trading: Industrial countries
with emission constraints agreed under the accord
(Annex 1 countries) and with high GHG abatement
costs buy emission allowances from countries with
low abatement costs in order to comply with their
obligation to reduce emissions.
Additionally, two related institutional mechanisms
that follow the same objective have been put in place
by the KP: Both the Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM), and Joint Implementation (JI) allow companies
from Annex 1 countries to invest in projects that
reduce emissions in other countries and thus ”buy”
emission credits for their country. Emission credits
generated by JI or CDM projects are in effect a
commodity which needs to be made fungible with
allowances, since both will likely be traded in the same
market.
Importantly for this paper, in practice, much of this
trading will happen on the corporate level since allowances
are often allocated to companies by their
governments. Companies then have to comply (i.e.
not exceed) this allocation by either reducing emissions,
buying allowances or buying credits.
While any policy addressing environmental problems
arising from emissions requires measurement and
reporting of emissions data, under an emissions trading
regime such measurement and reporting acquires
an especially interesting role from an institutional
perspective, since it provides crucial definition of
property rights to emission allowances and credits.
GHG accounting for credit-based systems bears
however different challenges to the standardization
efforts than the development of a corporate inventory
that provides the data necessary for allowancebased
”cap and trade” systems. The GHG Protocol
Initiative – established to foster the standardization
of corporate GHG accounting – has therefore divided
the corporate accounting standard into two
different modules:
• The corporate Inventory module, and the
• Project Accounting module
We will use the remainder of this section to outline
briefly the evolution and the content of these two
different accounting modules of the GHG Protocol.
SOME BACKGROUND AND THE ”SUCCESS STORY” OF
THE CORPORATE INVENTORY MODULE
The GHG Protocol Initiative was established in 1999
under the auspices of the World Business Council for
Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World
Resource Institute (WRI) in an attempt to harmonize
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
the various streams of existing accounting and reporting
practices relating to greenhouse gas inventories
within an organization or company and deliver one
internationally accepted standard and provide solid
guidance on how to implement it.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development
is a coalition of 160 international companies
united by a shared commitment to sustainable development
via the three pillars of economic growth,
ecological balance and social progress. Members are
drawn from more than 30 countries and 20 major
industrial sectors. The WBCSD also benefits from a
global network of 38 national and regional business
councils and partner organizations involving some
1000 business leaders globally.
The World Resources Institute is an environmental
think tank that goes beyond research to create practical
ways to protect the earth and improve people’s
lives. Inside the WRI, the GHG Protocol Initiative is
managed by the sustainable enterprise program,
which seeks to harness the power of business to
create profitable solutions to environmental and
social challenges.
The first edition of the Corporate Inventory standard
has been published at the end of 2001. All of the
companies that voluntarily worked with WBCSD and
WRI on developing and road-testing the standard are
now using the standards and guidance in it for compiling
and reporting a GHG inventory.
Since its publication in October 2001 and its launch
in various regions around the world, it has been at
least partially adopted both by emerging schemes on
voluntary reporting of GHG emissions and regulatory
schemes on emissions trading. 1 Therefore, it is to
be expected that many additional user companies
around the globe will be ”recruited” through these
schemes.
The GHG Protocol will also be the basis for the
standardization efforts of the International Standardization
Organization (ISO), which has agreed to use it
as a ”seed document”. It can therefore be said that
the GHG Protocol corporate accounting and reporting
standard is on its best way to become a generally
accepted international standard.
1 All of US EPA Climate Leaders, WWF ClimateSavers, UK
Emission Trading System, Chicago Climate Exchange, Entreprises
pour l’Environnement, ISO/TC 207, European Certification
Organization (CEN/TC 264), several state GHG Registries
in the US, US AID, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
and the World Economic Forum (WEF) GHG Register are
policy or voluntary reporting initiatives that are either using or
building on the GHG Protocol for their accounting and reporting
framework.

Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 23
ELEMENTS OF THE CORPORATE MODULE 2 • Completeness (account for all emission sources
The GHG Protocol corporate accounting and reporting
standard consists of three parts:
• It sets GHG accounting and reporting standards.
• It provides practical advice to companies
ranging from managing inventory quality to
having emissions verified by a third party.
• It offers GHG calculation tools on emission
sources common for all sectors (e.g. stationary
combustion) as well as for different industry
sectors, which can be downloaded
from the internet
(http://www.ghgprotocol.org).
Figure 1 shows the structural elements of the Corporate
Module. The different sections of this module
within the organizational and operational
boundaries)
• Consistency (to allow comparison of the data
over time)
• Transparency (address all relevant issues in a
factual and coherent manner, based on a clear
audit trail)
• Accuracy (exercise due diligence to ensure that
GHG calculations have the precision needed for
their intended use)
The principles serve to stipulate overarching normative
concerns, stating the most important criteria
against which an inventory should be evaluated and
that ultimately determine the usefulness and credibility
of the inventory.
will be shortly explained below. In the standards section, the main issues addressed by
the Corporate Module include:
Standards
Accounting
Principles
Organizational
Boundaries
Operational
Boundaries
Historic Datum
Reporting GHG
emissions
GUIDANCE
Figure 1: Elements of the Corporate Inventory module
Business goals and
inventory design
Accounting for GHG reduc-
tions
Identifying GHG sources
The backbone of the GHG Protocol consists of the
following five accounting and reporting principles: 3
• Relevance (of all reported data)
2 Parts of this section draw on Sundin and Ranganathan (2002)
3 WRI/WBCSD (2001), p. 7.
Managing inventory quality
Verification of
CALCULATION TOOLS
Web-based, user-
friendly,step-by- step guidance
Build on IPCC method-
ologies & industry best
practice
Cross sector, e.g.
mobile and stationary
combustion
Sector specific
• Setting organizational boundaries – This part of
the Protocol sets rules on how to account
for emissions from joint ventures, subsidiaries
and other partially owned entities and
operations.
• Setting operational boundaries –Setting operational
boundaries involves making choices
with respect to accounting and reporting for
direct and indirect emissions. All direct

24
•
emissions and indirect emissions associated
with purchased electricity should be included
in an inventory compiled with the
help of the GHG Protocol, whereas all other
indirect emissions are a voluntary reporting
category.
Setting a historic performance datum –The GHG
Protocol recommends setting a historic performance
datum for comparing emissions
over time. Companies should choose a base
year for which verifiable data is available.
The performance datum needs to be adjusted
overtime to maintain comparability if
significant structural changes (e.g.,
acquisitions, divestitures, mergers etc.)
occur. The GHG Protocol provides a number
of rules to help companies adopt a
consistent adjustment policy.
The guidance sections do not prescribe the conduct of a
reporting company as much as the standard sections
do, but rather provide useful step-by-step guidance
for such issues as improving data quality and conceptual
learnings on such issues as identifying and calculating
emissions sources.
The most detailed and concrete contribution to GHG
accounting is made by the web-based calculation tools.
They consist of Excel spreadsheets accompanied by
guidance documents on how to use them. Both detailed
calculation methodologies for cross-sector
(such as mobile and stationary combustion) and sector-specific
emission sources are provided. These
tools are a reference point for companies in developing
the inventory, and provide a credible source to
cite when reporting methodologies. Moreover, the
tools are certainly a crucial feature in adding real
comparability to inventories from different companies.
THE IDEA OF THE PROJECT MODULE
The effort to build a similar standard for GHG project
accounting was launched in December 2001.
While national and international schemes on reduction
projects (like CDM and JI) had been defined on
the policy level, there was a clear lack of rules on the
implementation level. At the same time, there was a
strong agreement within the GHG Protocol Initiative
that clear GHG project accounting rules would be
needed if schemes like CDM or JI were to work
effectively. A similar multi-stakeholder process to the
one set up for the Corporate Module was launched in
which discussions are ongoing. The aim is to publish
the Project Standard by October next year.
The overarching requirement for any GHG reduction
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
project is that it causes ”reductions in emissions that
are additional to any that would otherwise occur”. 4
The crucial question then is how ”additional” is the
project to what would ”otherwise” have happened?
The ”otherwise”, i.e. the counterfactual scenario for
how many GHG emissions would have occurred
without the project, is referred to as ”baseline”. As
indicated in Figure 2, the credits accruing from a
project will be the difference between baseline emissions
and project emissions; high baselines thus result
in a big amount of reduction.
4 This is the provision for JI in the KP and the Marrakech Accords
(MA); for the CDM it is very similar, i.e. ”additional to
emissions that would occur without the certified project activity”.

Quantifying emission reductions involves, besides the
baseline, at least one other crucial measure, which is
the boundary drawn around the project. Judgements
on boundaries can also vary greatly, depending on
how far up- or downstream emissions are accounted
for. This issue is similar to the one of Operational
Boundaries in the Corporate Module: It is always
somewhat ambiguous who is actually responsible or
accountable for indirect emissions. While the issue of
Operational Boundaries has been solved in the Corporate
Module through the recommendation to always
include indirect emissions associated with purchased
electricity, this issue is still open for discussion
in the Project Module.
However tricky to agree it is on the boundary question,
it is clear that the baseline scenario also is subject
to some judgement since it is by its nature counterfactual.
Here lies in our view the obvious but most
important conceptual difference between the two
modules: whereas a corporate inventory of emissions
is being evaluated ex-post (after emissions have occurred),
what is needed in the project case is an exante
evaluation (i.e. a scenario) of what emissions
would have been without the project. The flexibility
in interpretation entailed by this provides the potential
for divergence of interests which creates the challenges
discussed in Section 5.
The Project Module is discussing step-by-step guidance
on how to set baselines and boundary-setting
and will soon come up with a draft text. The project
typology will provide guidance on conceptual issues
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 25
relating to baselines, boundaries etc. in different sectors,
which requires a good deal of sector-specific
expert knowledge.
Knowledge-related functions of a GHG
accounting standard
The standardization of GHG accounting described
above fulfils several knowledge related functions.
From an economist’s point of view these are always
related to the reduction of transaction costs in the
broader sense of the term.
First of all, GHG accounting in general facilitates
identification of reduction opportunities. By providing
a consistent method to gather data on GHG
emissions in a cost effective way, GHG accounting
reduces the costs of procuring information about
reduction potentials.
Related to this point is the fact that a GHG accounting
standard like the GHG Protocol represents to a
certain extent ”coagulated” expert knowledge. The
company that starts to develop a GHG inventory or
to plan reduction projects can build on the experience
of others by adhering to the standard and through the
application of the recommendations from the guideline
section. The GHG Protocol reduces therefore
costs for learning about the different GHG accounting
issues.
On the country level the standardization of GHG
accounting and reporting is crucial for the comparability
of the emission data, which is a prerequisite for

26
the effectiveness of policy measures like emissions
trading or taxation. Another advantage of standardized
corporate GHG accounting is the fact that the
Data on GHG emissions within the country become
more precise.
In the following we will elaborate these points in
order to emphasize the role that the GHG Protocol
plays in the context of ”knowledge and sustainability”
as an institution that diffuses practical knowledge on
GHG accounting.
IDENTIFYING REDUCTION OPPORTUNITIES
The scientific arguments supporting the thesis of
human-induced global warming have become more
and more widely accepted, not only within a wide
community of natural scientists and environmental
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) but also
by national governments and multi-national companies.
As long as there is no policy reaction to this problem,
activities that entail Greenhouse Gas emissions create
an ”externality”. This means that the real costs (of
global warming) entailed by such activities are not
directly taken into account in the price that people
who engage in them have to pay. As the price for, say
electricity from the combustion of fossil fuels, does
not reflect all the costs for its production, the price
mechanism will not lead to an optimal production
level.
It has thus been a standard economic argument that
the price of such activities must rise in order for this
externality to be rectified. Such a price rise would
then provide incentives to either engage, for example,
in less activities that consume energy in the first place
or finding ways of producing energy with less GHG
emissions.
While it is more and more widely recognized that
GHG emissions are costly in the above described
sense, it is even clearer that the mitigation of climate
change through reducing emissions of GHGs is also
costly. It requires an overhaul of our interconnected
systems of energy production and use, transport and
industry. More precisely, carbon-intensive technologies
currently used have to be upgraded or replaced
and whole patterns of production and consumption
currently tied up with the emission of GHGs have to
be reconsidered in finding ways to a low-carbon
economy. Moreover, for developing countries, the
opportunity cost of foregoing industrial development
based on fossil fuels is potentially very high.
It is therefore very important to generate knowledge
on those reduction opportunities which can be realized
with the lowest possible costs. This requires
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
effective methods to assemble data on emissions,
which can be attributed to the different economic
activities. One of the main sectors where GHG emissions
occur is the business sector. Corporate GHG
accounting is an important instrument to identify the
cost-effective reduction opportunities, as it assures –
if it is properly done – the attribution of measured
emissions to the different cost centers of the company.
From this perspective the Corporate Inventory
module of the GHG Protocol can be understood as
an institution, which facilitates the generation of
knowledge on reduction opportunities in the different
companies.
REDUCTION OF TRANSACTION COSTS FOR
ASSEMBLING EMISSION DATA
The most prominent role of the GHG Protocol
probably is to provide the companies with a framework
of methodologies to deal with specific accounting
problems. This function is often referred to as a
form of reduction of information costs on the company
level, since certain conceptual learnings can be
taken from the standard rather than having to be
generated by an cost intensive internal learning process.
The Protocol aims at fulfilling this function by
not only prescribing a standardized approach for
typical accounting problems but also giving guidance
on their application and providing calculation tools
for typical GHG sources in different sectors.
Furthermore GHG accounting on the company level
reduces the transaction costs for assembling yearly
emissions data on the country level, which are required
for all Annex I countries of the Kyoto Protocol.
The data assembled from the separate corporate
inventories are more precise than the inventories
based on general estimations used so far. In this way,
the data available for national inventories is significantly
improved by consistent reporting by companies.
5
ACCOUNTING AND THE ATTRIBUTION OF EMISSION
RIGHTS
A further compelling argument for the benefit of a
common standard is channeled through theory on
transaction costs on the market level. Under an emissions
trading system as it is conceived in the Kyoto
Protocol, emission allowances and credits essentially
become a commodity that is traded like any other,
with one ton of this commodity being sold at the
same price as another ton.
5 This insight was backed up by our experience of outreach activities
at different workshops, aiming at refining national inventories
for particular sectors.

In such a future market for emission rights, any buyer
will want to make sure that these are ”real”. For any
good the price of which depends on a certain quantifiable
attribute, this attribute always has to be measured
in some way, and both buyer and seller will want
to protect and enforce their property rights relating to
the attributes. Thus, the more complex the attributes
of the good, the higher will likely be the transaction
costs (North, 1990). Emission allowances and credits
have, in this sense, quite complex attributes, and a
common accounting standard provides a necessary
tool for providing the credibility needed to significantly
reduce transaction costs of the attribution and
enforcement of such newly created property rights.
Standardization of the volumetric measurement and
accounting of emission data is one prerequisite for
the allowances and credits to effectively become a
homogenous good6. One ton of reported carbon
emission has been measured in the same standardized
manner as any other ton of carbon emission irrespective
of its origin. 7 The regulator, who allocates and
enforces the newly created property rights on emissions,
is then able to base its decisions on transparent,
consistent and comparable data.
REDUCTION OF THE COST OF CONTROL
Comparable and consistent emission data are not
only a prerequisite for the smooth operation of an
emissions trading system, but are also necessary for
any other kind of a countries’ GHG reduction policies.
It is important to note that the enforceability of
taxation, non-tradable quotas or any other mechanism
depends also on the existence of reliable data.
This refers to the transactions costs of control, which
play also an important role for non-governmental
controlling institutions as environmental NGO’s,
ethical investors or the media.
It seems further plausible that the company emission
inventories will be verified in a similar way as in financial
accounting, by an independent verifier. With a
6 The homogeneity of this good also depends on the regulations
going along with it: if CDM-credits are rated (by the
UNFCCC) as fully fungible with emission allowances then
homogeneity is guaranteed. However, this does not imply that
all emission reduction credits or allowances have had the same
reduction effect. E.g., a company or country could have been
assigned a very high allowance, which enables it to sell allowances
without any reduction efforts. Other companies might
be able to sell allowances since they have really made an effort
to do so.
7 Please note that this is not incompatible with the labeling of
“high quality” CDM-projects as planned by some environmental
NGO’s. If labeled certificates gain a higher price this is
due to price differentiation, that means another “sub-market”
for those “high quality” certificates is created. The certificates
within that sub-market will also have the same price and therefore
the labeling implies also the definition of certain criteria
of selection, which is nothing but a standard.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 27
standardized system, the verifier will be able to use a
reliable accounting standard against which a companies’
GHG emission report can be verified.
From a theoretical perspective, both modules could
potentially fulfill all knowledge-related functions
described here. However, as will become clear below,
the conceptual challenges in the Project module are
fundamentally different from those encountered in
the Corporate Inventory module, precisely because
they provide more potential for conflicts of interest
between the different stakeholders.
This, in turn, makes for the important differences
between the two modules that we found in running
the standardization process. These differences are
discussed in detail in Section 5. To showcase the
process that led to the ”coagulation” of expert
knowledge the following section will give a short
overview on how the corporate module has been
developed.
Institutional structure of the GHG Protocol
Initiative 8
A MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PROCESS
To meet the challenge of creating an acceptable standard,
a development process has to be designed
which takes into account the interests of all concerned
actors. The Protocol was thus fundamentally
shaped by what is termed a unique ‘multi-stakeholder
process’ that was jointly convened by the
WBCSD/WRI. The term multi-stakeholder9 process
describes ”processes that aim to bring together all
major stakeholders in a new form of communication,
decision finding and possibly decision making on a
particular issue” 10.
The Corporate Module represents a successful example
of a co-operation of parties with different – sometimes
conflicting – interests (as for the case of business
and environmental NGO’s) leading to a constructive
”coagulation” of expert knowledge on GHG
accounting. It showcases that such a process can lead
to a generally accepted standard.
As a starting point for the development of the Corporate
Inventory Standard all interested parties have
been invited to participate. More than 350 participants
from business, NGO’s, governments and others
participated in the process.
8 Parts of this section draw on Sundin (2002)
9 The term ”stakeholder” refers to those groups or individuals that
have an interest in a particular decision. This includes people
who influence a decision, or can influence it, as well as those
affected by it.
10 Memmati (2001), p. 19

28
Starting from existing work, the different accounting
issues have been identified during constitutive meetings
and were treated in smaller sub-groups open to
all experts interested in these issues. The resulting
working documents, issue papers and feedback papers
were posted on the collaboration’s website.
All issues were discussed until consensus was reached
in the working groups. The resulting draft standard
was then accepted by all participating parties and
went then into a ”road test phase”, to test its applicability.
During the ”road test” phase 30 companies in
ten countries used the standard for setting up a GHG
accounting system. The learnings from this experience
were then taken into consideration for the final
standard and led also to a detailed guidance part to
improve the usability.
In a parallel process the more detailed calculation
tools for different general and sector specific emissions
sources have been developed. The tools have
been created by one or several experts and went then
into a peer review phase which fed back into the
development of the calculation tools. The draft versions
of the tools were then posted on the collaboration’s
website for an open review process. After all
the reactions from this phase have been considered,
the final version of the tools have been posted on the
website, from which they are freely downloadable for
the public.
ROAD-TESTING AND REVISION
As GHG accounting is still in its infancy and continually
evolving, the Corporate Inventory Standard is
not to be considered as a final product. Already the
draft of the first edition was road-tested by 30 companies
to integrate the learnings from practical experience
with GHG accounting.
The second edition of the Corporate Standard will be
published in May 2003. The intention to publish a
second edition is part of the Initiative’s commitment
to continuous revision and the will to keep up with
the dynamics of GHG regulation. The revision process
which is currently under way was kicked off with
the so-called Structured Feedback Process that has
involved another 15 user companies and other targeted
stake-holders in in-depth discussions on the
standard’s usefulness and improvement needs. The
results from the Structured Feedback Process will be
assessed by a group of experts in which all relevant
stakeholder groups are presented, and the second
edition of the Corporate Inventory Standard will then
be published in May 2003.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
THE IMPORTANCE OF A FACILITATOR
Naturally the process must be facilitated by an organization
that provides non-biased driving force and
coordination, that has the ability to engage the relevant
experts and stakeholders and that is widely recognized
as being dedicated and competent in the
issues it seeks to address and resolve.
One of the most important learnings for the WBCSD
and WRI effort was to thoroughly understand the
role of a facilitator (also referred to as a secretariat or
convenor). The facilitator’s role is to bring together
stakeholders relevant to the initiative, to drive the
process, to ensure the lines of communication are
extremely open and transparent and to be the central
focal point for information flows.
The structure of the development process for the
GHG Protocol Initiative has been designed to be as
balanced and transparent as possible. With both
modules, Corporate Inventory and Project Accounting,
the WBCSD and WRI established several groups
– common in nature: Project Management Team,
Technical Taskforces and Revision Groups. At the
same time all interactions within and between these
groups was published on the website on a regular
basis (e.g. minutes after each conference call, draft
discussion papers, input materials).
Knowledge-coagulation vs. institutional
bargaining
The process described here led to the successful
definition of an accounting standard that in itself can
be referred to as ”coagulated knowledge” and that
fulfils the different functions elaborated in section 3.
In purely theoretical terms, the process of ”knowledge
coagulation” could be defined as the movement
towards the best possible solution for a technical or
scientific problem. The previous observations on the
importance of a facilitator imply, however, that no
knowledge coagulation process will be completely
devoid of conflict and bargaining based on the participants’
particular interests, even if the nature of the
knowledge discussed is highly technical.
Since the subject of this bargaining is an accounting
standard, i.e. a set of rules that is developed within a
structured framework – the GHG Protocol Initiative
– we refer to this aspect of the process as ”institutional
bargaining”. In the following, we lay out what
the crucial features for such institutional bargaining
from our point of view are.
Firstly, the process of standardization has a clearly
consensus-based approach. Once the set of multiple
participants were clear, efforts were maximized to

make arrangements that everyone can accept, rather
than any one sub-set of actors trying to form a ”winning
coalition”.
Secondly, the discussions around both Modules were,
at least on some issues, exploratory, since it is not
always entirely clear what exactly the outcome of an
agreement on a particular issue will be: the actors
search for mutual deals on an ”integrative” rather
than ”distributive” approach to bargaining.
This aspect is related to the fact that the deals
achieved under institutional bargaining can be of
quite generic character. 11 This entails a good deal of
uncertainty as to how the rules exactly apply to particular
cases, which facilitates efforts to reach a fair
agreement, since no participant is exactly sure what
his position he will take to the questions discussed
when applied to particular cases.
Institutional bargaining in the Corporate and the
Project Module
A GHG accounting standard is to serve different
stakeholders with particular interests, its development
is therefore subject to potential conflicts.
Both Modules clearly exhibited some degree of bargaining
involved in the process, even though the
degree to which this is the case differs across the two
modules. A corporate inventory report must for
example include all the important GHG sources of a
company in order to be usable for the regulator of an
emissions trading regime but the process of gathering
the reported data must still be affordable for the
reporting company. There was thus certainly some
degree of conflict here between the participants as to
how much data quality measures are enough.
Nevertheless, the incentive structure of the development
process of the Corporate Standard is very close
to the structure of a co-ordination game. All participating
actors had a high interest in the development
of such a standard, while the costs from consensus
were very low. From the business perspective it is
very important to create a standard which keeps the
cost of accounting and reporting on an acceptable
level. From an environmentalist point of view it is
important to create a standard which allows comparison
between businesses and that helps to set up effective
mitigation policies. As the standard involves
rather technical questions than political decisions, it
was relatively easy to find a consensus.
11 This is only partially true for the Corporate Module, which has
achieved highly detailed agreements for example in the ongoing
process on the determination of organizational boundaries
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 29
The development of an accounting standard for reduction
projects implies a different incentive structure for the
different actors to be involved in such a process. As
indicated above, the main problem in this field is to
find a consensus on the methodologies to generate a
baseline. We experienced a distinct tension in this
field between the environmentalist and the business
camp.
The aforementioned flexibility in interpretation of
what the baseline scenario should be (see Section 2)
has the following effects on the incentive structure:
While business is generally in favor of a higher baseline
since this incentivises projects, the environmentalists
emphasize the importance of ”conservatively”
estimated (i.e. low) baselines in order to minimize the
risk of ”non-additional” projects obtaining reduction
credits. 12 If projects that do not significantly reduce
emissions become incentivised, the overall outcome
is worse in environmental terms than if only truly
additional projects get credited.
In relation to the features of institutional bargaining
briefly outlined above, the Corporate Module certainly
is a consensus-based process involving multiple
actors. Furthermore, all actors came together with the
motive of building a common standard in an new
field of accounting, without knowing their exact
positions and the applicability of each agreement to
particular cases. If differences in views were clearly
identified, they were often smoothened out by formulating
only guidance rather than standards (e.g. in the
case of data quality).
In the Project Module, however, clear conflicts of
interest have been identified. As both parties have
high interests in making not too high concessions
from their original positions, the standardization
efforts advance only slowly. It is unclear at this stage
exactly what the result of this bargaining process will
be. However, given the incentive structure, it is likely
that the ultimate agreement will have to be reached
through a merely exploratory process and that the
final outcome will have a more general character,
including procedural guidelines to project developers
rather than providing detailed technical methodologies
on how to calculate project reductions.
As the limitations of a consensus based multistakeholder
process at the global level become apparent,
we believe that further specifications on the
baseline issue have to be transferred to other institu-
12 The reader should recall at this point that the amount of emission
reduction depends on the subjective views on what would
otherwise have happened. ”Non-additional” projects are those
that are regarded as though they would have taken place
”anyway”, i.e. even without the additional incentive of project
credits.

30
tions, like the CDM Executive Board and related
processes of validation through accredited certification
bodies.
Conclusion
An international standard for GHG accounting and
reporting is an institution for the ”coagulation” and
diffusion of expert knowledge, which is necessary to
foster the reduction of Greenhouse Gases. We presented
the first international standard on GHG accounting
– the GHG Protocol – and discussed its
societal functions in the context of ”knowledge and
sustainability”, as well as the process by which the
knowledge required for GHG accounting becomes
coagulated into an international standard, sometimes
on the basis of dynamic feedback from usage of the
standard itself. Figure 3 represents this simplified
conceptual picture of the different roles that the
GHG Protocol plays in the knowledge context.
The GHG Protocol consists of two modules the
Corporate Inventory Module, which has already been
published and is currently under revision and the
”Project Module”, still under development. The objective
of knowledge-coagulation in both modules is
interspersed with elements of institutional bargaining
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
due to the divergence of the participants’ interests.
However, as we have shown, this is much more the
case in the Project Module than in the Corporate
Module.
The exact baseline scenario for each project will have
to be negotiated in one political sphere or another,
but one with more local knowledge than the GHG
Protocol. The project accounting framework resulting
from the GHG Protocol Initiative will feed into these
political processes agreements reached on a general
and procedural level as well as the coagulated knowledge
from expert discussions on purely technical
issues, like for example the very detailed project typology.
The Project Module of the GHG Protocol will therefore
have its strengths rather in coagulating and diffusing
expert knowledge than in its direct applicability
in regulatory policies. These strengths have been
recognized by the initiatives’ participants, which led
to the decision to generate guidelines for project
developers, which are usually not experts in the field
of reduction projects.

References
Hemmati M. (2001): ”Multi-Stakeholder Processes for Governance
and Sustainability - Beyond Deadlock and Conflict”, London,
Earthscan 2001, accessed at
http://www.earthsummit2002.org/msp/book/chap2.pdf
North D. (1990): Institutions, institutional change and economic performance
Sundin H. (2002): The Hallmark Learnings of a Successful Multistakeholder
Initiative, WBCSD working paper, June 2002
Sundin H. and Ranganathan J. (2002): Managing Business Greenhouse
Gas Emissions: the Greenhouse Gas Protocol – A Strategic and Operational
Tool, Corporate Environmental Strategy Journal, Vol. 9, No
2 (2002), p. 137-144
WBCSD/WRI (2001): The GHG Protocol; a corporate accounting and
reporting standard
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 31

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 32-41.
New Knowledge for Sustainable Governance: The SCENE Model
Jasper Grosskurth and Jan Rotmans *
1. Introduction
The transition towards a sustainable society is one of
the major challenges for today’s policy makers. Since
the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro a wide
range of political, scientific, business-based and individual
initiatives have been undertaken in order to
achieve sustainable development. An indicator for the
increasing role and acceptance of the scientific contribution
to sustainable development is the official
participation of researchers and scientific organizations
during the recent World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg. A key question in that
context is how to handle sustainability related issues
that touch a wide range of disciplines to develop
strategies for the sustainable development of regions.
2. Getting a grip on sustainable development
Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, a
range of scientific concepts has been developed in
order to capture the many facets of sustainability.
Examples are the Indicator for Sustainable Economic
Welfare ISEW (Daly and Cobb 1994), the Genuine
Progress Indicator (Redefining Progress 1995), and
the Ecological Footprint (Wackernagel and Rees
1996).
Some approaches are based on the collection of indicators.
Without further aggregation these indicators
were taken to provide sustainability-related information
(e.g. OECD (1993) and UN-DPCSD (1999)). In
several studies, the indicators were structured along
the lines of forms of capital. For example, UN-
DPCSD distinguished social, environmental, economic
and institutional capital. The World Bank
applied the slightly different structure of social, human,
man-made and natural capital (Munasinghe
1993), (World Bank 1997). Joachim Spangenberg and
Odile Bonnoit (1998) extended this approach with
policy targets for key indicators and interaction between
the different domains in order to make “proactive
policy steering” possible. Independently of Spangenberg
and Bonnoit, Jan Rotmans et al. (1998) first
*
Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Contact:
ja.grosskurth@icis.unimaas.nl
developed the structure of the SCENE model as a
support tool for an analysis of regional sustainable
development in the Dutch Province of Limburg.
Rotmans et al. emphasize the importance of stocks
and the interactions between them in long-term sustainability
studies. This latter approach has been
further developed to the SCENE model as we present
it in this paper, based on extensive practical case
studies and ongoing research.
2.1 DEFINING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Sustainable development has been defined in many
different ways. The most widely accepted definition
of sustainable development is that of the Brundtland
Commission (WCED 1987):
“Sustainable development is development that meets
the needs of the present generation without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs.”
A common denominator of these definitions is an
implied general balance of economic, ecological and
social developments.
2.2 CHARACTERISTICS OF SUSTAINABILITY
The Brundtland definition is a political definition of
sustainable development, which contains inevitable
problems with respect to a scientific application of
the concept, namely normativeness, subjectivity,
ambiguity and complexity
Normativeness implies that something is (i) relating to
standards or (ii) tending to create or prescribe standards.
The word is derived from the noun ‘norm’
which the Cambridge International Dictionary of English
(CIDE) explains as follows: “A norm is an accepted
standard or a way of behaving or doing things that
most people agree with.” The norm that is set in the
above definition of sustainability is intergenerational
equity. Future generations should have the same
opportunities and/or resources as the current generation.
This postulate is widely accepted in politics, but
it is nevertheless an arbitrary norm for the weighting
of the rights of current and future generations. Therefore
the scientific implementation of this norm is
contested. For the scientific advisory board of the
Dutch government (WRR) the inherent normativeness
was sufficient reason to reject the concept of
sustainability as a whole (WRR 1994).
Subjectivity means that something is "influenced by or
based on personal beliefs or feelings, rather than based on facts“

(CIDE). In relation to the above definition of sustainable
development it is a matter of personal beliefs
under which circumstances the needs of the current
or future generation are considered to be satisfied.
Any benchmark to measure the level of satisfaction
against is essentially arbitrary. The same holds for the
means that future generations are expected to require
fulfilling their needs. In other words, we cannot objectively
establish, what is worth to be saved for future
generations.
In order to analyse what should be saved for the use
of future generations and to what degree, it is necessary
to weigh against each other the fundamentally
different elements of the social, economic and ecological
domains. The Brundtland definition does not
give any indication on the relative priorities given to
the domains, which makes it ambiguous. A second
aspect of ambiguity is implicit in the two contradicting
goals of satisfying the needs of current generations
and future generations simultaneously. As there
is no obvious benchmark to measure the ‘sameness’
of abilities to satisfy needs, an ambiguous weighting
procedure is needed. The inherent ambiguity has
been reason for among others Wolfgang Sachs to
reject the concept of sustainability as an oxymoron
(Sachs 1999).
The concept of sustainable development is also complex.
The complexity stems from the transgression of
time scales, spatial scale-levels and domains. The
processes underlying the concept of sustainable development
take place on different time-scales. Where
climate change takes decades for its manifestation,
water pollution in the case of a flood can be immediate.
At the same time, processes take place on spatial
scale-levels ranging from local to global. The energy
emission of a single household is as much an element
of sustainable development as the global loss of biodiversity.
Sustainability related processes also transgress
the boundaries between economic, ecological
and social aspects. For example, the economic progress
of the last century has had an enormous impact
on the environment. Complexity means that sustainability
related problems can no longer be addressed
from one perspective with respect to time, space or
domain, one country, one culture, one ministry or
one scientific discipline (Rotmans 1998).
By any measure, the complexity of our society and
thus also the complexity of the applied concept of
sustainability seems to be increasing. This can be
attributed to different causes. First the element of
scale-enlargement: processes at the global and international
level more and more interfere with processes at
the national and local level. A second important factor
is technological development, which among others
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 33
leads to time acceleration, causing a shorter rotation
time of all sorts of processes, and knowledge increase, in
particular about the interactions between social, economic
and ecological processes (ibid.). These complex
dynamics of strongly interacting short-term and longterm
processes on various scale levels force us to
think and act in a more integrative manner.
The characteristics of sustainable development make
it not only difficult to analyse sustainability, but also
to communicate about it. The inherent subjectivity
needs to be mapped out carefully in order to be able
to communicate across different perspectives of the
circumstances that are considered to be sustainable.
The relative values given to social, economic and
ecological elements have to be made explicit when
communicating on how ambiguity is addressed. The
communication about both subjectivity and ambiguity
is further exacerbated by complexity. A wellstructured
and transparent approach to representing
the elements of sustainability and their interactions is
a necessary precondition for any approach on how to
handle sustainability and related issues.
Any approach should as an end result not only highlight
the driving forces of sustainable development,
but also the levers available to influence the system in
co-operation with those who handle these levers.
Otherwise any approach will remain of academic
interest only and not do justice to the concept of
sustainability at the interface of science and politics.
3. The structure of the SCENE model
With the SCENE model we continue the traditional
distinction of different forms of capital as developed
at UN-DPCSD and the World Bank. We distinguish
three forms of sustainability-capital: SoCial, ENvironmental
and Economic, hence the acronym
SCENE. The social capital also includes institutional
and cultural aspects. We extended the concept of
interaction between the capital-domains and the way
in which capital stocks are described helping to describe
and analyse context and dynamics more accurately.
With these additions, the triangle is transformed
from a concept for the structuring of sets of
indicators for sustainability to a model, that allows the
analysis of underlying dynamics and integrated strategy
analysis and decision support. Figure 1 is a schematic
representation of the “naked” SCENE model.

34
Figure 1: The SCENE model [Rotmans, 1998 #2873]
3.1 STOCKS
Each capital domain contains a number of stocks.
These stocks can be quite generic terms, such as
‘quality of life’ (social capital), ‘environmental quality’
(ecological capital), or ‘economic vitality’ (economic
capital). The genericity of the stocks decreases the
tendency to favour stocks in the selection, for which
quantitative data are readily available. The main criterion
for the inclusion of a specific stock must be its
relevance for the issue or region under research.
Further down, we will explain how to select stocks
for a range of applications.
3.2 CHARACTERISTICS OF STOCKS
From the legacy of system dynamic modelling, there
is a tendency to describe a stock using a single dimension,
i.E. quantity. This approach does not do justice
to the frequently apparent interaction of different
aspects of a single stock. We represent four aspects of
a stock, namely its quantity, its quality, its function
and its spatial component. Taking ‘education’ as an
example of a stock in a research study on a national
level, its quantitative aspects could be described contain
the distribution of education over the population
and the number of years in education, the quality
could contain the efficiency of the educational system,
the function of education could contain how
well education prepares for earning a living and taking
responsibility, but also the potential for innovation,
the spatial aspect could contain the geographic
distribution of education and the land surface needed
for educational purposes.
It is important to note that a stock can be described
using multiple descriptions of the same characteristic.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
In other words, a stock can be described with an
arbitrary (though preferably limited) number of quantitative,
qualitative, functional and spatial terms. Only
in this way is it possible to capture the wide range of
effects that a stock can have in a system. The clustering
of these different characteristics of a stock enhances
the intuitive understanding of the interaction
between the characteristics. The detailed description
of the stocks allows the conceptual testing of policy
strategies for sustainable development in an integrated
way.
3.3 INDICATORS
Describing the characteristics of a stock is not the
same as finding measures or indicators for a stock. It
is only in a subsequent step that our focus turns on
the selection of indicators for each of the characteristics.
“Indicators describe complex phenomena in a
(quasi-) quantitative way by simplifying them in such
a way that communication is possible with specific
user groups. The term ‘quasi’ indicates that, although
indicators are mostly quantitative in nature, in principle
they can also be qualitative.” (Rotmans 1997)
Qualitative indicators may be preferable to quantitative
indicators where the underlying quantitative
information is not available, or the subject of interest
is not inherently quantifiable (Gallopin 1996).
Each characteristic is assigned one or more indicators
or indices from available information-resources. We
are aware of the fact that the selection of a measurable
indicator for a characteristic with the goal of
quantifying or monitoring the development of a certain
characteristic often goes together with a loss in
descriptive quality. It is for this reason, that we put so
much emphasis on the selection of generic terms to
describe a system. In this way, the consciousness of
what an indicator is meant to measure (and any deviation
from that) is best preserved. As we will see in the
description of the different applications of the
SCENE model further down, selecting indicators is
not always necessary, depending on the exact research
question.
The selection of indicators completes the variable tree
implicit in the SCENE structure. The stem of the tree
are the three capital domains, the branches are the
stocks within each capital domain, twigs branch off in
the form of characteristics, connecting to the leaves,
the indicators (see Figure 2).

For an integrated description of an issue it is crucial
that all three capital domains are “filled” with stocks
with the same scrutiny. It is of little use to take the
three-capital model as a basis for analysis and subsequently
neglect one or even two of these capital domains
in the analysis.
3.4 FLOWS
In order to complete the structure of the SCENE
model it is necessary to define the relationships between
the different stocks. We call these relationships
‘flows’. Flows are visualised in the triangular SCENE
model in the form of arrows.
We distinguish ‘intra-flows’ and ‘inter-flows’. An
intra-flow connects two stocks of the same capitaldomain.
Analogously, an inter-flow connects two
stocks of different capital-domains. Only inter-flows
can be carriers of substitution processes, where one
form of capital is substituted for another.
In addition to flows between stocks, we define
autonomous flows. These describe continuous processes
influencing a stock from outside a system. We
call these flows ‘service’ (in-flow) and ‘depreciation’
(out-flow). Most evident is the example of the stock
‘physical infrastructure’, where a lack of service leads
to a reduction of quality (out-flow in the form of
depreciation). By adding service and depreciation, we
add to the model explicit policy levers.
Between the characteristics of a single stock, there is a
fourth type of flows, describing the close interaction
of quantity, quality, function and space.
Depending on the research question, the focus on
placing the links can be on links between the generic
stocks, between their characteristics or between the
selected indicators. Later in this article, we will describe
this dependency in some detail.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 35
Figure 2: The four layers of the SCENE model
3.5 ADDRESSING COMPLEXITY
The clear structure of the triangular model makes it
possible to represent the complexity of sustainability
in a way that does justice to the needs of communication
and analysis alike. For communication purposes
one can choose an appropriate level of detail to provide
insights into the developments and context of
sustainability related issues. For analysis the derivation
of key-issues and stocks using participatory
methods is a useful way to reduce the complexity
with a minimal loss of information. By postponing
the translation of the conceptual model into the black
box of a quantitative model, we enable participants to
support maximally the process of defining the details
of the stocks and flows. The effect of this is, that the
complexity is reduced in such a way, that the policy
relevance of the model is optimised.
3.6 SURFACE
The surface of the triangle can be used as an additional
way of storing and communicating information.
The size of each corner of the triangle is a visual
indicator for the strength (or capital value) of that
domain. We distinguish three possible developments
of the surface of the triangle as a whole: weakening,
substitution and strengthening. Weakening implies that
there are losses in the capital of all three domains.
Strategies that have the effect of weakening can be
considered as the least sustainable option as on all
three domains the ability of future generation to
satisfy their needs is compromised. The notion of
substitution can be used to describe the concept of
weak sustainability with all its advantages and disadvantages.
With substitution, one domain grows at the
expense of another. A widely discussed example is
the growth of economic capital at the expense of
natural capital in the western world, especially in the
1960’s and 70’s. But it is important to note, that

36
comparable links can be described between the economic
and social domains, and the ecological and
social domains as well. Also, these relationships are
not necessarily uni-directional. The economic costs
for protecting the environment and for repairing
damage done in the past are an example where ecological
capital grows at the expense of the economic
capital. Strengthening is the third general form of development
of the triangle. This process is related to
the notion of strong sustainability. By the improvement
of all three capital domains, the future ability to
4. Completing the SCENE model
In the previous section, we presented the structure of
the SCENE model with its four layers ranging from
the three capital-domains to the selected indicators.
In order to be of any use in a practical application,
this ‘naked’ structure needs to be filled in with information.
In general, there are two ways in which this
can be done. One can either use the insight of one or
more experts in a given field or one can rely on participatory
methods. Which method to use depends for one
thing on the research question at hand and for another
on the available resources.
4.1 EXPERT INSIGHTS
The most extreme form of completing the SCENE
model using expert insight is a desk-study, where a
single scientist selects the relevant stocks, characteristics
and flows based on his or her knowledge of the
research question at hand. The SCENE model in this
case functions as a structuring framework for complex
research issues. For contested research questions,
a researcher can develop different plausible sets
of stocks, characteristics and flows. In several case
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Figure 3: Possible capital developments of the SCENE model
satisfy needs is improved. An example would be the
successful creation of a natural reserve that is also
exploited for recreation. The ecological domain benefits
from the extension of natural area, in the economic
domain employment and income are created
and in the social domain new recreational facilities are
added. The processes of weakening, substitution and
strengthening are visualized in Figure 3.
studies, we use ‘perspectives’ to arrive at a small set of
consistent, but inherently different SCENE models.
These different models can be used to describe, and
in a later stage, to bridge different views on an issue.
The concept of perspectives is derived from Cultural
Theory (Thompson, Ellis et al. 1990). “Perspectives
may be considered as aggregations of the different
points of view humans have, and can be defined as
consistent, hybrid descriptions of how the world
functions and how decision-makers should act.”
(Rotmans and Vries 1997, p. 211) For a more extensive
description of the use of perspectives in the field
of Integrated Assessment, see van Asselt (1997) and
(2000).
4.2 ADDRESSING AMBIGUITY
The ambiguity of the concept of sustainable development
is inherent and cannot be reduced. However,
by mapping out the differences between perspectives
and by analysing trade-offs between different strategies
and their effects, it is possible to make the inherent
ambiguities visible and thus offering an opportunity
for a transparent choice. In the case of highly
contested issues with little scientific proof available,
taking a decision on the path to choose between the

ambiguous options should not be a role for scientists,
but for democratic decision-making. Playing a facilitating
role during the discussion that leads to the
choice is a role for scientists.
Usually, the knowledge of one researcher alone is too
limited and/or too entrenched to arrive at a consistent
and generally accepted set of stocks, characteristics
and flows. Therefore, it is advisable to always
allow for feedback from other researchers. For contested
issues, a development process involving other
experts and stakeholders is advisable. Methods to do
so are discussed in the following section.
4.3 PARTICIPATORY METHODS
Participatory methods play a crucial role in the application
of the conceptual SCENE model as they help
to address the inherent subjectivity and normativeness
of the concept and at the same time structure
the communication process between the modellers,
other scientist, stakeholders and users. Participatory
methods involve a plethora of process methods,
varying from expert panels, to gaming, policy exercises
and focus groups. The input of non-scientific
and practical knowledge and expertise, valuation and
preferences through the involvement of actors by
means of participatory methods enriches modelling
exercises.
The participatory methods we use for the modelling
input depend on the characteristics of the problem
for which the model is developed and on the type of
participants we can expect to participate. In general,
different forms of focus groups are applied together
with interviews and open feedback sessions. For a
detailed discussion of participatory methods in Integrated
Assessment, see van Asselt (2001).
Participatory methods can be applied for two distinct
purposes, namely to map out diversity or to reach
consensus. When the goal of the research process is
the description of differences in perspective between
different actors, it is most helpful to map out the
diversity of their views. If one strives for concerted
action of all stakeholders, it is most helpful to apply
consensus-building methods. In an optimal case, both
methods are combined: First, the diversity of opinions
and possible strategies are mapped out. Differences
in view are explained and discussed. Subsequently
consensus-building methods are applied to
arrive at an efficient and effective strategy for action.
With respect to policy making and sustainable development
Van Asselt distinguishes five categories of
potential participants related to public policy issues,
the so-called actors: government, citizens, interest
groups, such as non-governmental organizations
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 37
(NGOs), business, and scientific experts. It is neither
feasible nor necessary to employ all actors for every
sustainability study. The strategic selection and the
recruitment of committed stakeholders is often one
of the more challenging steps in the process.
However, we found that developing a policy relevant
model for the sustainability of a given region is hardly
possible without a structural interaction with stakeholders.
The stakeholders map out the relevant factors
and their context. In addition, they provide the
lines along which complexity must be reduced in
order to keep the policy relevant information of the
model. In this way, the structure of the model and the
dynamics it describes are tailor-made for the users of
the model, maximizing its policy relevance. This
support in the simplification of the model is vital to
the later acceptance of the model. The acceptance is
further enhanced by the active participation of those,
who will at a later stage work with the outcomes of
the model. Developing the model together with the
end-users also means that the process of communicating
the results will be facilitated. Other than acceptance,
structure, policy relevance and communication,
there is an inherent benefit of the development in the
form of a learning process. In our experience, users
who were trained to think in a more integrated fashion
were more capable of expanding their frame of
thinking that is otherwise restricted by day-to-day
pressures.
The use of participatory methods in policy-related
research is now widely accepted. However, it seems
that in some cases participation has become a goal on
itself. Without a sharp vision on what the ultimate
goal of a participatory process is, it is unlikely to
contribute to any project. A frequently noted
disadvantage of using participatory methods is the
fact that current topics tend to be over-represented.
An example would be a dominance of water-related
issues after a flood has taken place. However, not
only stakeholders, but also scientists are prone to this
tendency. The balancing of participatory input and
material derived from desk-studies would level this
problem somewhat. Nevertheless it is evident, that it
is currently not possible to develop a model for sustainability,
that is deemed to be evenly useful and
applicable at all times. Certain societal dynamics, and
thus certain “current” issues will have to be represented
in redrafted versions of the SCENE model.
4.4 COMBINING EXPERT KNOWLEDGE AND
PARTICIPATORY METHODS
In our practical applications of the SCENE model,
we mostly combined expert knowledge and participatory
methods in order to satisfy the multiple goals of

38
these studies. The participatory research process is
then usually limited to the stock level of the SCENE
model. On this level, it is possible to derive consistent
sets of variables (stocks) and the flows between them
in relatively little time. The resulting conceptual
framework is then reflected upon by a group of experts,
who subsequently complete the more detailed
layers of the model. The process of completion goes
together with continuous reporting to and feedback
from the group of stakeholders. The ongoing interaction
is needed in order to avoid dissociation, where
the relevant stakeholders do not recognize their own
input back in the final draft of the model.
4.5 THE ROLE OF PARTICIPATION IN ADDRESSING
NORMATIVENESS AND SUBJECTIVITY
Spangenberg and Bonnoit have called for the setting
of norms or so-called “performance indicators” in the
form of “quantifiable policy targets” in order to measure
the degree to which a policy strategy is successful in
achieving sustainability (Spangenberg and Bonnoit
1998, p.10). According to them: “These targets should be
agreed upon by society at large and codified by legislation or
other binding means of policy enactment.” (Ibid.) In other
words, Spangenberg and Bonnoit want to address the
normativeness, that is inherent in the concept of
sustainability by letting not scientists, but society as a
whole set the norms. We find that, lacking norms
agreed upon by society at large, norms set by groups
of stakeholders are a justifiable compromise. By using
participatory methods the way we do, we explicitly
address the normativeness of sustainable development.
Analogous reasoning holds for subjectivity. It is an
impossibility to develop an objective representation
of what is sustainable, let alone an indicator for the
degree of sustainability. However, explicitly using the
subjective preferences, values and opinions expressed
during the participatory process means, that the resulting
model is at least meaningful to those, who use
it. Simultaneously, the explicit documentation of
these preferences, values and opinions provides a
basis for discussion. As the model is flexible, alternative
sets of subjective criteria can be compared to the
existing ones and thus differences in strategies be
derived. Which strategy should be applied in the end
is once more not for the scientist or the model to
decide, but for the democratic process.
5. Ways to apply the SCENE model
The SCENE model can be applied for a wide range
of sustainability related research issues and research
goals. The SCENE model can serve as a framework
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
for integrated and structured thinking about complex
issues, for monitoring sustainable development, for
the evaluation of complex sustainability related issues
and for strategy planning. The above functions make
the SCENE model a suitable qualitative modellingframework
for quantitative modeling. In addition, the
model provides a tool for the communication of
these issues. The research goals and how to approach
them are described in the following section. Several
case studies on different issues serve as illustration.
5.1 INTEGRATED THINKING
A trivial, but highly effective and efficient application
of the SCENE model is as a tool for mapping out
and structuring complex interrelations. In this way,
the integrated context of stocks can be represented.
From this conceptual approach, points of attention
and points of discussion can be derived. One example
of the SCENE model used as a structuring tool is the
NMP4 biodiversity project (Rotmans, van Asselt et al.
2000, in Dutch). This project was an integrated analysis
of biodiversity as a support study for the 4th Dutch
National Environmental Outlook (NMP4). The
SCENE model was used to describe the current state
of the stock of biodiversity, in order to establish the
driving forces for its development, place biodiversity
in its context with developments in other domains,
sketch future developments and define policy levers
for an improvement of biodiversity. The added value
of the SCENE model lay in the clear picture, it provided
of driving forces, effects and policy options.
The structural presentation facilitated the quest for
win-win strategies in preserving biodiversity.
When applying the SCENE model as a structuring
tool, one can choose to describe the model either on
the stock-level or on the level of the characteristics,
depending on the level of detail requested. With a
process of full participation it takes a set of highly
dedicated stakeholders to go beyond the stock level.
At the same time, a participatory process adds significantly
to the content of the model and simultaneously
raises the awareness for interactions and the context
of their own field among the participants. The importance
of this effect should not be underestimated. It
has been the most important outcome in many of our
governance consulting projects.
One example is the POL project (Provincie Limburg
2000). The Dutch province of Limburg based its
strategic vision up to the year 2030 on a SCENE
model developed for the province in co-operation
with participants from a wide range of provincial
departments. In this project, the SCENE model has
not only mapped out the issue of a sustainable Lim-

urg in the year 2030, but also the necessary paths of
communication, to make this ambitious goal come
true. The resulting report is now used as an important
benchmark for the evaluation of governance strategies.
5.2 MONITORING
The list of indicators derived during the model development
process is a useful basis for the monitoring
of sustainable development. The advantage of the list
is the fact, that the indicators are not loosely selected
to represent a range of disciplines or topics, but that
they also form a consistent and interrelated set for
further analysis and interpretation. It is obvious, that
in order to select indicators, it is necessary to complete
the SCENE structure to that level of detail for
any meaningful results.
Based on an expert process, the Telos Institute has
built a monitoring tool for the Dutch province of
North-Brabant based on the SCENE model (TELOS
2001). The state of indicators and their development
during the past few years are set against benchmarks.
In this way, sustainability related developments are
monitored.
At ICIS, we implemented a participatory process to
derive a set of monitoring indicators for the city of
Maastricht. The advantage of participation in selecting
the indicators lies in the practical applicability of
the chosen sets. The user – in this case the civil servants
of the city of Maastricht – has in a transparent
process laid an explicit link between their daily chores
and the more abstract concept of sustainable development.
(Yang 2002)
5.3 EVALUATION FRAMEWORK
Choices concerning the inherent trade-offs related to
the concept of sustainable development can be explicitly
weighed against each other, based on the
SCENE model. The inherent ambiguity of the concept
can thus be addressed. This application is especially
useful in the evaluation of projects where tradeoffs
between the three domains of sustainability have
to be negotiated, such as for example large infrastructural
projects. In order to make the choices between
different ambiguous options meaningful, it is helpful
to focus on the layer of characteristics. In our experience,
this layer best represents the consequences of
choices that are made to improve certain keyindicators,
like economic growth and maps out the
hidden consequences in terms of quality, function
and space.
In an expert based process, the well- structured overview
of economic, ecological and social stocks and
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 39
characteristics provides a framework for an integrated
and balanced evaluation. Any bias towards one or
two corners of the triangle becomes explicit. Generally,
the content gains from a participatory approach,
where implicit choices made by stakeholders become
explicit. The awareness for the existing sets of tradeoffs
in combination with the perspectives of the
stakeholders opens up the space for a well-funded
discussion on ambiguous options.
The practical use of the POL report is an example for
this application of the SCENE model. The consequences
of different policy strategies can be mapped
out. Including the positive and negative side effects.
Based on these options, trade-offs between economic,
ecological and social aspects are made explicit,
allowing for transparent choices.
Another relevant example in this context is the TOK
project. In this project a set of scenarios for the year
2030 was developed for the city of Maastricht
(Kockelkorn, van Asselt et al. 1999). The version of
the SCENE model used in this project represents the
driving forces and effects of policy strategies and
offers to the decision maker well structured insights
into possible future developments. This project later
resulted in the monitoring instrument described
above.
5.4 STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
In addition to evaluating strategies, the SCENE
model can also serve as a tool for the development of
policy strategies. A useful starting point for the development
process is the identification of policylevers,
i.E. stock, characteristics and flows that governance
has a direct impact on. Evaluating the consequences
of influencing one or more of these policy
levers results in strategies that are not influenced by
entrenched goals. For example, it is not possible for
provincial governance in the Netherlands to directly
influence the population size. But population size
being a crucial variable in sustainability related issues,
strategies are often still focused on achieving the
impossible. Letting that focus go and taking a closer
look at feasible interventions has delivered more
feasible approaches to sustainability, some of which
have the side-effect of supporting the preferred development
of the population size.
In an ongoing research project about the sustainability
of the Netherlands, we are currently systematically
analysing policy options for several layers of government
and other actors using the described approach.
In this process, continued interaction with stakeholders
is vital in order to continuously check the
assumptions underlying the basic model. In some

40
cases the perceptions of the stakeholders do not
overlap with the results of scientific research. The
fact, that policy makers think they are able to influence
a certain element, but probably are not (or vice
versa) is a point of special attention for the researcher.
5.5 QUANTITATIVE MODELLING
The structure of the SCENE model, including the
derived set of indicators is a transparent framework
for the development of quantitative models in the
tradition of system dynamics. Generally, the development
of each given indicator in the model can be
expressed as a differential equation. The set of explanatory
variables consists of all indicators that have
a link towards the given indicator, i.E. influence that
indicator.
In some cases the complexity of the conceptual
model is preventing the straightforward implementation
in system dynamic form while still providing any
useful results. In these cases, the conceptual model is
simplified by selecting a set of key-indicators that are
especially important for the development of a system.
The criteria for this selection procedure depend on
the question at hand. During the selection process it
is crucial to check, whether the main dynamics of the
systems as the expert and/or participants understand
it are still represented within the system.
Even in a simplified system, it would be exceptional if
all links between indicators in that system were thoroughly
researched with widely accepted and reasonably
certain results. It is important to explicitly address
the less researched links either based on a participatory
process or based on a set of scenarios, that rep-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
resent the range of scientific dissent.
In co-operation with the Technical University Delft
(TUDelft) we have used the SCENE model as a
framework for quantitative modelling in our ongoing
consultancy activities for the city of Maastricht (Yang
2002). An important lesson from this exercise was the
disability of decision-makers to commit to the tedious
process of discussing the underlying assumptions of
the conceptual model at the level of indicators combined
with an urgent request to provide quantitative
indicators as measures of progress towards a more
sustainable city.
5.6 COMMUNICATION
The clarity with which complex sustainability related
issues can be represented in the SCENE model
makes it a useful tool for communicating with participants
or third parties the process and the results of
any of the previous applications. Complex problems
can be represented with relatively little loss of information.
This also increases the acceptance of the
conceptual as well as the analytical model. Decisionmakers
are not confronted with a black-box tool that
provides them with ready-made strategies, but their
own input is digested and structured. As the political
decisions are to a large extent not taken within the
model itself, but left to the policy circuit, decision
makers are more likely to accept the tool and use it
intelligently.
Table 1 provides a summary of the different applications
of the SCENE model, their main advantages
and the focus level.
Expert Participation
Application Main advantages Focus level Main advantages Focus level
Integrated think- Structured framework Stock / charac- Structured frame- Stock
ing
for integrated analysis teristicwork for integrated
analysis;
Monitoring Framework for rele- Indicator
Raising awareness for
complexity
Selection of indica- Indicator
vant indicator selectors
with broad actionceptance
and practical
applicability
Evaluation Balancing economics, Characteristic Making context and Characteristic
ecology and social
aspects
trade-offs explicit
Strategy devel- Policy levers and Characteristic Policy levers and Characteristic
opment
consequences
consequences
Modelling Conceptual structure Indicator Conceptual under- Characteristic /
standing
Indicator
Communication Complex issue com- Depending on Basis for reporting Depending on
munication
audience and discussion audience
Table 1: The applications of the SCENE model, their goals and the relevant focus levels

6. Future Research and Conclusion
The full quantification of the SCENE model for a
given region is currently in progress. During this
process, some major challenges have to be solved.
The two major challenges are the representation of
uncertainty related to the relationships between different
indicators and the development of an interface
that allows policy-makers to enter the information
they have in such a way, that it is feasible for the
modeller to process this information in a coherent
and consistent manner.
The SCENE model is a versatile tool for scientists
and policy makers to get a grip on the complexity,
ambiguity, subjectivity and normativeness of sustainable
development. The model has proven its capabilities
as a tool for analysis and communication in a set
of case studies. The major problems of the scientific
implementation of the concept of sustainable development
have been addressed. Further development is
necessary, especially in bridging the conceptual applications
and the quantitative applications.
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 42-52.
Foresight for Sustainable Transport and Mobility
Liana Giorgi, Esther Schroeder-Wildberg, and Alexander
Carius ∗
Introduction
The Foresight for Transport project is a joint, interdisciplinary
exercise assessing the impacts of nontransport
policies on transport. It is carried out by
five partners, namely Adelphi Research, the Interdisciplinary
Centre for Comparative Research in the
Social Sciences (ICCR), NESTEAR, ALAMO
Online, and the University of Cardiff, covering the
areas of energy & environment, governance, enlargement,
ICT, and time.
The approach of assessing the impacts of nontransport
policies on transport and mobility is quite
young and, so far, there has been little systematic
exploration. For example, studies on the relationship
between the environment and transport focused
almost exclusively on environmental impacts of
transport.
For transport is a derived demand, its dependence on
other intermediate factors has always been acknowledged
in theory. Typically, however, it is thought
possible to capture these intermediate pathways
through one or several proxy variables: for instance
most traffic forecasts are driven by GDP per capita
growth rates; and most environmental assessments by
vehicle kilometres. Where non-transport policies or
associated societal trends have been studied more
comprehensively, as with land use or urban policy,
the emphasis has tended to be on how the latter are
affected by transport policy rather than the other way
around: for instance, does transport (infrastructure)
influence urbanisation or the de/re-localisation of
services or industry? In other words, transport has
been defined as the independent variable and effects
have often been studied ‘in vacuum’, i.e. with little
attention paid to interconnections and feedback
loops.
In recent work, the scenario approach was used to try
to overcome this static or one-sided view. While
these approaches recognise the importance of nontransport
policies and of dynamic elements, the sce-
∗ Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in the Social Sciences,
Austria, and Adelphi Research gGmbH, Germany. Contact:
l.giorgi@iccr-international.org.
narios constructed are primarily of a strategic generic
nature which leaves out much of the detail necessary
for policy analysis and the cross-fertilisation of policy
agendas.
The Foresight for Transport project goes beyond this
approach. A sustainable transport policy needs to
incorporate the ability to anticipate and crosssectorally
integrate trends and co-ordinate policies.
This was first recognised in the environmental field
where the integration of environmental concerns
across policy sectors is the lead argument for improving
standards as well as for overcoming the implementation
deficit. The project aims at contributing
considerably to better co-ordinating the transport
policy agenda with those other policy agendas that
display the strongest interconnections with transport,
like enlargement and environment. Developments in
these fields are for instance changing land use planning,
economic and trade organisation as well as
urbanisation in ways that carry serious implications
for transport planning.
The Foresight for Transport project is funded by the
European Commission under its fifth framework
programme. It started in November 2001 and will be
finished in January 2004. Accordingly, results presented
in this paper are only preliminary, thus neither
quotable nor for circulation.
1. European background
The publication of the European Union’s Sustainable
Development Strategy at the Gothenburg Summit,
the Cardiff process and the proposed integration of
environmental concerns into transport policy combined
with the current debate on the White Papers on
Transport and on Governance, present a window of
opportunity to achieve significant shifts in policies
and measures. In turn, these strategies also indicate
the level of uncertainty about future trends in the
energy and environment sector as well as related
policies. What impact will these policies and measures
have in the future? To what extent will they be operationalised?
When and how successfully will they be
implemented? How will policies and measures
change? What impact will result from an enlarged
European Union with member states with environmental
policy levels far below the average? The presidency
conclusions from the European Council in
Helsinki establish that the completion of sectoral

strategies should be followed by their immediate
implementation. Regular evaluation, follow-up and
monitoring must be undertaken so that the strategies
can be adjusted and deepened. The Commission and
the Council are urged to develop adequate instruments
and applicable data for these purposes. These
are the challenges that future scenarios, trend analysis
and policy monitoring need to comprise and integrate
in more coherent, regular foresight mechanisms.
1.1 The Cardiff Strategy
The term Cardiff Strategy stands for “Partnership for
Integration: A strategy for integrating Environment
into EU policy” that was adopted by the European
Council in Cardiff in 1998. This strategy became
necessary because articles 2 and 6 of the Amsterdam
Treaty require the integration of environmental protection
into the definition and implementation of all
Community policies and activities, in order to achieve
sustainable development. The Cardiff Strategy calls
for a regular monitoring and review system in order
to measure achievements and, if necessary, adjust the
adopted policies. This system should be based on the
identification of indicators against which progress can
be monitored. The setting of quantifiable targets and,
later, bench-marking could be helpful in order to
progress towards best-practice (EC 1998).
The Cardiff Strategy requires the formulation of
sectoral ‘integration initiatives’ which happened for
energy and transport in 1999 (European Transport
Council 1999). The first review report on the integration
of the environment into energy and transport
policies was released by the Commission in 2001 (EC
2001a).
1.2 White Paper on Transport
The new White Paper on Transport policy was published
in September 2001, entitled ‘European Transport
Policy for 2010: Time to decide’ (EC 2001b).
While the document states only a few ‘new’ priorities
– the majority of the issues addressed have either
already been raised in the previous White Paper of
1992 and related Action Plans or have been under
discussion and in the process of deliberation since
that time with reference to various directives – it is
meant to act as a lever forcing member states to take
decisions on outstanding issues. This said, the new
White Paper is much more comprehensive, outlining
for the first time explicitly the Commission’s diagnosis
of the problems at hand and their interrelations,
and also the solutions proposed. The emphasis is
placed on road pricing (for freight and especially
heavy good vehicles). This is considered the way
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 43
forward for redressing the balance between modes (in
particular road and rail), which, in turn, is expected to
contribute to resolving both the congestion and the
environmental problems facing transport. Furthermore,
in proposing a link between pricing and financing
– through the ear-marking of revenues from road
pricing for investment in transport infrastructure
which is more environmentally friendly – the new
White Paper expects to also solve the financing problems
for major infrastructure projects.
New elements in the 2001 White Paper on the common
transport policy are:
a) The identification of the chain sea- inland waterways
-rail as the biggest missing link with regard to
the promotion of intermodality and, subsequently,
the proposal to develop ‘motorways of the sea’ to
shift transport through the Alpine crossings by road
to the sea.
b) The revision of the TEN-T (trans-European networks
in transport) guidelines to include new projects
or revisions to the existing priority proposals. It is
also proposed to set up a new procedure for the
declaration of European interest in specific
infrastructure projects, to assist in their
implementation through mediation between the
European, national, regional and local levels. Perhaps
more importantly, the Commission announces an
increase of the direct Community support for TEN-T
projects from 10 to 20 per cent of total costs.
c) The launching of a process of re-thinking with
regard to air transport, in particular air capacity, use
and charging, the interconnectivity between air and
rail, the better integration of air networks and of the
latter into an environmentally sustainable framework,
and the harmonisation of air traffic control systems.
d) The launching of a discussion about the definition
of environmentally sensitive areas and how to deal
with these with regard to transport.
But when formulating the new White Paper on transport,
the Commission did not only set out a policy
proposal for the future, but also accounted for its
failures. The latter it does with almost remarkable
sincerity, making reference to almost all major problem
areas. 1
1 The failure to balance the development of different modes of
transport through adequate regulatory frameworks and policy
co-ordination at different levels as well as with the industry;
the inadequacy of the ‘open market’ vision as a sufficient
means to promote competitive and sustainable transport system
development; the lack of harmonisation even in areas like
market access, safety or social regulation where relevant directives
have been in place for some time (yet where transposition
has been mistaken for implementation); the continuing
existence of infrastructure bottlenecks which, in turn, is not

44
If the new White Paper on European transport will
mark the beginning of a new phase in the Common
Transport Policy remains to be seen, with some
countries complaining that it does not go far enough
while others find some of the proposals too fargoing,
thus unacceptable.
2 The Foresight Methodology
The foresight methodology can be characterised by
its long-term look into the future. In addition, foresight
is a process rather than a set of techniques,
which contains the interaction of many societal
groups like the scientific community, policy makers,
government, different sectors of the economy and
other users. The results of a foresight exercise can
provide guidance for policy-makers by identifying
indicators and e.g. developing a monitoring system.
While foresight exercises have been applied e.g. to the
areas of science & technology, education and research,
critical technologies or products, and employment,
foresight exercises on the environment
and/or transport have been quite rare in the past.
2.1 Definitions of Foresight
Foresight studies are relatively young and a variety of
definitions as the following exist:
“The ability to create and maintain a high-quality,
coherent, and functional forward view and to use the
insights arising in organisationally-useful ways, for
example, to detect adverse conditions, guide policy
and shape strategy and to explore new markets products
and services” (Slaughter 1998).
“Future trends and how they might affect you?
Where the new opportunities will be? How science
and technology can help you to seize these opportunities?
What you should be doing now? For every
person and organisation some things will be more
important than others. But one thing is certain: We
live in a world of change. The need to anticipate and
prepare for the future is crucial. That is Foresight”
(UK Foresight Programme).
"A systematic attempt to look into the longer-term
future of science, technology, the economy, the environment
and society with a view to identifying the
unrelated to the failure to attract private investors and/or
agree with national governments on an appropriate key for
sharing costs; the very slow recognition of pricing as a means
to manage transport development in a balanced way; the real
challenge posed by environmental and social sustainability
(and acceptability) in ecological sensitive areas or in densely
populated areas like cities; the close connection (hence the
need for co-ordination) between transport policy and land-use
planning, economic and fiscal policies among others.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
emerging generic technologies and the underpinning
areas of strategic research likely to yield the greatest
economic and social benefits" (Technology Innovation
Information Foresight Discussion Forum).
“Foresight is a systematic, participatory, futureintelligence-gathering
and medium-to-long-term
vision building process aimed at present-day decisions
and mobilising joint actions. Foresight arises
from a convergence of trends underlying recent developments
in the fields of ‘policy analysis’, ‘strategic
planning’ and ‘future studies’. It brings together key
agents of change and various sources of knowledge in
order to develop strategic visions and anticipatory
intelligence” (FOREN 2001).
2.2 Methodologies
Foresight represents a process for arriving at future
visions which is open and broad in terms of thematic
scope, the methods applied and participation. As
outlined below (chapter 2.3), the foresight method
was firstly applied in other areas than transport.
Foresight exercises typically involve consultation
among relevant actors – especially stakeholders and
experts. Some, albeit still only a few, adopt a broader
participatory perspective seeking also to involve citizens
or citizen group representatives in the consultative
process. Consultation can in turn use or involve
several different techniques ranging from the less
standardised, like brainstorming, to the more standardised,
like the Delphi method. The scenario
method is central to the application of foresight,
simulation models are also used.
The reliance of foresight on (expert) consultation –
for the purpose of assessing expert opinion and/or
effecting networking – raises the important question
of how to select participants for expert panels in such
a way as to avoid or minimise bias. Insofar as foresight
exercises are exclusively or even only in part
driven by panel-led consultations, this danger will
always be there, not necessarily out of intention but
simply because there might be a larger plurality of
opinion than can be possibly reflected by the composition
of any expert panel in real life. Still, a serious
attempt should be made to reflect both scope of
expertise and of stakeholder interest (where relevant)
when setting up an expert panel. 2
The following methodologies are most commonly in
use by foresight exercises:
2 Typically the selection of experts is based on reputation combined
with co-nomination or the snowball principle (cf.
FOREN 2001) and can be more or less formalised depending
on the degree of reliance on expert databases or citation indexes
(cf. Katz 2001).

BRAINSTORMING
Brainstorming is a group / seminar technique used at
the onset and in the course of consultations to generate
ideas and support creativity. First, it involves a
period of free thinking for generating and listing ideas
and subsequently an analytical phase for organising,
clustering and prioritising these.
SCENARIO WRITING / ANALYSIS
Scenarios represent visions / images of the future and
courses of development organised in a systematic and
consistent way.
There are different types of scenarios depending on
the objectives and perspective of the scenario
writer(s) and their use. In summarising the relevant
literature Ling (2002) draws a useful distinction between
the ‘precautionary model’, the ‘visionary
model’ and the ‘learning model’ of scenario writing.
Scenarios developed under the ‘precautionary model’
approach have as a goal to envisage a negative future
state resulting from a certain course of events in
order to demonstrate or make explicit the negative
consequences of present actions and elaborate ways
to counteract these. Under the ‘visionary model’, a
preferred future is outlined and then strategies for
reaching this future are developed using the so-called
‘back-casting approach’ (cf. Banister et al. 2000). Both
the ‘precautionary’ and ‘visionary’ models of scenario
writing are normative in orientation. In consultation
and/or assessment exercises further insights can be
gained by comparing different normative scenarios
arrived at by different stakeholders or institutions.
Finally, scenarios developed under the ‘learning
model’ follow the extrapolative approach whereby
between two and four equally desirable and/or plausible
futures are described based on a systematic
analysis of current trends: “In the first instance [this]
involves scenario building through which participants
may come to understand the complex interconnections
in their policy arena. Then the process involves
using these scenarios either to test existing strategies
(the so-called wind-tunnel approach) or to create new
policy options (the so-called generator option)” (Ling
2002, 263).
DELPHI SURVEY
The Delphi involves the survey of expert opinion –
consecutively over a number of waves and a period of
time – for identifying developments and/or trends
and to gradually reach a convergence of opinion
without physically coming together. The latter is
often presented as one major advantage of the Delphi
method over other physically-bound consultation
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 45
procedures for two reasons: first, because it allows
the participation of a wider circle of experts in the
consultation exercise and second, because it thus
controls for the disproportionate influence of any
single participant.
The main disadvantage is that Delphi surveys can be
very expensive and time-consuming and that whilst
often successful in obtaining a high response rate to
the first wave of the questionnaire, it is problematic
to keep a high longitudinal response rate over several
questionnaire iterations.
QUANTITATIVE METHODS
Foresight may also make use of quantitative methods
like trend extrapolation or simulation modelling. The
use of such methods presupposes the availability of
trend data over a long period of time and, more generally,
a comprehensive information base (which
often goes beyond the subject at hand), as well as the
existence of robust models and modelling expertise.
OTHER METHODS
Other methods used in foresight exercises are:
• Critical / key technology reports: applying set
of criteria against which the importance and
policy relevance of specific technologies are assessed.
• Relevance trees: a variation of scenario writing
where the attention is focused on identifying
objectives and needs in the future and projecting
backwards to identify the conditions under
which these can be met. When applied on a
specific region, this method is called morphological
analysis.
• SWOT analysis: an approach to identify the
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats, usually of an organisation.
Foresight can be found at the interface of ‘policy
analysis’, ‘strategic planning’ and ‘future studies’
(FOREN 2001), and through its particular relevance
for the S&T field also innovation studies (de Laat
2002). Not surprisingly, it is a broad and rather protean
field where terminology – generic or methodological
– is not always clear or consistent. Thus de
Laat notes “futures methods are difficult to categorise
and, in studying the literature, it turns out that different
authors classify similar methods differently. In
fact only the meaning of ‘forecasting’ is relatively well
shared (…) most agreeing that it relates to the quantified
prediction of future events, arrived at through
formal modelling and/or expert opinion. But even

46
then the boundaries differ (…). As an alternative,
others propose distinctions between forecasting and
the actual planning process, between prevision/forecasting
and prospective/foresight, or again
between strategic analysis and foresight…” (de Laat
2002, 178f).
Recapitulating, it could be said that Foresight is an
overall attempt to prepare for future challenges and
changes by trying to assess the challenges entailed in
the long-term future. Generated strategies should not
only prepare for future challenges, but also try to
influence and alter the changing process (and in the
long run the future itself) due to own perceptions and
goals.
2.3 Application of foresight exercises
As mentioned above, foresight exercises are quite
young in the transport sector. In the past, they have
been applied for the following purposes:
• To forecast developments and changes in the
areas of society, environment, economy, technology
and science, and create policy strategies
to meet the challenges;
• To define key areas of science and technology
that are vital for economic development and
hence should be prioritised for funding;
• To elaborate pathways of technology application
to create wealth and improve the quality of
life whilst respecting environmental concerns;
• To identify market opportunities for specific
business or industrial sectors;
• To set up collaborative programmes between
industrial companies and government;
• To create networks linking different interest
groups such as scientists, policy makers, industrial
companies, funding agencies and various
specific stakeholders.
Today, foresight exercises on environment and/or
transport as well as enlargement and governance
increasingly attract attention from foresight practitioners,
and foresight exercises on such themes are
increasingly considered at the policy level.
Whether aiming at elaborating policy or business
strategies about the future or determining priorities
for science and technology, foresight exercises (and
definitions) share the following two criteria:
• Foresight is always concerned with the longterm
look into the future, typically with a time
frame of five to thirty years.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
• Foresight is a process rather than a set of techniques,
which contains the interaction of many
societal groups like the scientific community,
policy makers, government, different sectors of
the economy and other users. Increasingly
foresight is also used as a broader participatory
and networking technique, especially at the regional
level.
3 The Foresight for Transport project
The Foresight for Transport project applies the foresight
methodology to the impacts of developments in
the areas environment & energy, governance,
enlargement, ICT, and time, on sustainable transport
and mobility in Europe.
Its aim is to
1) Set up and run a strategic dialogue with the participation
of experts from different disciplines as well as
representatives of business and industry, policymakers
and interest organisations that prepares guidelines
to analyse the influence of non-transport policies
on mobility.
2) Use these guidelines to determine the degree of
impact of these policies and associated trends on
mobility.
3) Develop a procedure for monitoring such developments
in the future.
After giving an overview of the method as applied in
the project, this paper will present some preliminary
results. The area of energy & environment will serve
as an example.
3.1 The method
As outlined in chapter 2.2, foresight represents a
process for arriving at future visions which is open
and broad in terms of thematic scope, the methods
applied and participation.
In the Foresight for Transport project it was tried to
fulfil all of the above conditions:
• Thematically by addressing in parallel and then
jointly five non-transport areas;
• Methodologically by combining several techniques
both at each step of the process and
overall;
• In terms of participation by seeking to cover a
wide spectrum of expertise – both functionally
and professionally and again at each step of the
process and overall.

Concerning the choice of method, there is hardly any
foresight exercise which employs only one method.
Rather most involve several techniques. Furthermore,
“the choice of the techniques does not seem to predetermine
the quality of the result. The essence of
foresight exercises is that they are collective processes
of thinking toward the definition of priorities” (de
Laat 2002, 81).
The Foresight for Transport project follows the recommendations
of the Foresight UK Technology
programme which is organised in 16 sector panels.
These panels consist of experts from the academia,
construction industry, government and research, and
technology organisations. A questionnaire is posed to
each of the panels to get their views of the development
likely to effect their sectors in the next 10 to 20
years. The issues derived from this round have been
the basis of a wider Delphi survey.
Following this methodology, Foresight for Transport
has been organised in three rounds:
• In the first round a series of expert panel consultations
as structured brainstorming sessions according
to the issues-drivers-impacts-indicators
schemes (Flanagan 2000) has been undertaken.
These expert consultations also applied the
methods of scenario writing and resulted in five
thematic consultation documents.
• The results of these consultations will be followed
in the second round by a two-wave Delphi
survey which will seek feedback to the consultation
documents from a wider circle of experts
and stakeholders in Europe to further elaborate
scenarios or trends and to specify indicators.
• In the third round, the scenarios that have been
established during consultations as well as indicators
proposed will be further tested and assessed
by the core consortium of the project. At this
stage, the results will be submitted to a second
round of expert consultations for refinement and
for providing input to the development of a
monitoring system. The indicator-based
monitoring system shall provide guidance for
policy-makers.
In addition, between the first and the second round
the outputs of the thematic consultations were synthesised
by the core consortium to arrive at a reference
scenario and a set of future scenarios that cover
all the areas addressed by the project.
3.2 Steps taken
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 47
Until now, the five thematic as well as the joint consultation
document have been finalised. Preparations
for the first wave of the Delphi Survey – which will
start in mid-January 2003 – are almost finished.
The output of the brainstorming sessions that marked
the beginning of the participatory process of the
Foresight for Transport project were thematic consultation
documents on
• decision-making in context of multi-level governance
and transport;
• energy and the environment and transport;
• EU enlargement and transport;
• the Information & Communication Technologies
(ICT) and transport;
• time politics, timescape analysis and transport.
Each of the five simultaneously organised expert
panels was made up of between seven and ten experts.
The participants were a mix of select representatives
from academia, business, industry, policy and
interest organisations from all across Europe and in
some cases from North America too. Altogether, 40
experts covered a wide spectrum of expertise.
The work of the expert panels was organised in the
following manner:
• Step 1: Identification of issues that are important
in the respective sector in the next 5, 10
and 20 years;
• Step 2: Establishment of the relevance between
these issues and transport in the short, medium
and long term;
• Step 3: Elaboration of a trend and/or a number
of scenarios for these relevant issues jointly.
The elaboration of scenarios to follow the
‘learning model’ approach;
• Step 4: Specification of indicators that will
monitor developments in the respective sectors.
The thematic consultation documents were used to
establish the degree of impact of non-transport policies
and societal trends on mobility and transport.
3.3 First results
As an example for the work of the Foresight for
Transport project, the consultation document of the
energy & environment panel will be introduced
briefly. Similar documents have been produced for
the areas of governance, enlargement, ICT, and time,
each in relation to transport. Besides considering the
type of possible developments and their evolution for

48
each policy field separately, strategic assessment as
informed by foresight takes a step further and tries to
link the various developments and both for the present
and the future. This step was taken by producing
a joint consultation document.
3.3.1 Thematic consultation document ‘energy &
environment’
According to the steps described above, the key outcomes
of the expert panel were statements concerning
drivers and issues in the sector of energy & environment
that will be important in the next 20 years.
While for the political dimension the panel emphasised
the complexity and uncertainty of factors, the
following key drivers were identified for the other
dimensions under assessment:
• Attitudinal: Attitudes regarding quality of life;
• Social: Intergenerational equity and the wellbeing
of children;
• Institutional: Emphasis on participation in
complex political system;
• Technological: Technological developments in
energy production and use;
• Economic: Liberalisation, fuel prices, integrated
production.
The other main part of the foresight exercise consisted
of the development of equally plausible or
desirable scenarios, based on the drivers and issues
identified before and a systematic analysis of current
trends.
The futures developed in this group can be divided
into a weak and a strong sustainability approach, each
with different pathways. While weak sustainability still
aims at welfare maximisation and economic growth is
seen as the solution to environmental problems
(paradigm of resource optimism), strong sustainability
assumes that environmental quality and economic
growth are not compatible (paradigm of growth pessimism).
Thus, protection of the environment needs a
restriction of economic growth (zero growth) (Steurer
2001). 3
The weak sustainability futures aim at
• achieving a sustainable (land) transport system
through technological progress. This vision describes
a transition period during which a synergistic
relationship is created between technological
advances and economic instruments to facilitate
the emergence of a sustainable transport sys-
3
Besides weak and strong sustainability, Steurer distinguishes
balanced sustainability.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
tem. There are four components in creating
these synergies: sustainable communities, alternative
fuel-vehicles, alternative transport modes,
and the move towards a hydrogen economy.
• achieving a sustainable transport system through
decoupling. This needs changes in the economic
and spatial structures as well as in individual
travel behaviour and consumer preferences.
There are four components in achieving decoupling:
the internalisation of external costs, changes
in technological development towards fuel saving
technology and alternative fuels, the establishment
of new models of wealth and mobility,
and an integrated structural change.
While the weak sustainable transport scenarios do not
require major behavioural changes, both strong sustainability
futures necessitate a change of life style and
organisation. They
• lay emphasis on cities by pointing out the role
of applying new urban development and land
use principles in order to plan cities that require
less transport and support a higher quality of
life.
• emphasise C02 reduction. This requires a paradigm
shift away from the pursuit of the objective
of growth and material prosperity in those
economic sectors that entail immoderate use of
fossil fuels towards one based on improving
quality of life. Substantially reducing greenhouse
gas emissions from transport requires
major reductions in both the volume and speed
of road, rail, and air traffic. The reduction in
the rate of its growth is less important.
3.3.2 The joint consultation document
The joint consultation document focuses on what
influences mobility and the transport sector by synthesising
the outputs of the thematic consultations.
For analytical reasons, developments in eight nontransport
fields which directly or indirectly influence
mobility are considered. These developments were
identified during the expert consultations. The eight
fields are demographics, attitudes, social developments,
institutional arrangements, politics, environment,
the economy, and science and technology.
In a first step, key factors determining developments
in these eight fields as well as relevant indicators for a
comprehensive monitoring system were outlined and
possible futures identified. Additionally, the main
trends in the transport sector and the possible mobility
futures were also outlined. In a second step, a
composite reference scenario as well as a set of future

scenarios were specified, covering all of the above
dimensions.
ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY SCENARIOS
In this field, it was stated that developments regarding
the environment (and, not least, environmental
policy) are not independent from developments regarding
attitudes, politics, social and institutional
developments, technology, and economics. Critical
factors are thus the general attitude and practical
implementation of principles relating to sustainable
development at different levels and both regarding
energy production and use as well as prices and traffic
reduction measures.
The following futures are considered possible regarding
sustainable environmental development. They are
based on the scenarios developed during the expert
consultations.
'Strong' sustainability
This future is driven by a paradigm shift in values and
the perception of life quality leading to massive CO2
reduction through less materialism, less transport
(both short- and long-distance), as well as different
urban development principles. Because environmental
quality and economic growth are not compatible
(paradigm of growth pessimism) new measures
of progress derive and are applied. Within that
process, education has a crucial role in pointing to the
need for this major shift in thinking and for its relevance
to current commercial practices and lifestyles.
Technology or economic measures are not considered
to be able to deliver sufficient solutions within
the time-scale available. Under this scenario, environmental
quality increases considerably (less noise,
less sealing of soil, less pollution).
'Weak' sustainability driven by technology
Both weak sustainability scenarios are characterised
by stable or even growing levels of transport. The
main goal is still welfare maximisation and economic
growth is seen as the solution to environmental problems
(paradigm of resource optimism).
Under this scenario, technological progress (fuel
saving technology, alternative fuels) is the most significant
and considered sufficient for meeting the
contemporary environmental challenges (mainly
emission reduction and considerable but not massive
CO2 reduction). Furthermore, it will decouple economic
and transport growth. While environmental
quality slowly increases there are no changes in transport
related deaths or fragmentation of habitat.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 49
'Weak' sustainability driven by economic measures
The second weak sustainability future is characterized
by applying economic measures in order to reduce
the negative environmental effects of the transport
sector. The key element is to internalise external
environmental costs, taking all costs of transport into
account such as costs of infrastructure, accidents and
environmental pollution. Respective strategies include
marked based options as road pricing, fuel taxes
(including kerosene) and the reduction of subsidies
for private transport; alternative fuels vehicles will
receive tax credits. Fair prices for transport help to
decouple production and transport so that the transport
intensity of economic production declines. The
effects on environmental quality are the same as with
the first weak sustainability scenario.
Environmental degradation increases
In this future there is neither a technological breakthrough
nor do policy-makers apply economic measures
in order to reduce transport (both demand and
supply). As a result, environmental quality further
decreases and the growth trend of transport prevails
(for both passenger and freight transport). The new
European member states follow the current transport
trends. Regarding health, noise levels, deaths, emission
rates, and related diseases increase.
JOINT SCENARIOS
As exemplified above for the environment, similar
scenarios were developed for the transport sector and
the other seven fields under consideration. In a next
step, it was tried to link the various developments for
both the present and the future. Such an exercise is
useful for making explicit underlying assumptions as
well as for helping in the specification of impact
pathways: how do specific variables impact on others
and with what effect?
The following four joint scenarios were developed by
the core team of the Foresight for Transport project.
Reference ‘business-as-usual’ scenario
The transport present is characterised by high transport
demand with the trend pointing towards further
growth; high levels of congestion and external negative
effects; an increasing trend towards motorisation
and, associated with this, a high level of injuries and
fatalities.
At the technological front incremental changes and
improvements are the order of the day. The problem
appears to lie more with the diffusion and uptake of
new technologies rather than with innovation,
whereby the low expenditures in RTD, both from

50
government and business, are in part to blame for
this.
Politically, technocracy prevails as political parties as
well as representative democracy remain weak. Politics
are determined by security issues, which also
drive cooperation and enlargement. Among citizens
alienation and disenfranchisement rises.
Demographically, we live in an ageing society with a
comparatively high regional variation.
The trends with regard to transport, technology,
politics and demography are the clearest under this
reference business-as-usual scenario. Insofar as economic,
institutional, social, and environmental factors
as well as attitudes are concerned, the trends are less
clear tending between two directions.
Thus in terms of the economy, the present tends to a
low level of GDP growth with stagnation in terms of
international trade and the economic structures. This
is however not a stable situation with both recession
or a turn-around towards economic growth being
possible.
Institutionally the European Union finds itself at a
key turning point, with enlargement and institutional
reforms underway, but unclear with regard to the
latter’s success or impacts. As possible is the consolidation
of federal structures or the return of strong
state functions at the national level. Either development
on its own will not resolve contemporary transport
problems, just like recession of low economic
growth will not.
Improvements with regard to the environment are
sought through both economy and technological
instruments, whereby the low uptake of new technologies,
on the one hand, and the low economic
growth, on the other, make the introduction of strong
ecological policy measures difficult.
The trends with regard to the social agenda and welfare
expenditures are also unclear and there is a significant
regional variation. Thus while some countries
put an emphasis on high welfare spending, activation
policies and policies aiming to reduce poverty and
income inequality, others adopt the more laissez-faire
approach.
The lack of orientation in many respects is also reflected
at the micro-level with attitudes dividing between
individualism and materialism, on the one
hand, and strong group orientations, on the other,
with an unclear sense of public interest.
Sustainable European identity
This scenario comes in three versions:
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Under option (A), the emergence of a new sense of
public interest at the interface between individual
autonomy and a new social consciousness as well as
the reinforcement of European identity, lead to the
consolidation of federalist structures at European
Union level, the adoption of a strong social agenda
against inequality and high economic growth. This
gives momentum to environmental policies aiming to
reduce the negative external effects of transport
through economic and technological instruments.
Transport demand continues to be high with regard
to international trade (in line with high economic
growth and economic integration) but short-distance
motorised transport decreases mitigating the negative
effects of transport. Overall we observe an increase
both of the rail and short-sea shipping share in transport
patterns.
Under option (B) similar political and attitudinal
developments as above lead to a re-assertion of local
governance and full decentralisation (thus a Europe
of the regions). Economic production and development
is re-organised according to ecological principles
supporting strong sustainability – in general and
with regard to transport – and new forms of social
organisation with less work, more leisure and a strong
voluntary sector emerge. This is in part possible because
of strong technological innovations.
Under option (C), the emergence of a new European
identity leading either to a strong federal Europe or
local governance, combined with technological innovation
and the re-balance of demographic trends
leads to increased equality, strong sustainability and a
ecological economic model.
Technocratic Europe
Like 'Sustainable European Identity' this future
comes in three versions:
Under option (A), we observe the emergence of a
federal Europe in the context of elite closure and the
weakening of representative democracy at national
and European levels. High economic growth supports
the fighting of inequality but the negative impacts
of transport are not dealt with.
Under option (B), elite closure leads instead to the
strengthening of the nation-state, with economic
growth stabilising at a low level and social inequality
increasing. Transport impacts remain negative and are
not dealt with.
Under option (C), external pressures (arising, for
instance, from environmental or technological failures)
lead to a change in the thinking of the elite and,
at the same time, a generational change. Economic

forms of production are ecologically improved and
institutional arrangements are reformed towards
technological innovation, sustainability and federal
structures.
Governance failure
Institutional reforms support regional / national
governance albeit a low level of cohesion and collaboration
lead to a breakdown of the project of
European integration. Combined with recession,
political polarisation, the rise of the extreme rightwing
and the strengthening of egotism and/or tribalism,
this leads to increasing inequality, the further
ageing of society, environmental degradation and a
technological breakdown. Economic recession leads
to a decrease of transport demand yet in view of the
above, negative transport effects are not reversed.
3.4 The next steps
The main steps that still have to be taken are the
Delphi Survey and the development of a monitoring
system.
The preparations for the Delphi Survey are under
way, aiming to reach some 500 experts. The first
wave is planned for mid-January to end February and
the second for mid-April to end May next year. The
aim is to get feedback on the following points:
• Are critical factors correctly identified?
• Assessment of one-dimensional scenarios /
trends in terms of their likelihood and desirability;
• Ranking of global scenarios in terms of likelihood
and desirability;
• Assessment of degree of impact of nontransport
critical factors on transport outcome
variables (strong, weak) and whether direct or
indirect;
• Choice of indicators for the different fields.
The last step in the project will be the development
of an indicator-based monitoring system to provide
guidance for policy-makers.
4 Conclusion
The Foresight method is based on the assumption
that arriving at a clear conceptual understanding
about the future, which, in turn, can be formalised
through modelling, needs clarification and then classification
of the various trends that characterise contemporary
developments as well as the assumptions
or value orientations that underlie their interpretation.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 51
Insofar as the latter are plural and different, it becomes
clear that the process of arriving at future
visions must be open and broad with regard to the
thematic scope, the methods applied and participation.
The Foresight for Transport project meets those
requirements by
• addressing in parallel and then jointly several
thematic areas (energy & environment,
•
enlargement, ICT, governance and time politics);
combining several techniques – brainstorming,
scenario-writing, Delphi survey, critical factors,
strategic assessment; and
• covering a wide spectrum of expertise – experts
in academia, policy, business, and the nongovernmental
sector from different countries
(40 at expert panel consultations; 500 through
Delphi).
Besides applying this innovative approach to the
transport field, the Foresight for Transport project
represents the first attempt to
• establish a foresight exercise tailored to the
needs of the European Common Transport
Policy (CTP); and
• establish a procedure that assists in the crosssectoral
policy integration and co-ordination
and, more specifically, in the integration of
non-transport concerns in transport policies
and vice-versa.
By doing this, the project will help to prepare the
Common Transport Policy for the future and in that
will contribute to the preparation of decisions that are
demand-oriented, economically and ecologically reasonable
and socially acceptable, as well as consistent
with other sectoral policies.
References
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Flanagan, R. 2000. Lessons for UK Foresight from around the
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Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 53-66.
Navigating the Sustainability Transition: The Future of Scenarios
Paul Raskin + , Robert J. Swart ∗ and John Robinson ♣
1. Core questions
There is wide consensus in both science and policy
that world development continues to move in an
unsustainable direction. A recent comprehensive
review of the state of the environment (UNEP,
2002) finds that, over the last 30 years, human and
environmental circumstances have changed considerably
and inequitably across the world. Social
and environmental conditions have deteriorated in
many places, and the integrity of life support systems
has come under increasing threat.
Since the seminal report of the Brundtland Commission
(WCED, 1987), the policy response has
centered on a call for sustainable forms of development.
While definitions of sustainable development
vary widely (Robinson, 2002), most call attention
to the need to maintain resilience in environmental
and social systems by meeting a complex
array of interacting environmental, social and
economic conditions. One version of such an
approach suggests three “imperatives” for sustainable
development: the ecological (staying within
biophysical carrying capacity), the social, (providing
systems of governance that propagate the
values that people want to live by), and the economic
(providing an adequate material standard of
living for all) (Robinson and Tinker, 1998).
These concerns have stimulated a scientific response,
as new research initiatives addressed various
biophysical aspects of global environmental
change. In the 1980s, international global environmental
change research became coordinated
+ Boston Center of the Stockholm Environment Institute,
Tellus Institute, USA. Contact: praskin@tellus.org.
∗ Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the
Environment (RIVM), The Netherlands. Contact:
rob.swart@rivm.nl.
♣ Sustainable Development Research Institute (SDRI) of the
University of British Columbia, Canada. Contact: jrobinson@sdri.ubc.ca.
within the frameworks of the World Climate Research
Programme (WCRP), the International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and
DIVERSITAS. As the importance of social and
economic aspects became increasingly recognized,
the International Human Dimensions Programme
(IHDP) for the social sciences and humanities was
formed in the 1990s. Global environmental
change research matured into a broader agenda
under the rubric of global change research. The
interdependence of natural and social systems led
increasingly to calls for interdisciplinary research
efforts (e.g. Lubchenko, 1998; NAS, 1999;
IGBP/IHDP/WCRP/Diversitas, 2001). In the
context of IGBP, the GAIM (Global Analysis,
Integration and Modeling) task force is advancing
a framework for integrated research (Schellnhuber
and Sahagian, 2002). For the 2002 World Summit
on Sustainable Development, the world’s scientific
research programmes committed themselves to
integrate societal problems into their endeavors
(ICSU, 2002).
While the link between science-driven research
activities and sustainability policy development
remains weak (Cohen et al., 1998), the call to
strengthen the contribution of science to a sustainability
transition 1 has grown louder (Raven et al.,
2002). Recently, Kates et al. (2001) identified a
framework for an emerging “sustainability science”
for generating useful knowledge to support a transition
to sustainable development. Such a sustainability
science would seek to illuminate the interactions
between nature and society at different geographic
scales from global to local. It would address
the behavior of complex self-organizing
1 Detailed analysis of the integrated requirements for a sustainability
transition was introduced by Raskin et al. (1998), and
further developed by the National Research Council of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States (NAS,
1999), which spells out international targets for meeting
human needs and preserving life support systems, as a basis
for priorities both for research and action. Subsequently,
on the policy side, the General Assembly of the
United Nations adopted the Millennium Declaration
(UNGA, 2000), which includes targets for a number of social
and environmental sustainability problems.

54 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
systems and responses of the combined naturesociety
system to multiple and interacting stresses,
involving different social actors. It would develop
tools for monitoring key environmental and social
conditions, and guidance on effective management
systems.
The seven core questions proposed for sustainability
science by Kates et al. (2001) are collected in
Box 1. The emphasis is on understanding the
systems complexities associated with sustainability,
including the provision of information to help
social actors to develop transition strategies. These
core questions are a particular way of looking at
the problem of sustainability, which reflects the
scientific perspective it is intended to represent.
Sustainability science is seen as fundamentally a
problem of representing the interactions, behaviors
and emergent properties of combined natural
and social systems, and providing decision makers
with better advice about the effects of various
forms of behaviour or intervention. These are
indeed critical issues. Our goal here is to suggest
ways in which scenario analysis can contribute to
these goals, and in so doing to help broaden the
focus to encompass a richer set of considerations.
These are derived in part from a “human science”
perspective that emphasizes the need to develop
approaches for evaluating future options, recognizing
diverse epistemologies and problem definitions,
and encompassing the deeply normative
nature of the sustainability problem2 .
The questions in Box 1 do not directly address the
problem of illuminating the long-term evolution of
complex socio-ecological systems – the problem of
the future. Yet, sustainability is ultimately about
maintaining the resilience of combined human and
environmental system over many generations.
Where they touch upon the future, the proposed
core questions underscore trends and discontinuities
in those trends, and how these trends may be
changed “in ways relevant to sustainability”. They
do not underscore the critical role of envisioning
2 The scientific perspective described by the proposed core
questions corresponds to the “descriptive” approach to the
social sciences and humanities (Rayner and Malone, 1998).
Our approach in this paper attempts to incorporate the
“interpretive” approach, characterized by a focus on the
meaning created by human agents in the conduct of social
life.
alternative futures, exploring plausible pathways,
and identifying the factors conditioning long-term
outcomes. To highlight some of these issues we
have added an 8th question in Box 1: “How can the
future be scanned in a creative, rigorous and policy-relevant
manner that reflects the normative character of sustainability
and incorporates different perspectives?”
Box 1: Core questions for sustainability
science
1. How can the dynamic interactions between
nature and society – including lags and inertia – be
better incorporated in emerging models and conceptualizations
that integrate the Earth system,
human development, and sustainability?
2. How are long-term trends in environment and
development, including consumption and population,
reshaping nature-society interactions in ways
relevant to sustainability?
3. What determines the vulnerability or resilience
of the nature-society system in particular kinds of
places and for particular types of ecosystems and
human livelihoods?
4. Can scientifically meaningful “limits” or
“boundaries” be defined that would provide effective
warning of conditions beyond which the nature-society
systems incur a significantly increased
risk of serious degradation?
5. What systems of incentive structures – including
markets, rules, norms and scientific information
– can most effectively improve social capacity to
guide interactions between nature and society toward
more sustainable trajectories?
6. How can today’s operational systems for
monitoring and reporting on environmental and
social conditions be integrated or extended to provide
more useful guidance for efforts to navigate a
transition toward sustainability?
7. How can today’s relatively independent activities
of research planning, observation, assessment,
and decision support be better integrated into systems
for adaptive management and societal learning?
Source: Kates et al., 2001
8. How can the future be scanned in a creative,
rigorous and policy-relevant manner that reflects
the normative character of sustainability and incorporates
different perspectives?”
Source: this paper
The core questions outlined in Box 1 raise a number
of research challenges for sustainability, which
we discuss in the following section. We next summarize
parallel developments in the use of scenario
analysis to illuminate sustainability problems. We
then argue that scenario analysis is a natural and

powerful tool for advancing important aspects of
sustainability science, and close with some observations
on future directions.
2. Research strategies
Kates et al. (2001) conclude that the structure,
methods, and content of the scientific enterprise
would have to change in order to pursue sustainability
science adequately. From the core questions
they derive four research strategies:
i. spanning multiple spatial scales from local
to global processes;
ii. accounting for temporal inertia and urgency
of problems that are both longlived
and perilous;
iii. reflecting functional complexity and multiple
stresses in human and environmental
systems; and
iv. recognizing the wide range of outlooks in
order to generate knowledge usable for
people with different perspectives.
These are important strategic challenges, indeed,
which science has only begun to address. But
others should be highlighted or, where implicit in
the four generic strategies above, made explicit, in
order to draw attention to the critical problem of
the future (Core question 8). These are:
v. integrating across policy themes and issues to
capture the intricately-linked ecological,
social, economic, ethical and institutional
dimensions of sustainability problems –
adequately addressing any specific problems
requires a framework that reflects
the breadth and depth of interconnections
(e.g., poverty, deforestation, climate
change, land tenure systems, income distribution,
trade regimes, etc., are codetermining);
vi. reflecting uncertainty: incorporating deep uncertainties,
surprise, critical thresholds and abrupt
change that are immanent in non-linear
natural and social systems – the potential
for and implications of novel events and
rapid structural change beyond critical
thresholds are fundamental to assessing
the resilience, vulnerability and suite of
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 55
possible future states; understanding and
reflecting deep uncertainty in complex
socio-ecological systems should be an explicit
part of the sustainability science
strategies;
vii. accounting for human volition as a key conditioning
factor of combined human and
environmental systems – the constitution,
reproduction and reformulation of human
needs, wants and values is key to illuminating
consumption, social goals, institutional
innovation, social learning and
the prospects for alternative futures;
viii. combining qualitative and quantitative analysis
to elevate non-quantifiable cultural, institutional
and value aspects of the integrated
system problem capture3 ; and
ix. making sustainability science more relevant to
policy development and action through stakeholder
participation: incorporating the relevant
values, perceptions and preferences
of societal actors about the future into
the research process is needed to encompass
non-traditional forms of knowledge
and normative values.
3. Scenario analysis: history and current
frontiers
Scanning these various research strategies for a
new sustainability science, a recurrent meta-theme
is the challenge of integration. The systemic character
of sustainability problems demands a holistic
perspective that unifies across sectors, problems,
methods, disciplines, spatial scales and time. Furthermore,
the classic radical distinction between
the realm of the normative and the objective, the
“ought” and the “is”, is not useful when the system
under scrutiny entrains human values and
choices as irreducible and critically important
system constituents and drivers of change.
Recent advances in scenario analysis offer powerful
methods and valuable experience for an inte-
3 Global change science continues to be dominated by quantitative
approaches, whereas non-quantifiable factors, such as
trust, power, emotional attachment and many others,
which profoundly effect human behavior and the prospects
for sustainability are left implicit.

56 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
grative and future-oriented sustainability science.
The US Board on Sustainable Development (NAS,
1999) lists four criteria for evaluating scientific
strategies for exploring sustainable futures in policy
contexts: scientific credibility, political legitimacy,
practical utility and effectiveness. The
Board then identifies six possible approaches:
qualitative consultation among "knowledgeable"
people as in study panels; formal elicitation of
expert judgment in forms such as subjective probability
distributions; creation of structured and
internally consistent narratives or scenarios; various
forms of strategic gaming; formal extrapolation
of past trends using statistical methods; and a
wide variety of different kinds of causal modeling.
While we shall focus on scenario analysis, it is a
flexible methodology that draws on other approaches.
Integrated scenario analysis can transcend
the limitations of conventional approaches
in responding to the core sustainability science
issues, while offering opportunities for participatory
processes of knowledge generation.
What are scenarios? In the context of sustainability
science, integrated scenarios may be thought of as
coherent and plausible stories, told in words and
numbers, about the possible co-evolutionary
pathways of combined human and environmental
systems. They generally include a definition of
problem boundaries, a characterization of current
conditions and processes driving change, an identification
of critical uncertainties and assumptions
on how they are resolved, and images of the future.
The characterization of the nature of human
and environmental response under contrasting
future conditions is key in scenario formulation.
Reflecting deep respect for the uncertainty inherent
in such systems, scenarios are neither predictions
nor forecasts.
Scenario analysis is an evolving concept. The term
has been applied to diverse efforts ranging from
literary descriptions to model-based projections,
from visionary thinking to minor adjustments to
“business-as-usual” projections. Although scenario
development as a systematic way of thinking
about the future has a long history it has not been
codified into a common set of definitions and
procedures. Such methodological ambiguity is in
many ways a source of strength for this evolving
field of inquiry. The range of aims and the sheer
complexity of the problem demand flexibility and
creative exploration.
The broad use of the term “scenario” for characterizing
the systematic framing of uncertain possibilities
can be traced to post-World War II strategic
studies. In particular, Herman Kahn explored
possible consequences of nuclear proliferation,
defining scenarios as “hypothetical sequences of
events constructed with the purpose of focusing
attention on causal processes and decision points”
(Kahn and Wiener, 1967). In the private sector,
Shell has played a leading role since the 1970s
developing scenarios to highlight world development
possibilities that are relevant to the company’s
future, and to prepare company managers
for responding to an uncertain future (Wack,
1985a; 1985b; for the latest scenarios work, see
Shell, 2002), a process that has been used more
widely in the business community (Schwarz, 1991).
Systems modeling is another antecedent to contemporary
scenario analysis. Mathematical simulations
were used to forecast the behavior of the
economy, its pressures on the environment, and
resource constraints. A controversial early effort
was Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) for the
Club of Rome, which was followed with more
complex modeling exercises (Mesarovic and Pestel,
1974). These studies found that trends in economy,
demography and technology would overshoot
the planet’s carrying capacity in the twentyfirst
century, and explored the adjustments to
growth necessary to avoid such a crisis. While
calling attention to critical problems, the rigidity
and uncertainty of the model specifications, and
underestimation of society’s adaptive capacity and
of human ingenuity in the face of emerging problems
has been used to discredit the work. In order
to emphasize social and political aspects of development,
particularly in developing countries,
Herrera et al. (1976) developed the Latin American
World Model to explore the requirements for a
more egalitarian future.
Another stream of scenario work focused on envisioning
desirable futures, particularly in the energy
field, in order to stimulate discussions on how to
get there. Such “backcasting” studies (Robinson,
1982), mostly at the regional or national level, were
conducted in dozens of countries, inspired by the

early work of Amory Lovins (1976, 1977) in developing
scenarios of “soft energy paths”. More recently,
this backcasting approach has been applied
in the context of sustainable futures, at both the
regional and global scales (e.g. Robinson et al.,
1996; Raskin et al., 1998; Raskin et al., 2002).
After the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987) and
the 1992 Rio World Conference on Environment
and Development, a second “wave” of global
scenarios was launched in the context of the
sustainability challenge. Some were model-based
such as the updated work of Meadows et al. (1992),
and new integrated studies on such themes as
climate change, water scarcity, public health, and
land-use (Rotmans and de Vries, 1997). The IPCC
series of greenhouse gas emissions scenarios
studies became successively more sophisticated
(IPCC, 1990; Leggett et al, 1992; Nakicenovic and
Swart, 2000). Meanwhile, a number of studies
adopted the narrative scenario tradition (e.g.,
Svedin and Aniansson, 1987). 4
The distinction between quantitative (modeling) and
qualitative (narrative) traditions of scenario analysis
should be underscored. Predictive modeling is
appropriate for simulating well-understood systems
over sufficiently short times. But as complexity
increases and the time horizon of interest
lengthens, the power of prediction diminishes.
Quantitative forecasting is legitimate to the degree
the state of the system under consideration can be
specified, the dynamics governing change are
known and persistent, and mathematical algorithms
can be created that map these relationships
with sufficient precision for simulation. These
conditions are violated when the task is to assess
the long-range future of socio-ecological systems –
state descriptions are uncertain, causal interactions
are poorly understood and non-quantifiable factors
are significant. Probabilistic forecasts of a given
future state, or a spectrum of possible states, is not
feasible. Systems can branch into multiple future
pathways, each consistent with current conditions,
trends and drivers, and some entailing discontinuous
and novel behavior. Quantitative analysis
often relies on formal models, using mathematical
4 For a recent review of both modeling and narrative global
scenarios analyses, mainly related to climate change, see
Morita et al. (2001).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 57
algorithms and relationships to represent key features
of human and environmental systems in
order to represent. Varying assumptions on key
parameters generates scenarios. By the very nature
of their formality, quantitative scenario analysis is
limited to what can meaningfully be modeled.
While quantitative analysis remains an important
component of scenario analysis in the context of
sustainability science, because of these limitations
it should be complemented by qualitative scenario
exploration. This type of analysis can capture
other factors influencing the future such as system
shifts and surprises, or non-quantifiable issues
such as values, cultural shifts and institutional
features. The scenario narrative gives voice to the
important qualitative factors shaping development
such as values, behaviors and institutions, providing
a broader perspective than is possible from
mathematical modeling alone. Recent combinations
of long-term narratives with scenarios quantification
are attempting to combine the advantages
of both approaches (Raskin et al., 1998; Nakicenovic
and Swart, 2000). Narrative offers texture,
richness and insight, while quantitative analysis
offers structure, discipline and rigor (Figure 1). In
this sense, scenario analysis, with its rich history of
alternative traditions and approaches, offers the
potential of fostering the integration of descriptive
and interpretive traditions. The art is in the balance
(Raskin et al., 1996).

58 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
.
Another way of distinguishing between types of
scenarios (e.g., Alcamo, 2001) is between primarily
descriptive (or exploratory) scenarios, i.e. scenarios
describing possible developments starting from
what we know about current conditions and
trends, and primarily normative (or anticipatory)
scenarios, i.e.. scenarios which are constructed to
lead to a future that is afforded a specific subjective
value by the scenario authors. Neither of these
types is value-free, since both embody extrascientific
judgments about how the problem is to
be framed, and what are reasonable or feasible
assumptions. However they differ in terms of
overall purpose. That is, the choice between exploratory
or anticipatory scenarios is dependent on
the objectives of the scenario development exercise.
Anticipatory scenarios represent organized
attempts at evaluating the feasibility and consequences
of trying to achieve certain desired outcomes
or avoid the risks of undesirable ones. Exploratory
scenario analysis, on the other hand, tries
to articulate different plausible future outcomes,
and explore their consequences. Since the future is
unknowable, all scenarios are subjective by nature
and usually scenarios have both descriptive and
normative elements.
From a methodological point of view, scenarios
can attempt to discern the likely outcome of a
Figure 1. Scenarios in relations to stories and models
Source: Nakicenovic and Swart (2000)
range of “expected” trends (forecasting 5 ), outline the
implications of different assumptions not chosen
on the basis of likelihood (what-if analysis) or examine
the feasibility and implications of desirable
futures – or risks of undesirable ones (backcasting).
For sustainability problems, a combination of
backcasting from an array of possible end-states
and forecasting from initial conditions and drivers
of change is appropriate. The latter helps to identify
long-term risks and to specify sustainability
conditions, while the former identifies the bandwidth
of initial trajectories and available actions to
“bend the curve” (Raskin et al., 1998) toward longterm
sustainability goals.
Box 2: Linking global and regional scenarios:
the Global Scenario Group and UNEP’s
Global Environmental Outlook
The Global Scenario Group (GSG) was convened by
the Stockholm Environment Institute to engage diverse
international participants in an ongoing exploration of
the future using scenarios (Gallopin et al., 1997, Raskin et
al., 1998, Raskin et al., 2002; see http://www.gsg.org).
The scenarios have both global and regional dimensions,
cover a full spectrum of socio-economic and environmental
issues, and explore a range of contrasting futures
through both narrative “histories of the future” and
quantitative illustration. UNEP relied on these GSG
5 This does not imply that scenarios can be “single” forecasts,
or represent “most likely”, “business-as-usual”, or “current
trends”. Such terms misleadingly suggest that the probability
of particular futures is objectively known.

scenarios as a point of departure for its Global Environmental
Outlook project (UNEP, 2002), adding additional
regional insight through a long process of workshops
and consultation.
The GSG and UNEP-GEO work not only couples
regional to global scales, it also demonstrates how narratives
can be successfully combined with model-based
quantification of socio-economic developments and the
environmental changes they cause. The experience
shows that participants in scenario development do not
require technical familiarity with quantitative analysis to
contribute meaningfully, drawing on their own expertise
and wisdom to enrich scenarios. Thus, the fusion of
quantitative and qualitative approaches facilitates the
involvement of experts from different disciplinary and
regional backgrounds, and a variety of societal actors.
Between different regions, priority themes and the
nature of basic socio-economic and ecological processes
differ. The scenario approach accommodates these
differences and promotes a consistent logic across policy
themes and regional interactions. The governmental link
of UNEP ensures a direct input into the international
policy development.
In summary, whether more anticipatory or more
exploratory; more quantitative or more qualitative;
forecasting, “what-if” analysis or backcasting, welldesigned
scenarios are coherent stories, shaping,
and changing our ideas about the future, focusing
the attention on salient issues and helping us to
make better decisions, without prescribing such
decisions. They help us navigate strategically under
uncertainty, and can have different objectives 6 .
The scenario approach has evolved in response to
the challenge of thinking about highly uncertain
futures in an organized and integrated manner.
The methodological goal is an integrated approach
that is sensitive to the potential for discontinuity
and surprise, and to the need for both quantitative
and non-quantifiable descriptors of system attributes.
The aim is to reveal the links between issues,
the relationship between global and regional de-
6 E.g., for Shell, the main objectives of the scenarios are to
identify emerging challenges in the global business environment
and to prepare accordingly, to test and develop
strategies, to develop focused challenges, and to establish a
common platform for scanning, learning and communicating
(Shell, 2002). With different objectives, the scenarios of
the Global Scenario Group (Raskin et al., 2002) broadly
scan a spectrum of possibilities, describing the historic
roots, current dynamics, future perils, and alternative
pathways for world development, and then go on to advance
some of these paths as the preferred route to a sustainability
transition, proposing specific sustainability goals,
identifying strategies, agents of change, and values for a
new global agenda.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 59
velopment, and the influence of human choice on
the character of the future. By offering insight
into uncertainties and the consequences of current
actions, scenarios support more informed and
rational decision-making.
4. Integrating scenario analysis into the
sustainability science toolkit
With this background, the potential for scenario
analysis as a tool for addressing the core questions
and methodological challenges of sustainability
science comes into focus. Sustainability science
must consider the interplay and dynamic evolution
of social, economic and natural systems — it requires
an integrated and long-term perspective. It must
understand the sustainability process as tentative,
open and iterative, involving scientific, policy and
public participation. It must capture the possibility
of structural discontinuity and surprise in socioecological
systems. And it must recognize the
critical importance of alternative, and sometimes
competing, stories, beliefs, institutional contexts
and social structures.
Modern scenario methods are well-suited to these
tasks. They can help organize scientific insight into
an integrated framework, gauge emerging risks,
and challenge the imagination. They can provide a
means for integration of descriptive and narrative
elements, and qualitative and quantitative information.
They ease communication with non-scientific
audiences, and can engage diverse stakeholders as
actors in scenario design and refinement. Though
their subject is the future, scenarios are about
catalyzing and guiding appropriate action today for
a sustainability transition.

60 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Research challenges
1. spanning spatial scales Socio-ecological change must be studied at various levels of spatial resolution.
Planetary, regional and local change are co-determining, but the
linkages not well understood.
2. accounting for temporal
inertia and urgency
3. recognizing the wide
range of outlooks
4. reflecting functional
complexity and multiple
stresses
5. integrating across
themes and issues
6. reflecting uncertainties,
incorporating surprise,
critical thresholds and
abrupt change
Key aspects Contribution of scenario analysis
Processes play out at disparate time scales. System inertia characterizes
both natural and socio-economic systems, while system change is increasingly
indeterminate as the time horizon of analysis lengthens. Yet, societal
decisions in response to long-term changes must be made in the short
term.
Sustainability science cannot be divorced from the values that shape people’s
perspectives and preferences with respect to sustainable futures and
on ways and means to get there. Traditional scientific research is poorly
equipped to deal with such normative issues.
Multiple stresses affect the interdependent functioning social and environmental
systems at all scales affecting their resilience. Scientific explana-
tion of these complex interactions is likely to remain limited.
Component aspects and features of combined human and environmental
systems are highly interdependent while policy interventions ripple and
cascade through the system.
Conventional methods are not well-equipped to deal with discontinuous
changes in complex, non-linear systems. Scientific uncertainties in the
complex socio-natural system relevant to sustainability issues are deep and
may not be resolved. It is crucial to understand their importance and to
make them explicit in research output.
7. accounting for volition The dynamics of change is influenced by individual and collective human
decisions at all scales. Human behaviors and choice will determine both
the goals and pathways of development and, hence, the prospects for a
sustainability transition.
8. combining qualitative
and quantitative analysis
9. engaging stakeholders
Cultural, institutional and value aspects of sustainability, although difficult
to quantify, must be considered in a unified framework with those biophysical,
economic and social features in which quantitative analysis adds
insight.
Human agents are an important internal feature of the system that sustainability
science must address. Stakeholder engagement allows for taking into
account the normative dimensions of sustainability, widens the knowledge
base, and enhances mutual learning.
Absent full scientific understanding of cross-scale linkages, “what-if”
analysis can explore possible linkages and link local, regional and global
perspectives in a common and consistent framework. Examples of re-
gional scenarios associated with global scenarios are in Boxes 2 and 4.
Through backcasting, scenario analysis can link long-term goals (e.g. associated
with a sustainability transition) to the shorter time horizon of today’s
decision makers. Examples are the tolerable windows/safe landing
approaches to climate change (Box 3), the GSG’s “bending the curve”
scenarios (Box 2) and the GBFP scenarios (Box 4).
Participatory scenario development, involving key stakeholders, is one of
the ways to address different views on how the world works, how a sustainability
transition could be envisaged and how it could be achieved. The
GBFP and IPCC work are good examples (Boxes 4, 5).
Qualitative expert knowledge applied in “what-if” scenario analysis can
help charting possible complex linkages and multiple stresses, minimizing
inconsistencies.
The scientific research and policy communities are both highly segregated
into individual disciplines, subject areas, or themes. Integrated scenario
analysis provides opportunities to broaden perspectives and reveal links.
The work described in Boxes 2 and 4 are examples.
Since surprises, critical thresholds and abrupt changes can have dramatic
consequences for nature and society, creative, “what-if” scenarios offers
the possibility of exploring the possibilities and analyzing the consequences.
Svedin and Aniansson (1987) provide an example.
Scenario analysis is a powerful method to explore normatively distinct
future images and alternative pathways for getting to each. It also helps
researchers and users of scenarios alike to reflect on their own worldviews,
biases and values, and thus enrich the science and practice of sustainability.
The backcasting analyses of the COOL and the GBFP projects are exam-
ples (Boxes 3 and 4).
Narrative scenarios capture qualitative features, which can be used in
conjunction with quantitative descriptions. The work from the Global
Scenario Group and the IPCC are examples of this integration (Boxes 2
and 5). Models can also be designed to capture qualitative aspects of sce-
nario analysis, as in the QUEST model used in the GBFP (Box 4).
Scenarios promote communication between researchers and stakeholders,
provide a structured framework for incorporating feedback into iterative
analysis and offer a laboratory for testing (and influencing) human perceptions
and goals (e.g. see Boxes 3 and 4).

Table 1 summarizes how scenario analysis can
contribute to the various strategies introduced in
the previous section. Boxes 2-5 give some selected
examples of projects in which some of these challenges
were addressed. While scenario analysis
cannot provide, of course, all the answers to the
questions posed by sustainability science, it has an
important role to play in synthesis, thinking about
the future, and linking to policy and stakeholder
communities. This role is complementary to the
daunting amount of non-scenario work required
for a robust sustainability science. Descriptive and
normative scenarios; forecasting, “what-if” analysis
and backcasting approaches; qualitative and
quantitative analysis, each type of scenario analysis
can address different elements of the questions,
and different challenges posed by the proposed
research strategies. For example, backcasting approaches
are useful when it comes to analyzing
today’s implications of long-term risks or longterm
sustainability objectives, taking into account
the inertia of natural and social systems, and for
exploring different strategies. ”What-if” analysis
can be useful to evaluate under which conditions
and when particular types of surprises could occur
or thresholds passed, and then explore ways how
to take these into account in today’s decisionmaking
processes. Forecasting is the appropriate
methodology if we want to explore how different
plausible socio-economic trends would work out
in the short-term future and how this might interact
with changes in natural systems, taking into
account all relevant scientific uncertainties. Narrative
scenario analysis facilitates a debate about
normative aspects of sustainability, quantitative
analysis can contribute to an adequate knowledge
base and structural consistency.
Box 3: COOL: Stakeholder involvement in
researching climate change solutions
In the Netherlands, a series of projects have adopted a
participatory scenario approach to analyze climate
change response options. Initially, a project was implemented
in which an integrated assessment model was
used as the basis for a dialogue with negotiators of the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Klabbers
et al., 1997, van Daalen et al., 1999). In a series of
workshops, UNFCCC negotiators formulated policyrelevant
scientific questions, which the modelers attempted
to address in an iterative process. Two new
products were generated: the so-called safe landing
analysis, a backcasting-type of analysis to link short-term
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 61
greenhouse emissions constraints to long-term climate
goals (e.g. Swart et al., 1998), and the interactive scenario
scanner, which allows a quick scenario exploration of
the climatic effects of a wide variety of socio-economic
developments (Berk and Janssen, 1997). The safe landing
idea influenced the development of the Tolerable
Windows Approach in Germany (Toth et al., 1997),
leading to an alternative approach to climate change
response analysis, complementary to the hitherto dominant
economic cost-benefit framework.
The Climate OptiOns for the Long-term (COOL) project
followed-up this work at three spatial levels: national,
European and global (Berk et al., 1999). The
global component was similar to the process described
above, involving government, environmental NGO and
private sector representatives. The question of burdensharing
in setting emissions allocations between developed
and developing countries had became an important
question. An interactive scenario tool was developed
(FAIR) to explore the implication of different equity
principles with regard to future participation in a climate
regime (den Elzen et al., 2001). At the European and
national levels, stakeholder dialogues were organized for
economic sectors, , involving a variety of stakeholders
such as national climate negotiators; sectoral policymakers;
representatives of the private sector; representatives
of environmental NGOs, politicians and government
policy makers; and scientists. The workshops
elaborated future images for reducing developed countries’
greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the
middle of the 21st century, through backcasting analysed
the possible pathways for connecting these images to the
present and considered short-term actions for reaching
long-term goals. Throughout the project, researchers
brought evolving scientific information into the debate,
while the stakeholders brought there also evolving
priority policy questions.
Two aspects of scenario analysis in the context of
a sustainability transition deserve special attention.
First, scenario analysis for sustainability science as
we see it goes beyond the traditional view on the
relationship between science and policy, which
assumes that science provides – sometimes on
request, sometimes not - information to policymakers
in order to improve the quality of the
decision-making process. Because of the apparent
objective nature of scenarios developed from this
perspective, they can be used by policy makers as a
means of legitimizing rather than informing policy
decisions. However, by explicitly recognizing the
normative values embedded in the scenarios themselves,
scenario analysis can instead reveal the
implications of making political decisions about
alternative integrated packages of policy and behavioural
choices, and in so doing serve as a vehicle
for illustrating the normative and reflexive

62
nature of the interplay between science and policy.
Second, scenario analysis in the context of sustainability
science has a potentially important role to
play with regard to the increasing demand for
more public and stakeholder involvement in the
scientific activities, driven by a complex mix of
factors, including increased public distrust of expert-driven
decision making, growing awareness of
a diversity of opinions in the scientific community,
and increased sophistication of NGO, private
sector and public involvement in regulatory and
other decision-making fora. These evolving dimensions
of the policy-science interface suggest that
participatory forms of scenario analysis could be
particularly effective in addressing the strategic and
normative elements of the sustainability questions
by incorporating values and preferences into the
scenario analysis process itself. The objectives and
design of a participatory scenario development
exercise would be different for involvement of key
stakeholders with advanced levels of scientific and
technical expertise, as compared to engagement of
the general public. But in all cases, scenario analysis
for sustainability science should encompass
mutual learning about the knowledge, positions
and preferences of those involved, hopefully leading
to better informed decision-making:
5. Conclusions and future directions
In summary, the emergence of a planetary phase of
development is bringing both new opportunities
and new perils. In many regions technological
advances thrive, incomes increase, and health
conditions improve. At the same time, poverty and
hunger continue to plague hundreds of millions of
people, conflicts abound, and ecological resources
are under continuous pressure around the globe.
With the world’s population possibly doubling in
this century and the economic output increasing
manifold, these problems can be expected to become
even more pronounced and urgent. There is
general agreement that a transition to sustainability
is needed. But incomplete understanding of the
problems, their causes and possible solutions
makes society poorly prepared for such a transition.
Maybe more importantly, the existence of
very different, often contradictory views about
how natural and human systems operate and inter-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
act, or how they should be managed, complicates
matters.
Box 4: The IPCC Special Report on Emissions
Scenarios: combining quantitative with narrative
scenarios
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) has developed and used emissions scenarios for
all three of its major assessments to date (IPCC, 1990;
Leggett et al., 1992; Nakicenovic and Swart, 2000). The
evolution of these scenario sets illustrates some of the
challenges discussed in this paper. The scenarios for the
first assessment (IPCC, 1990) consisted of one businessas-usual
scenario with three policy scenarios with increasing
levels of greenhouse gas emissions control. The
scenarios were conceived by a limited number of modelers,
using two integrated assessment models, focusing on
quantitative output in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
Eventually, a consensus emerged that these scenarios
were too limited, failing to reflect the wide variety
of outlooks on how the world could develop in the
absence of climate policy – the use of a single businessas-usual
scenario was considered misleading.
A broader team of integrated assessment modelers
developed more diverse scenarios for the second IPCC
assessment (Leggett et al., 1992), which were then exposed
to a wider review process. Divergent future developments
were reflected mainly by making low, medium
or high assumptions for key variables such as
population and economic growth, and resource availability.
On the basis of a thorough evaluation (Alcamo et al.,
1995), a considerable more intensive exercise was organized
for the third assessment. A much wider group of
experts was assembled, including involvement from
developing countries participants, the private sector and
environmental NGOs (Nakicenovic and Swart, 2000).
Intermediate results were made available through the
Internet for feedback from a wide community of interested
parties. To capture important unquantifiable issues,
to enhance consistency between driving forces
where interdependencies are not quantitatively known,
and to engage a wider group of peers, narratives for the
scenarios were developed before 6 modeling teams from
around the world started the quantification of the driving
forces and emissions. In this way, several of the
methodological challenges mentioned in this paper were
addressed. The scenarios served as the basis for a consistent
climate and mitigation analysis in IPCC’s Third
Assessment Report and is expected to remain fulfilling
this role for the next assessment.
Science can contribute to the sustainability transition
by providing knowledge and guidance for
navigating the journey from unsustainable contemporary
patterns to a sustainable future. We
have argued that scenario analysis offers one
promising approach for operationalizing and en-

iching the required “sustainability science”. The
process and product of scenario analysis are
equally important. In many contexts, effective
scenario analysis will benefit by reflecting the concerns
of the affected actors. Scientists bring
knowledge of relevant processes and their linkages
to the discourse and stakeholders enrich scenarios
by bringing the perspectives of the human participants
in the story of the future.
Scenario analysis can play a major role in addressing
the challenges of sustainability science, especially
the core question of how to scan the future
in a structured, integrated and policy-relevant
manner. From our scenario experiences over the
past twenty years, we offer the following principles
of good practice for those who would like to pursue
scenario analysis as a means of addressing the
vital questions of sustainability science. Of course,
scenario analysis should be tailored to the needs of
the set of problems being addressed. However, the
following ingredients should be on the menu of
each scenario exercise in the context of sustainability
science:
A sufficiently large and diverse group of participants.
The typical size of the core group
developing the scenarios discussed in the
boxes of this paper was between 10 and
40, usually involving experts from different
disciplinary backgrounds and stakeholders
with different interests. Interestingly,
scientists, representatives from the
private sector, governments and NGOs
can find common ground through a scenario
development process, since all these
groups have usually had at least some exposure
to scenarios, many even actively.
Key stakeholders can be integrated directly
into the problem definition, research
design and scenario generation
components of the research. For global
scenario work, a balanced representation
from all regions is important. In addition,
during the scenario development process,
a wider community of experts and stakeholders
should be involved, e.g. through
regional or stakeholder consultations, or
through an extensive review or other
feedback process. The process of scenario
development should be a process of
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 63
mutual learning, and co-production of
knowledge by those involved.
Adequate time for problem definition, knowledge
base development, iterative scenario development
and analysis, review and outreach. It is vital to
take the time and effort to come to grips
with involved researchers, policy-makers
and other stakeholders about the precise
nature of the questions and the audience
to be addressed, building trust between
the team members, and avoiding misunderstandings
or different interpretations
of key terms. Subsequently, storylines,
possibly supported by quantitative
modeling efforts, should be developed in
a number of iterations, and reviewed by a
group of peers beyond the core team. In
many cases, the processes of interacting
with stakeholders in the course of generating
scenarios are as important as the
scenario analysis itself. Finally, also the
communication to the audience external
to the development process needs careful
attention.
Full account of available scientific knowledge and
rigor of methods. All relevant scientific
knowledge about what is known, and
what is unknown about the problem being
considered, should be incorporated
into the scenario development process.
This includes predetermined elements
and critical uncertainties. Available tools
such as models and data bases should be
used, taking into account their strengths
and weaknesses. Care should be taken
when applying tools developed for one
type of question for addressing other
questions. Generating an adequate
knowledge base is an essential element of
the scenario development and analysis
process.
An explicit discussion about normative scenario
elements. One of the factors that moves
scenario analysis for sustainability science
beyond the boundaries of the traditional
scientific enterprise is that it should explicitly
account for the normative dimensions
of factors that shape development

64
and the prospects for sustainability.
These can be related to religion, spirituality,
norms and values, and to sociopolitical
and institutional design questions.
In the journey metaphor of the sustainability
transition, normative elements
can not only be related to its final
destination, but also to the choice of
means of transportation, the route and
the navigation instruments. In an open
discussion, mental maps of participants
can be revealed and challenged.
The development of coherent, engaging stories
about the future. Even if quantitative analysis,
e.g. through the usage of integrated
assessment models, can improve the consistency
of the scenarios, the telling of a
compelling story rich in imagination can
capture more of the knowledge and understanding,
and also of the beliefs, hopes
and dreams of those participating in the
scenario development process. Such a
process provides a means of addressing
sometimes neglected questions. It can
also be a powerful vehicle for effective
communication with target audiences.
The stories should not be constrained by
the limitations of the quantitative methods
from the start. The stories should
have a consistent logic and take into account
evolving positions and power balance
of stakeholders.
Explore the possibility of surprise events and address
possible seeds of change. Many scenarios
lack imagination and explore variations
on the main trends in the world today.
The future however can be influenced by
surprise events. Explicitly considering
this possibility will enrich the range of
scenarios developed, as will probing
“seeds of change”, societal or natural developments
that have the potential to
change society in an important way, and
that are presently dormant or in their
early stages of growth (van Notten,
2002).
Adventure beyond a narrow definition of the focal
problem, taking into account a broader con-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
text by integrating across issues, time and spatial
scales. Often, the focus of a scenario
exercise is on one dimension of sustainability,
such as climate change, biological
diversity, hunger, poverty, international
security, sustainable management of energy,
etc. These issues manifest themselves
at different spatial and time scales
and influence each other. Key linkages
across time, space and themes should be
identified and analyzed in an integrated
way as to their relevance for the focal
problem. Analyzing a sustainable energy
transition does not make sense without
evaluating the linkages with land-use and
food production, environmental implications
of energy use, and a host of social
and economic factors pertaining to energy
production and use.
The development of an effective science of sustainability
is an urgent endeavor that requires further
clarification of the contours of its key questions
and research agenda. The character of the
sustainability problems compels an integrated
exploration of the future that is sensitive to normative
issues grounded in cultural, spiritual and
philosophical attitudes of people, while incorporating
methodological rigor. To succeed, sustainability
science will need to be a dynamic, evolving field of
inquiry and application, which seeks integration
across disparate natural and social science perspectives.
Scenario analysis offers a powerful platform
for evolving an integrative, conceptually rich and
inclusive process of relevant knowledge generation
for a sustainable future.
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The Precarious Role of Scenarios in Global Environmental Politics.
Political options versus scientific projections
∗ 1
Harald A. Mieg
SUMMARY
In 1967, Kahn and Wiener introduced the concept of
scenario construction as a tool for science-based strategic
decision-making. More recently, the IPCC (the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) has been
employing such scenarios to translate climate-change
research findings into international politics. The history
of the IPCC scenarios provides evidence of the potential
of scenarios to elicit political resonance but also irritation.
The IPCC-1990 scenarios took into account political
developments and included a business-as-usual
scenario. The IPCC-2000 scenarios were designed as
purely non-intervention, gaining in scientific evidence
but, as scenarios, loosing out in terms of direct political
relevance. The status of these scenarios has effectively
changed from an option-in-context into a form of soft
prediction. The transformation of IPCC scenarios can
be interpreted from two points of view. Firstly, seen
from a cognitive point of view, scenarios seem a perfect
support for decision-making, however, tending to
disregard incremental processes and to underestimate
seemingly non-measurable factors (such as social values).
Thus, it is difficult to find a validated scientific basis
for intervention scenarios. Secondly, when we analyze
science and politics as two different functional systems
and two different professional spheres, the definition
of scientific scenarios for political action runs into
conflict with the political business at hand.
The scenario method was introduced by Herman
Kahn in the late 1960s as a tool for strategic planning.
In his book (with Wiener), "The Year 2000," Kahn
explained what scenarios are for:
Scenarios are hypothetical sequences of events constructed
for the purpose of focusing attention on causal
processes and decision-points. They answer two kinds
of questions: (1) Precisely how might some hypothetical
situation come about, step by step? and (2) What alternatives
exist, for each actor, at each step, for preventing,
diverting, or facilitating the process. (Kahn &
Wiener 1967, p. 6)
Scenarios represent different possible futures. They
describe options and their contexts. The scenario method
has been used in strategic corporate planning and,
more recently, by the IPCC—the Intergovernmental
∗
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland.
Contact: harald.mieg@env.ethz.ch.
1
I thank Rajendra K. Pachauri for his comments on the previous
version of this paper.
Panel on Climate Change—to translate findings of
climate-change science into international politics (cf.
IPCC 1990; 1992; 2000).
IPCC SCENARIOS
1990-1995
The IPCC report of 1990 communicated the results
in four scenarios of climate policies for the time until
the year 2100. Scenario A depicts business as usual:
[T]he energy supply is coal intensive and on the demand
side only modest efficiency increases are
achieved. Carbon monoxide controls are modest, deforestation
continues until the tropical forests are depleted
and agricultural emissions of methane and nitrous
oxide are uncontrolled […] (IPCC 1990, xxxiv).
The other three scenarios depict increases in efficiency
in the use of carbon fuels, carbon monoxide
controls, halted deforestation, and a shift towards
renewables and nuclear energy (cf. Table 1). Thus, the
IPCC-1990 scenarios are based on the variation of
several "key" parameters that supposedly influence
emissions of greenhouse gases, including: population
growth, economic growth, deforestation, end-use
efficiency of energy uses (cf. den Elzen 1994, chap 5;
IPCC 1992). The construction was undertaken by an
US-Dutch expert group (cf. den Elzen 1994).
In 1992, IPCC revised the 1990 scenarios assigning
them a no-policy status (Leggett, Pepper & Swart
1992). Particularly, Scenario A ("Business as usual")
was split into scenario 92a and 92b (see Figure 1). In
1994, IPCC clearly focused the purpose of emissions
scenarios to "non-intervention," namely:
As input to evaluating the environmental/climatic consequences
of "non-interventions", i.e. no action to reduce
greenhouse gases. For this purpose a nonintervention
scenario is devised, and then used as input
for a climate or similar model to evaluate the scenario's
environmental/climatic consequences. (Alcamo et al.
1995, 251)

68
A
"Business
as Usual"
B
"Low
Emissions"
C
"Control
Policies"
D
"AcceleratedPolicies"
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Table 1: IPCC climate change scenarios as communicated in the IPCC-1990 report
CO2 methane &
nitrous
oxide
CFC
energy mix supply: carbon deforest- agriculture Montreal
efficiency monoxidecontrolsation
Protocol
coal - modest + + partially
implemented
natural gas + + - ? +
renewables
& nuclear
power
renewables
& nuclear
power
+ + - - CFC phase
out
+ + - - CFC phase
out
timing
> 2050
< 2050
Note. Only some of the parameters used for scenario construction are communicated (for details cf. den Elzen 1994). The
scenarios are constructed by varying the state of the different parameters for greenhouse-gas emissions. To some extent,
the scenarios build on one another: scenario B is "better" than A, as C is "better" than B and so on; scenario C contains
the same preferable regulations as scenario B and some more (such as the use of renewables). Scenario D has an additional
time limit. The table shows only those specifications that were explicitly made; for instance, we can assume that
scenarios C and D have carbon monoxide (CO) controls. Source: Mieg (2001, Table 6.1). Copyright 2001 by Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates. Reprinted with permission.
The IPCC-"Climate Change 1995" report slightly
redirected attention from global warming to the scientific
study of "radiative forcing." The IPCCsummary
for policymakers started in 1990, under the
heading "We are certain of the following," with a
focus on the greenhouse effect and global warming
that is increased by human activities (IPCC 1990, xi).
The policymakers summary of the 1995 report started
with the remark that "considerable" scientific progress
has been made since 1990 and then, under the
heading "Greenhouse gas concentrations have increased,"
focused on radiative forcing (IPCC 1996, 3).
The attentive reader of the reports may also notice a
change in terminology: Whereas the 1990 report
speaks of "predicting" climate change, the 1995 report
speaks of "projecting" it (cf. IPCC 1996, 31;
IPCC 1990, xxv).
2000-2001
In contrast to the 1990 scenarios, those of 2000
(IPCC 2000) do not include any policies or intervention.
Particularly, there is no business-as-usual scenario.
Instead, these new scenarios follow one of four
specific story lines. These being (IPCC 2000, 4-5):
The A1 storyline and scenario family describes a future
world of very rapid economic growth, global population
that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter,
and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient
technologies. [...]
The A2 storyline and scenario family describes a very
heterogeneous world. The underlying theme is selfreliance
and preservation of local identities. Fertility
patterns across regions converge very slowly [...].
The B1 storyline and scenario family describes a convergent
world [...], as in the A1 storyline, but with rapid
changes in economic structures towards a service and
information economy, with reduction in material intensity,
and the introduction of clean and resourceefficient
technologies. [...]
The B2 storyline and scenario family describes a world
in which the emphasis is on local solutions to economic,
social and environmental sustainability.
The driving forces are: population growth, economic
development, technology, energy, and agriculture
(land-use). All in all, 40 scenarios were constructed,
based on an intense study of scientific scenario literature
and using six different modeling approaches
(IPCC 2000, 335-351). Figure 2 shows the four scenario
families. Part of the construction was an open
process which lasted from June 1998 to January 1999
(IPCC 2000, 353-377); during that time the storylines
and, for each storyline, a so-called marker scenario
were presented on the web and open to discussion.

Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 69
Figure 1. On the top: Increases in global mean temperature from 1850 to 2100. This figure shows the increases in global
mean temperature from 1850 to 1990 due to observed increases in greenhouse gases, and predictions of the rise between
1990 and 2100 resulting from different scenarios (IPCC 1990, fig. 9, xxiii). At the bottom: Revised no-policy scenarios of
1992, the dots indicating the 1990-"Business as usual" Scenario A (Leggett, Pepper & Swart 1992, 81, fig. A3.1). Copyrights
by IPCC. Reprinted with permission.
Contrary to 1990, the IPCC-2000 scenarios are not
explicit regarding global temperature changes. They
further extend the range for emissions of greenhouse
gases derived in the 1990/1992 scenarios to higher
emissions (but not towards lower emissions). The
IPCC-2000 scenarios are, however, interpreted in the
Climate-Change 2001 Synthesis Report (IPCC 2001).
In particular, they are used to answer Questions 3 and
9 which explicitly refer to temperature change and its
consequences:
Question 3: "What is known about the regional and
global climatic, environmental, and socio-economic
consequences in the next 25, 50, and 100 years associated
with a range of greenhouse gas emissions arising
from scenarios used in the TAR (projections which involve
no climate policy intervention)? [...]" (IPCC 2001,
8).
Question 9: "What are the most robust findings and
key uncertainties regarding attribution of climate
change and regarding model projections of:
• Future emission of greenhouse gases and aerosols?
• Future concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols
?
• Future changes in regional and global climate? [...]
(IPCC 2001, 30)".

70
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Figure 2. On the top: The four families of IPCC-2000 emission scenarios. Source: IPCC (2000, fig. 4-1); SRES: Special Report
on Emissions Scenarios. At the bottom: CO2 emissions according to the four families of IPCC-2000 emission scenarios
Source: IPCC (2000, fig. 6-8). IS92: IPCC 1992. A1B, A1C, A1FI, AT: variants of the storyline A1 scenario family.
Copyrights by IPCC. Reprinted with permission.
THE ART OF SCENARIO BUILDING - THE
DEFINITION OF TYPES OF VARIABLES
The scenario method is well established in economic
and political planning (cf. Cooke 1991; Godet 1987;
Götze 1993; Ringland 1998; Schnaars 1987; Scholz &
Tietje 2001; Wilkinson 2002). Most scenario building
methods are based on the analysis of impact variables
such as population growth (in global scenarios) or the
development of a specific market (in a business scenario).
Sometimes these variables are called "factors,"
"parameters" or "forces." In the following, I will
discuss distinctions between scenario variables.
First, we can simply distinguish between relevant and
irrelevant variables. A variable is relevant in regard to
a specific purpose and a specific system. In the case
of business scenarios, we have to take into account
other kinds of systems than in the case of global
scenarios. In the first case the system might be an
enterprise and its market, in the second case it is the
Earth. Furthermore, if we want to construct scenarios
for global freight transportation, different variables
become relevant to those needed in global warming
scenarios. Finally, the purpose of constructing nonintervention
scenarios as defined in the 1994 evaluation
of 1992-IPCC scenarios (Alcamo et al. 1995, 259,
BOX 2) sets aside political parameters. Such parameters⎯for
instance global alliances⎯ would have been
relevant for alternative purposes like "to evaluate the
environmental/climatic consequences of intervention
to reduce greenhouse gas" (loc. cit.).
Second, we can distinguish between active and passive
variables. Active variables have a strong impact on
the other variables. Passive variables are strongly
influenced by other variables. To be clear, the distinction
of active and passive variables is relative to a set
of variables. A particular variable might be active in
one set of variables and passive in another. Very

active variables are sometimes called "driving forces."
There are established measures for activity and passivity
of variables (starting with Duperrin & Godet
1973).
Third, we can distinguish between steering variables
and context variables. Steering variables are active
variables that can be changed by political or managerial
decision-making. Steering variables can be policies
and specific interventions such as taxes, prohibition
or investments. Context variables are variables that
cannot be used to exert an impact on other variables.
World population growth and global economic development
are⎯at this point in time⎯context variables
in almost every scenario. Context variables are
sometimes called "external variables" or "trends." In
the IPCC-1990 scenarios, policies defined steering
variables. The 2000-scenarios lack any steering variables.
Therefore, they cannot answer the second kind
of questions that scenarios as defined by Kahn
should answer, namely: What alternatives exist, for
each actor, at each step, for preventing, diverting, or
facilitating the process?
Fourth, we can distinguish between independent variables
and dependent variables. Independent variables
are active variables for which we have varying input
data. Dependant variables are the target output variables
in our analyses using scenarios. In the IPCC-
1990/1992 scenarios, global warming was the main
dependent variable. After 1992, IPCC scenario building
clearly focused on emissions. In general, when
defining dependant variables, we seem to put too
much weight on measurable variables such as GDP
or emissions; seemingly non-measurable variables
such as social values or political movements occur⎯if
at all⎯only as independent variables (Mieg
1998). This phenomenon influences modeling in that
we are less aware of effects on seemingly nonmeasurable
variables (e.g. influences on social values)
than on measurable variables.
COGNITIVE SCENARIO CONSTRUCTION - "JOINTS"
Scenarios have a hypothetical form "if X then Y" and
describe steps between "hypothetical situations" X, Y,
and Z. From the point of view of cognitive psychology,
constructing scenarios is an instance of mental
simulation. This is true for someone who constructs
the scenarios as well as particularly for someone who
has to understand—to reconstruct—them. We can
divide the process of scenario construction into four
steps (cf, Jungermann & Thüring 1987, 1988; Mieg
2001; see Figure 3).
The first step consists of the activation of knowledge
about the problem. However, the problem knowledge
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 71
has to be arranged. This leads to the second step: the
construction of a mental model (Johnson-Laird 1983).
A mental model is a partial representation of the
world. Among facts and other data, it contains causal
knowledge of the type: "If parameter p changes then
parameter q will change, too." A mental model for
assessing climate change would include a model of
the climate system, physical laws and knowledge
about relevant parameters, for instance the current
amount of CO2-emissions.
The third step consists of mental simulation, that is
using—"running"—the mental model to cognitively
simulate specific problem constellations, for instance,
to consider future economic development and climate
change. This leads to specific inferences, for
instance, about what are the driving forces and the
key parameters. In the last step we have to select
relevant inferences in order to arrive at useful scenarios.
The selection of inferences might shed new light
on the mental model and lead to the insight that more
knowledge is needed.
The four steps serve two fundamental cognitive tasks;
problem representation and delimiting relevance (cf.
Mieg 1993; 2001). The problem representation has to be
complete or—at least—representative in order to be
valid. The overall task is to bring a complex world
into the limited space of a mind. Using scenarios, we
would often like to know about their validity. However,
we lack evidence for future phenomena. Therefore,
the validity of a family of scenarios can only be
tested in regard to its present problem representation
(Ulbrich & Mieg 2002). Delimiting relevance means to
view the problem representation from the perspective
of a specific purpose or problem to be resolved. The
purpose might be, for instance, to find scenarios that
can easily be communicated to the public, or to arrive
at scenarios that direct future research. Different
purposes result in different relevance decisions.
A huge difference in purpose lies between exploratory
and anticipatory scenarios (cf. Ducot & Lubben
1980). Anticipatory scenarios define relevant effects
and situations that might arise. Scenario building with
anticipatory scenarios starts with the scenarios and
then tries to track them back to the present situation.
Scenario building with exploratory scenarios works the
other way round. It starts with an analysis of the
present situation and tries to derive different scenarios
for future development. From the point of view
of cognitive psychology, scenario building with exploratory
scenarios is a forward-problem solving
process (cf. Johnson-Laird, 1999), focusing on the
correct representation of the problem and its present
context. In contrast, scenario building with anticipatory
scenarios is a backward-problem solving process

72
focusing on defining the relevant options.
Cognitive problem representation and delimiting
relevance are both subject to central cognitive constraints.
Mental simulation involves conscious analytical
thinking and therefore short-term memory processes.
Due to the very limited capacity of the shortterm
memory (storing 7± 2 items, cf. Miller 1956),
cognitive simulation can use only a limited number of
contents and variables. This is the simple reason why
neither in 1990/1992 nor in 2000 more than 7 IPCC-
activation of
problem knowledge
[knowledge about
the climate system]
constitution of
the mental model
[climate model]
simulation of
the mental model
[considering the
influences of
emissions, clouds,
oceans etc.]
selection of
inferences
[defining the key
parameters, e.g.
emissions]
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Definition of domain and task
[for example: assessing climate change]
problem knowledge
mental model
inferences
scenario
scenarios or scenario families were constructed. To
overcome the limitation of short-term memory, we
can either select relevant variables or use items with
condensed contents (so-called cognitive "chunks").
Such condensed items are abstract terms or formulas,
for instance for physical laws. Science is built on such
abstractions as "radiative forcing" and "climate."
These abstractions, however, are generally not in use
outside science.
problem
representation
[dynamics of the
climate]
incl. causal
knowledge
[e.g. physical
laws]
relevance
decisions
[What drives
the climate
system?]
Figure 3. Mental scenario construction from a psychological point of view (after Jungermann & Thüring 1987, 1988, fig. 1;
the examples and the shaded spaces are added). Source: Fig. 6.3 from Mieg (2001). Copyright 2001 by Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates. Reprinted with permission.
The 1990 scenarios were communicated as policy
scenarios that focus on politically relevant decision
points such as carbon monoxide controls and the
implementation of the Montreal Protocol that regulates
CFC emissions (as in Tab. 1). Kahneman and
Tversky called these decision points "joints" and
claimed that mental simulation in general is based on
joints (1982, 207). Joints are dramatic events "that are
low in redundancy but high in causal significance"
(loc. cit.), a causally significant event being one "whose
occurrence alters the values that are considered normal
for other events in the chain that eventually leads
to the target of the scenario" (loc. cit.). Kahneman
and Tversky explained redundancy only for the negative
case (as in joints): "A non-redundant event represents
a local minimum in the predictability of the sequence,
a point at which significant alternatives might arise"
(loc. cit.). In scenario construction, variables containing
joints represent very "active" singular events like
political interventions, industrial alliances or wars.
According to Kahneman and Tversky, the use of
joints results in a "tendency to underestimate the
likelihood of events that are produced by slow and
incremental change" (loc. cit.). The problems the
IPCC-1990 scenarios were facing were complementary:
they had to plausibly explain the incremental
change of climate by linking it to dramatic joints,
especially in the field of national and international
politics. As said, the IPCC-2000 scenarios refrained
from using steering variables; they were free of joints.
Instead, they show how different futures evolve on
the basis of varying assumptions regarding population

growth, economic development, technological
change, etc.
POLITICS & SCENARIOS: INCREASING OR REDUCING
POLICY OPTIONS
Scenarios containing joints perfectly match the needs
of decision making, cognitively and politically. Generally,
decision-making means rendering uncertainty
into risk (cf. Schön 1967; Mieg 1994). We do not
know the future, and we are often even uncertain
about our present: when deciding what to do, we
change this uncertainty into the risk that our decision
might turn out to be wrong resulting in heavy losses.
Decision-making is the content of politics. According
to Luhmann (1988), politics is a functional system
within society which regulates power; policies are
decisions about future decision-making (Luhmann
1971). The power of political decision-making is
based on the fact that modern societies try to communicate
a wide spectrum of events—from taxation
to traffic accidents—as consequences of decisions
(Luhmann 1993). Political decision-making means
rendering social uncertainty into the risk of what the
future society might be. It follows: as scenarios depict
alternative futures and joints in scenarios indicate
when and how to decide for which future, scenarios
containing joints are suitable means of communicating
science to politics.
Science is a functional social system different to that
of politics (Luhmann 1988). The logic of science is to
render uncertainties of knowledge into relative certainties
or truth. From a scientific point of view, it is
difficult to integrate the uncertainties involved in
political decision-making into modeling reality. Even
if we know the effects of accelerated control policies
on the climate, as in the case of the Montreal protocol
and the prohibition of ozone-depleting substances,
we do not really know the social and political
circumstances that can bring about these policies.
The IPCC-2000 scenarios resolved this problem
scientifically, by studying aggregated effects of social
and economic development such as population
growth and technological changes.
There is a constant but not always consonant interaction
between the system of science and the system of
politics. Communications from one side can have or
lack resonance on the other side (Luhmann 1988).
Resonance does not only depend on a common language
but also on the options open to management
on both sides. Resonance involves acceptance of the
logic of success of the other system. Thus, the standard
successful collaboration between science and
politics tries to increase options for both parties. Sci-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 73
ence provides justifications for policies that help
communicate and justify political decisions to the
public—often leading to requests from the political
side for scientific evaluation of feasible options (cf.
Alcamo, Kreileman & Leemans 1998). Vice versa,
politics provide budgets and public awareness for
particular research programs. However, irritations
arise when interaction results in reducing the particular
options, for instance, when politics tries to restrict
research or define research programs by laws or
budgeting. Or, when scientists try to prescribe political
options and intervene in political decision-making.
A person or a functional social system faced with
losing options will show reactance (Brehm, 1966),
trying to defend its freedom to decide by refusing all
advice that restricts options. From this point of view,
scientifically based scenarios for political action
("joints") have a potential for threatening politicians.
Moreover, as Kahneman and Tversky had already
noted (1982, 207), using scenarios with joints disregards
slow, incremental processes. A variable representing
an incremental process would be a context
variable that is rather low in activity and passivity.
These variables might even not be regarded as relevant,
unless we know about this particular incremental
process. Examples for social incremental
processes would be the radicalization of parts of the
society because of unemployment or lack of active
integration policies; or the changes in global freight
transportation chains due to technological and economic
development. Climate change as such is an
incremental process that was brought to public
awareness by science.
Politics does not necessarily react to uncertainty but
rather to insecurity. We can say that insecurity is
perceived uncertainty (Mieg 2001), for instance, insecurity
in job relations or insecurity caused by crime in
the streets. If there is scientific evidence for a potential
catastrophe, this can strongly support policies to
avert the particular catastrophe. The IPCC-1990
scenarios still had a clear message contained in the
business-as-usual scenario: if we do not act now,
global warming will exceed more than 4 degree Celsius
by 2100. The IPCC-2000 report skipped the
business-as-usual scenario and reduced the message
to estimates of CO2 emissions that were interpreted
for politics in the 2001 synthesis report (cf. IPCC
2001).
The comparison of the first IPCC scenarios in 1990
with the last ones in 2000 shows the dilemma between
the need for scenarios that would provide
options for decision making, on the one hand, and
the need for an exact and comprehensive understanding
of the social and natural factors that lead to cli-

74
mate change, on the other. The IPCC-2000 scenarios
may seem a retreat of science back to its home business,
coming back to validated and more or less exact
figures. The status of the scenarios changed from
options-in-contexts into some kind of soft predictions. The
1990-"Business as usual" scenario has developed into
the variety of the IPCC-2000 non-intervention emissions
scenarios, gaining in scientific evidence but
loosing, as scenarios, in political relevance. The 2000emissions
scenarios have reduced the general hypothetical
form of scenarios ("if X then Y") to projections
on the basis of different underlying assumptions
about the driving factors. They have become pure
context scenarios.
The transformation of the IPCC scenarios from 1990
to 2000 can also be seen as a re-arrangement of the
two professional spheres of science and international
politics. Usually, in their interaction with politics,
scientists take on the role of experts who provide
politics with information and, sometimes, advice.
Political decision-making is not part of this role; it
would intrude on the professional sphere of politicians
(cf. Mieg 2001). Vice versa, a politician defining
the methodology for scientific research would intrude
on the professional sphere of scientists. Climate
change research has had an enormous impact on the
agendas of international politics. Now, politics has to
translate the scientific concerns about climate change
into policies—thereby re-establishing the conventional
borderlines between science and politics.
It may well be that the Kyoto-process left many scientists
disappointed that it failed to influence or inform
politics to a great extent. However, even if the
Kyoto Protocol's direct effect on climate change
might be next to nothing, the process create,d a
whole range of new political instruments such as joint
implementation and the "clean development mechanism"
(Grubb, Vrolijk & Brack 1999). The creation
of these new instruments of international environmental
politics was unforeseen and itself opens new
scenarios for climate change policies.
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Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 75

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 76-86.
Social Learning and Sustainability Science: Which Role Can Stakeholder
Participation Play?
Bernd Siebenhüner ∗
1 Introduction
The concept of sustainable development has imposed
significant challenges for scientific research agendas
and methods world wide and in various areas and
disciplines. When the idea of sustainable development
was brought to attention to a larger international
audience by the UN-World Commission on Environment
and Development in 1987, the main focus
was directed onto the underlying practical social,
ecological, and economic problems and their solutions.
At that time, only very few people oversaw the
enormous implications the concept buried for the
whole endeavour of scientific research as such.
Today, there is broad acknowledgement of the fact
that sustainability requires a rather radical reorientation
of research activities and research policies to
achieve the objectives of poverty alleviation, ecosystem
stabilization, and ensuring a high quality of life at
the same time. In this respect, science is expected to
support and to become involved in processes of
social learning in order to comply with these new
demands. In response to these challenges, the notion
of “sustainability science” emerged from discussions
among concerned scientists from around the world.
They picked up recommendations and suggestions by
the World’s Scientific Academies (2000), the
UNESCO (1999), the US National Research Council
(Board 1999), the German Advisory Board on Global
Change (WBGU 1996), and others calling for a reorientation
of the existing and new research communities.
Sustainability science addresses a particular set of
multi-dimensional problems that put in question
conventional forms of scientific knowledge production
and call for reversed practices in research and
practical implementation of research results. In most
cases, these problems are characterised by globally
interlinked, complex, synergetic, cumulative, highly
dynamic and often non-linear causal chains and significant
time lags between causes and effects in the
∗ Carl-von-Ossietzky-University of Oldenburg, Germany. Contact:
bernd.siebenhuener@uni-oldenburg.de
interplay between social and natural systems. Since
most of the problems in the field of sustainability are
closely interlinked, scientists and non-scientists need
to understand the fundamental interdependence of
social and ecological processes in order to develop
practically relevant solutions. Moreover, human societies
developed into multi-faceted highly fragmented
and diverse entities with a broad array of differing
interests, views, knowledge structures, perspectives
norms, and values (Becker & Jahn 1999). Therefore,
scientific research can hardly suffice in conducting
laboratory experiments or theoretical reasoning but is
increasingly required to integrate views and the
knowledge from various social actors, in particular to
utilise their individual capacities to find practical
solutions: “In a world put at risk by the unintended
consequences of scientific progress, participatory
procedures involving scientists, stakeholders, advocates,
active citizens, and users of knowledge are
critically needed” (Kates et al. 2001, p. 641).
In this paper, I will discuss the question whether
participatory processes as part of scientific knowledge
production could help to foster social learning within
science and society at large towards the objectives of
sustainability. The argumentation will build on past
experience with participatory procedures in the production
of knowledge. The paper will give an account
of these experiences and will analyse facilitators and
hurdles in these procedures in the light of criteria
derived from the discussions around sustainability
science. It is the objective of the paper to identify
possible pathways and stumbling blocks to successful
social learning in participatory approaches to sustainability
science.
The paper is structured as follows. In the subsequent
section 2, I will refer to the concept of sustainability
science and its call for participatory procedures in
scientific research processes as a means for social
learning towards sustainable development. The section
also makes an effort to develop key criteria for
the analysis of existing examples of participatory
procedures in the production of knowledge. Section 3
will analyse prominent examples for stakeholder
participation in sustainability-related research endeavours
on the basis of the developed sets of criteria.
In Section 4, I intend to draw some conclusions
from these experiences by identifying key success
factors for participatory approaches in sustainability

science as opposed to hampering factors in relation
to their support of social learning processes.
2 The Rationale for Stakeholder
Participation
In the emerging field of sustainability science being
constituted around the issue of sustainable development,
stakeholder participation and the integration of
their diverse forms of knowledge and expertise is a
predominant claim (Funtowicz and O’Connor 1999,
Gallopín 2001, O’Riordan 2000). The concept has
been developed by a number of scientists from various
disciplines who conceptualised sustainability
science as a “new field … that seeks to understand
the fundamental character of interactions between
nature and society” (Kates et al. 2001, p. 641). In
their vision, this field should link learning with the
involvement of different social actors: “Combining
different ways of knowing and learning will permit
different social actors to work in concert, even with
much uncertainty and limited information” (ibd.).
Therefore, the authors call for the integration of the
private sector and the broader public as well as diverse
scientific disciplines into the process of generating
knowledge (Clark 2002). In particular, participatory
procedures are seen as a means to foster social
learning which should involve oftentimes overlapping
actor groups as scientists, stakeholders as well as
advocates, active citizens and the ultimate users of
knowledge (Kates et al. 2001, p. 641). 1
The chief motivation to broaden the scientific community
and to include other forms of knowledge in
this debate is based firstly on the insight in the multiscale
structure of many environmental and social
problems where actors at the local, the regional, the
national and the global level interact and influence the
causation and solution of the problems at hand. Secondly,
it is the character of multiple, interactive and
often cumulative environmental stresses that can only
be addressed successfully on a broad knowledge basis
that also includes traditional and indigenous knowledge,
e.g. to assess the vulnerability of societies and
the impacts and mitigation strategies of environmental
stresses. These two motivations refer largely
1 A similar listing of the social actors to be integrated in the processes
of sustainability science is given by the German Advisory
Board on Global Change: “Integrative effects can be achieved
through greater participation on the part of those causing, affected
by and combating environmental problems in the environmental
research process. Potential partners are municipalities
(e.g. climate protection alliances), interest groups, industry
(e.g. the energy industry, or the insurance and reinsurance sector)
and groups active in environmental politics” (WBGU
1996, p. 129).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 77
to collective learning within the scientific community
whereas the following will broach the topic of social
learning beyond the traditional scientific communities.
Thirdly, stakeholder involvement is required
under the umbrella of sustainability science to foster
commitment on the side of various social actor
groups to further their knowledge and to combat the
problem sets of sustainability. With particular reference
to the situation in developing countries the
authors of this concept argue for the allowance of
individuals and groups that so far have been denied
access to the scientific communities of the Western
hemisphere. Their participation will ensure most
likely that the knowledge generated in these processes
bears some relevance for them and thereby is more
salient to them than conventional scientific knowledge
produced in the ivory towers of the industrialised
countries. In addition, a broad participation of
societal stakeholders could enhance legitimacy of
scientific assessments and research projects to the
political world and to the respective stakeholders
(Clark et al. 2003, ICSU 2002). Participation is also
seen as a means of education and empowerment of
local institutions, groups and individuals given their
voice in the constitution of knowledge within sustainability
science (Jaeger 2002). In this sense, participation
should also facilitate learning on the side of these
actor groups.
The sustainability-science approach calls for the inclusion
of participatory elements in the knowledge
production for a number of reasons. But what are the
criteria for successful participation of stakeholders in
the generation of sustainability-related knowledge?
Who should be involved and why? Is any form of
participation equally helpful or is one more helpful
than another and which mistakes can be made in
designing these participatory approaches? When and
how does it lead to social learning processes? With
regard to these questions, one can single out a set of
criteria for the analysis of practical examples for public
participation in knowledge production which will
be undertaken in the subsequent section.
• Participation: In all participatory procedures
the crucial question is: Who participates? In
the sustainability-science discourse the claim
has been brought to the fore that it should
be “scientists, stakeholders, advocates, active
citizens, and users of knowledge”
(Kates et al. 2001, p. 641) who have to be
involved. Others put a particular emphasis
on the users of knowledge which could be a
specific and highly exclusive group of individuals
(Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). The
selection of participants could be seen as a

78
constitutional decision for the legitimacy,
the course and the topics of each participatory
procedure. It determines the perceived
legitimacy, the substantive outcomes and the
relevance of the outcomes for the users of
the knowledge and the resulting spread-out
effects. Exclusion of certain groups or having
a bias of certain interest groups among
the participants can put in question the entire
participatory procedure (Fischer 2000).
• Procedures: To date, a significant number of
different methods for participatory procedures
is available ranging from very scarcely
structured methods like brainstorming or
open space to more formalised processes
such as planning cells or citizen juries. According
to Mayer (1997), seven different
functions could be distinguished in participatory
approaches. These include information,
consultation, anticipation of the future,
mediation, co-ordination of different forms
and fields of knowledge, co-production of
problem solutions and social learning. The
choice of the participatory methods bears
high relevance for the success of the procedure
to fulfil one or numerous of these
functions. Thereby, the procedures are key
to the substantive quality of the participation
method, the relevance for the users,
and the legitimacy of the process.
• Processes of Learning: Given the high significance
of learning on the side of all social actors
involved for the solution of immediate
and long-term problems of sustainability, it
will be of interest to which extent participants
and non-participants in the participatory
procedures exhibited processes of
learning. Drawing on literature from social
psychology and political science, learning
can be defined as a process of long-lasting
change in the behaviour or the general ability
of an individual or a collective actor to
behave in a certain way that is founded on
changes in knowledge. 2 Thereby, knowledge
is understood in a broad sense and could
encompass cognitive, normative as well as
affective elements. However, the learning
can only be observed through the results of
2 By referring to changes, most of these definitions oppose the idea
of a simple increase in knowledge because there always have
to be losses of knowledge at the same time that allow for the
acceptance and memorization of new knowledge. Hence,
learning is more a change than a steady growth of the knowledge
of the learning system.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
this new knowledge in actual changes in the
behaviour. 3 With regard to the specific
problems of sustainability, a discussion on
social learning and sustainability emerged,
but is has not yet materialised in a coherent
set of elements of criteria that allow for empirical
analyses. 4 In the case of participatory
procedures, the specific focus of the following
analysis will be on (i) mutual learning
processes among the different social actors
involved, on (ii) awareness raising and moral
development towards a higher estimation of
sustainability-related concerns and on (iii)
modified patterns of behaviour on the side
of the individuals and actor groups involved.
• Products: Given that sustainability science
implies an immediate call for practical solutions
to the problems of sustainability, the
question has to be raised to which extent the
participatory procedure at hand produced
practically sizeable outcomes and how far
they lead to further social learning processes?
Was it merely an exchange of knowledge
between different stakeholders or did
they produce new knowledge or concrete
products that are relevant for other societal
groups and actors? Which practical steps
had to be taken in the follow-up?
3 Empirical Cases
In a number of sustainability-related research projects,
participatory procedures have been employed
for various reasons. This section will discuss a number
of them with the particular perspective on criteria
deduced from the discussion on sustainability science.
All of them are directly or indirectly linked to the
concept of sustainable development and could be
seen in the framework of sustainability science. They
have been selected to provide an overview of different
approaches and methods. An overview of all
projects is given in table 1.
A) THE ULYSSES PROJECT
The Project on Urban Lifestyles, Sustainability and
3 Learning theories in social psychology focus on the individual
level and are reviewed by Swenson (1980) and Schunk (1996).
Political science scholars have discussed learning mostly on
the level of collective actors such as national governments, social
actor groups or local communities. For an overview see
Bennett and Howlett (1992), Etheredge (1981), Rose (1994)
and Sabatier (1987).
4 For contributions to this discussion see Board (1999), Parson and
Clark (1995), Siebenhüner (2003), The Social Learning Group
(2001) and Webler et al. (1995).

Integrated Environmental Assessment (ULYSSES)
aimed at public participation in integrated assessment
efforts in 7 different European metropolitan areas. 5 It
has been the objective of the project to explore citizens’
views on climate change in local communities
with the help of computer models on climatic change.
Participation: In the ULYSSES focus groups, the target
group were lay citizens of selected communities who
had been carefully chosen according to the criteria
age, gender, income, educational level and attitudes
towards environmental protection. The participants
have been chosen randomly; contact and a first short
interview has been conducted by telephone to inquire
about their awareness of environmental problems.
Procedures: The project team chose a focus-group
method as a participatory procedure. It is a moderated
group discussion with assigned tasks for each
participant of the small group (6-15 individuals).
Therefore, it is not a completely open process but
one where some guidance is given as far as the
framework conditions, the topic, the means, and
some of the process steps have been defined in advance.
The discussions have been video-taped and
transcribed in parts to allow for a thorough analysis
of the expressed views and of the interactive processes
themselves. Later on, this data has been analysed
with an idea-type methodology which clusters
certain lines of argumentation into different ideal
types. In the three different phases, participants were
asked to express their views and feelings on climatic
change and energy use, to understand the problem in
its regional implication with the help of computer
models and to formulate a statement on their views
and policy options. The method largely aimed at
informing and consulting the participants, at the
anticipation of the future, at co-production of knowledge
and on their learning.
Processes of Learning: The composition of participants
with a focus on lay citizens rather than on different
stakeholders or experts reduced the possibility of
mutual learning from different fields of expertise and
knowledge. Most notably, learning from the scientists
and the models employed was the predominant mode
of learning on the side of the citizens. In terms of
moral development, the ULYSSES project team
found that “ordinary people from across Europe
usually framed climate impacts in ethical rather than
economic terms” (Kasemir et al. 2000, p. 40). This
indicates that ethical arguments at least played as
5 The project and its results have been described and discussed by
Kasemir et al. (1999, 2000a, 2000b and 2003) and Sluijs (2002).
Further information is available on the website
http://www.zit.tu-darmstadt.de/ulysses/docmain.htm.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 79
significant role in the participatory processes. However,
on the basis of the available data, it is difficult to
judge to which extent changes in the underlying values
of the participants took place. Due to a preference
given to written questionnaires (Dürrenberger et
al. 1997), there were no in-depth interviews conducted
with the participants during or after the focus
group sessions which might give better accounts of
any moral developments. Since the project design did
not include any follow-up measures or evaluations of
possible changes in the patterns of behaviour of the
participants or in related communities, no data is
available on this matter. Given the focus on the
group discussions and the exploration of existing
views on climate change as opposed to practical outcomes
or changes in concrete social practices, little
long-lasting impacts of the participatory processes
could be expected.
Products: In the focus group events, the groups produced
collages on their perceptions of the climate
problem and wrote reports on their views and policy
options to be taken. The initial goal of creating a
feedback into integrated assessment modelling approaches
has proved difficult to fulfil within the
framework of this project.
B) THE COOL PROJECT
The Dutch COOL Project (Climate OptiOns for the
Long term) concentrated on the identification of
possible future strategies in response to climate
change with a particular focus on the long term perspective
of about 50 years. 6 It included a national, a
European and a global dialogue involving stakeholders
from different social groups and economic
sectors. The following analysis focuses on the Dutch
national dialogue which targeted at developing insights
and recommendations for Dutch long term
climate policy and analysed various technological
options with regard to their possible contribution to a
reduction of CO2-emissions of about 80% until 2050.
Participation: The national dialogue involved stakeholders
in the areas of housing, industry and energy,
agriculture and transport. These included experts
from industry, politics, sectorial interest groups, environmental
NGOs and science.
Procedures: The dialogues were organized in three
different phases. The first was dedicated to problem
definition and the creation of the dialogue itself. The
second phase focused on the assessment and utilisa-
6 For further information on the project and its results see Berk et
al. (1999), Hisschemöller (2001), Hisschemöller and Tol (2002)
and Kerkhof et al. (2003). The project website is:
http://www.wau.nl/cool.

80
tion of available knowledge by the participants
whereas the third phase was centred around synthesising
and evaluating the dialogues and their results.
During the assessment phase, an interactive backcasting
method was employed that allowed to study the
specific technological options in subgroups of 4 to 6
individuals with the support of one facilitator and one
scientific expert. In this procedure a picture of the
future is to been drawn before the necessary decisions
and developments that led to this outcome
could be identified. In a second step the different
technological options that were in the focus of the
different backcasting exercises had to be analysed in
their relation to each other. For this purpose, the
COOL team developed a “repertory grid analysis”
which resulted in a ranking of all the different options.
In sum, these methods aimed at informing,
consulting, anticipating future developments, coproduction
of knowledge and mutual learning.
Processes of Learning: Given the heterogeneous composition
of the groups, some mutual learning between
the stakeholder groups had to take place in the participatory
procedures in order to come up with commonly
agreed upon results. The key question remains
how far-reaching they were. To answer this question,
the participatory procedures in the COOL project
were analysed in terms of a learning typology distinguishing
between first and second-order learning.
First-order learning refers to changes in knowledge
within an existing frame of reference which merely
involves the adoption of new facts whereas secondorder
learning includes changes in the evaluation of
facts on the basis of modified value structures. In indepth
interviews, both forms have been found with
the participants in the dialogues. However, most
learning processes remained in the first-order mode,
but in some cases up to 50% of the participants embarked
on processes of learning in the second-order
mode (Kerkhof et al. 2003). The latter could be described
as processes of moral development. Since it
was the objective of the COOL project to identify
and evaluate long-term options to respond to climate
change, there was no explicit objective of reversing
current patterns of behaviours of the participating
parties. It remains to be seen how far the results of
the processes influence political decision making on
the three different levels addressed in the project.
Products: The COOL dialogues provided reports on
the long-term climate policy in the Netherlands, in a
European and in a global context which focus on
long-term risks, long-term response options, and
short-term actions and their linkages. In addition, the
dialogue methods were examined with regard to
factors that enhance their effectiveness, to the best
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
way to employ scientific models and how to improve
mutual understanding and collective knowledge production.
C) THE VISIONS PROJECT
Similar to the ULYSSES project, the VISIONS Project
has also been designed as an integrated assessment
project on a European scale. 1 The main objective
of VISIONS was to create a set of alternative
scenarios for future sustainable development paths
ranging between a time horizon of 2020 to 2050.
They pertain to Europe as a whole and to three selected
regions. The project aimed to provide a point
of reference and practical tools for key-decision makers
and stakeholders. In addition, scenarios were
developed and analysed with the help of software
tools, in combination with participatory methods for
consensus building.
Participation: In the European-Vision workshop, a
balanced composition of the groups was sought after.
Therefore, the group totalled 25 participants and
included representatives from policy making, business,
and NGOs as well as experts in the fields of
economics, environment and social-cultural studies.
In addition, so-called "free thinkers" were invited to
bring in their creative ideas or their non-partisan
views. The approach largely focused on experts less
so on lay people.
Procedures: The scenario development approach taken
in the VISIONS project was adopted from a standard
scenario technique developed by Royal Dutch Shell
and focused on story lines which built on expert
knowledge from the different disciplines and societal
actor groups represented in the process. Apart from
the mutual exchange of knowledge, a so-called 'freeformat'
encouraged participants to think and act
creatively. In the turn of the scenario development,
participants were asked to discuss issues like equity,
employment, consumption, and environmental degradation
across different economic sectors and with
regard to specific actors such as governmental bodies,
NGOs, private companies and scientists. The resulting
ideas were clustered and prioritised in order to
deduce more concrete storylines. Additional support
through computer simulation models allowed to
visualise and to analyse the resulting scenarios.
Processes of Learning: The specific method selected for
the scenario development builds on mutual learning
among the different social actors involved. Mutual
learning was particularly sought after in the exchange
between experts and creative thinkers to open up new
ways of thinking about future events and to couple
them with existing scientific or technical expertise

(Rotmans et al. 2001). Awareness raising for the
problems of sustainable development was achieved
through the explicit inclusion of sustainability-related
topics in the design of the scenario workshops.
Thereby, participants had to address issues such as
climate change, urban development or changes in the
demographic structure. However, there have been
little efforts to further explore changes in the beliefs
and patterns of thinking which might indicate forms
of moral development on the side of the participants.
Similarly, there has been no attempt to study or
monitor modified patterns of behaviour in the aftermath
of the scenario workshops.
Products: The main outcome of the VISIONS project
are the scenarios for the three specific regions and the
whole of Europe. They are published on the website
and in written form. In addition, a CD-Rom was
produced which allows to visualise and understand
the different scenarios developed in the process. An
ongoing societal process or other actual developments
have not been among the core objectives of
the project.
D) COOPERATIVE DISCOURSES
The cooperative-discourse methodology is a citizen
panel that includes stakeholder groups and scientific
expertise into the development and assessment of
policy options in certain areas of decision making. 7
The procedure aims at integrating scientific and expert
knowledge and the preferences and views of lay
citizens. It has been applied in a decision-making
process on the location of a municipal waste disposal
facility in Switzerland.
Participation: Apart from the organisers and the sponsors,
the group of 25 participants comprised of citizens
from the local communities, stakeholders, in
particular political actors with a stake in the problem,
and experts in the scientific, technical or social dimensions
of the problem at hand. However, the role
of experts and stakeholders was restricted to witnessing
the citizen panels. The participating citizens were
chosen randomly from the population of the respective
communities.
Procedures: The process consisted of three distinct
steps. In a first step, participants were invited to
develop “value trees” which give a structured insight
in their preferences concerning the problem at stake.
The second step centred around a group Delphi
conducted by the scientists involved. This procedure
aimed at developing indicators that allow to evaluate
7
The cooperative-discourse method is described by Renn et al.
(1993) and Webler et al. (1995).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 81
different policy options how to solve the problem. In
the final step, the citizen panel evaluated the existing
options on the basis of their individual judgements
and the scientific information available to them. In
the end of this planning cell method (Dienel 1992),
they were asked to come up with clear policy recommendations.
Processes of Learning: Webler et al. (1995) analysed one
of their test cases for the method of cooperative
discourse in terms of social learning by themselves.
They distinguish between two components of social
learning, namely cognitive enhancement and moral
development. Mutual learning among the different
actors would fall into the former category because it
refers to cognitive learning about other perspectives,
preferences, fields of expertise and ways of thinking.
In the turn of the participatory procedures, participants
learned a lot on technical and scientific details
of waste disposal and related processes. In addition,
their insights into political decision making processes
improved in most cases. In the terminology of Webler
et al. (1995), moral development comprises of
the change of beliefs and values towards the positions
of others or towards more cooperation. These
changes were examined with the help of interviews,
questionnaires and observations. It was one of their
crucial findings that they observed the growing willingness
to co-operate and to acknowledge the arguments
of others. The researchers, however, could
merely speculate about the long-term results of these
moral developments in terms of concrete changes in
patterns of behaviour.
Products: As yet, the cooperative discourse methodology
has been applied only to a small number of cases.
The actual influence on local policy making processes
has, therefore, been limited. However, significant
learning processes occurred throughout the processes
and allowed for a better understanding of the different
positions (Webler et al. 1995).
E) CONSENSUS CONFERENCES
Consensus conferences have been developed in the
mid 70s in the US for the impact assessment of contested
technologies (Guston 1999). The method has
been refined and applied in numerous cases in Denmark
in the past 20 years. It has been also been applied
to assessments of controversial technologies in
other countries such as Austria, Australia, Switzerland
and the UK. Topics discussed range from biotechnology
in industry and agriculture and genetically
modified food to the human genome and the future
of private transportation (Joss and Durant 1995,
Grundahl 1995). In most cases, it was employed to
assess contested technologies or to deliberate on

82
difficult political decisions.
Participation: Consensus conferences are required to
have a strong participation of citizens who do not
have any specific knowledge of the topic under deliberation.
They form the so-called lay panels consisting
of 10-14 people who have an interest in active participation
and who have various educational and
occupational backgrounds and provide a variety of
socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender
and area of residence. In addition, scientific experts,
politicians and interest groups have been included in
the conferences in different roles. Whereas the experts
consult the lay panel and answer the respective
questions, politicians and interest groups might participate
in the general discussions but they are not
granted any further influence on the process.
Procedures: In most cases, the consensus conference is
organised by a professional project manager who
arranges the meetings, recruits the facilitator and
assists the lay panel in the preparation and publication
of the final document. He is also member of the
steering committee which comprises of 3-5 experts in
the field who select further experts to be part of
expert panel of up to 15 individuals. The procedure
itself starts with the formulation of specific questions
from the citizens and the representatives from interest
groups concerning the topic of the consensus
conference. In a second phase which is moderated by
a professional facilitator, experts are asked to answer
these questions on the basis of their specific knowledge.
This phase might last up to 6 months. The
answers will be analysed and discussed among the lay
people participating in the original conference procedure
of focused discussions which might last from
one to three days and which is open to the public. In
the end the group is required to come up with a consensus
on the contested issues involved in the general
topic. They have to draft a final document which will
be fed into political decision-making processes.
Processes of Learning: All members of the lay panels
have to make themselves familiar with background
materials and with the knowledge and expertise
brought to the table through the experts. Therefore, it
is a crucial requirement of the consensus-conference
procedure that mutual learning takes place in particular
when lay citizens learn from the experts in the
respective fields of expertise. A reversed transfer of
knowledge from the lay people to the experts is not
Participatory procedure
or project
Participation in
each participatory
process
ULYSSES Project Citizens from one
city
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Procedures and
methods used
Focus groups, use of
computer models
institutionalised in the process but might take place
through the publication of the final document in the
aftermath of the conference. Awareness raising and
moral development in the field of sustainability is
usually dependent on the choice of the topic for the
consensus conference. Most of the past conferences
were highly relevant for the objectives of sustainable
development such as biotechnology, ozone abatement
and other technologies relevant for the quality
of human life. However, more knowledge in these
risk-laden areas does not necessarily lead to more
reflective examination and the avoidance of future
risks, as Wynne (1995) emphasises which reference to
the often untouched tacit models and convictions
underneath the verbal elaborations brought to the
table in these processes. As far as behavioural patterns
of the participants are concerned which might
be affected through the processes of the consensus
conferences, it is rather unlikely to expect large-scale
effects in this field given the fact that the final document
is largely focused to affect political decision
making rather than individual behaviours.
Products: The final document of the consensus conference
is oftentimes used in political decision making at
least as an information source about perceptions and
opinions of the public on specific issues. So far, there
have been little incidences where the results from the
conferences have been fed back into science, e.g. in
the attempt to render scientific research more user
friendly and more accessible for the lay public.
Processes of learning
Difficult to judge,
most likely in the
Products
Collages and reports
by participants and

COOL Project Stakeholders in energy
policy
VISIONS Project Experts in different
fields and from different
stakeholder
groups, “free thinkers”
Cooperative discourse Citizens, stakeholders
and experts
Consensus conferences Citizens, technology
experts, representatives
from interest
groups
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 83
Backcasting method
and repertory grid
analysis
Scenario development
(based on
Royal Dutch Shell
methodology), use of
computer simulation
Group discussions,
Delphi method
Group discussions,
open conference
mode
field of climate
change
Mutual learning and
moral developments
observable
Mutual learning as
explicit tool in scenario
method
Cognitive and moral
developments observable
Lay people learn
from experts, no
focus on moral development
scientists
Scientific reports
Scientific reports,
CD-Rom
Policy recommendations
Final document
containing the consensus
statement
4 Discussion
Table 1: Overview of different examples of participatory procedures
sibility of highly unequal knowledge bases. The
COOL project attempted to provide all participants
with equal information which turned out to be impossible
given the different backgrounds and political
In summary, these examples show the growing interest
and ambition of scientists dedicated to the advancement
of sustainable development to engage in
participatory procedures and to involve a larger set of
actors in scientific research projects. However, not all
of the objectives stated above have been met by these
or professional interests. Not all of the participating
citizens could be categorised as actual users of the
knowledge produced, in some cases critics claim that
the project created the final users rather than analysing
them systematically and addressing the identified
needs.
projects. Most of their problems mirror the problems The examples presented above intentionally or unin-
and difficulties of most participatory procedures as tentionally excluded a number of groups. First, in
applied in other fields such as deliberative decision most cases, public authorities have been excluded
making, conflict resolution and technology assess- from the procedure to maintain a focus on the
ment.
knowledge production rather than on decision mak-
As far as participation is concerned, a similar bias could
be found in the examples reported here when compared
to other participatory methods. What we observe
here is the intentional bias towards citizens as
opposed to technological or scientific experts. The
latter either come from academia or from other
stakeholder groups. However, the emphasis on equal
representation of stakeholder interests was not given
preference in the compilation of the groups. In most
cases, citizens were recruited on the basis of demographic
data which does not necessarily ensure a good
representation of a large variety of different political
opinions. The ULYSSES project took exceptional
precaution in this respect through the inclusion of
environmental awareness as selection criteria. Participation
methods usually assume that citizens should
have little or no prior knowledge on the issue under
deliberation, but the selection of individuals on the
basis of demographic data does not rule out the posing.
However, resulting political recommendations
where a key topic in most of the procedures but the
procedures themselves were not focused on decision
making as such. In the interest of a somewhat balanced
process, this seems to be a pragmatic choice.
Second, companies played only minor roles in the
procedures in order to allow lay knowledge to come
to the fore and to neutralise commercial interests.
However, companies are key to the practical implementation
of solutions in the form of market products
and services. Therefore, their exclusion could to
a certain extent explain the limited practical outcomes
of most of these projects. Third, interests from developing
countries were not represented in the participatory
procedures, except for the global dialogue
in the COOL project. Thereby, most processes had a
strong regional or national focus and global concerns
which are key to the issue of sustainable development
have been somewhat neglected.

84
When studying legitimacy issues of the examples at
hand, one will find it hard to determine how far the
overall processes and the projects themselves are
perceived legitimate. Different constituencies will
judge their legitimacy differently in particular since no
sufficient representation mode in a political sense
could be achieved in the composition of the groups.
In addition, legitimacy depends on the actual influence
of the knowledge produced. Legitimacy concerns
range high where actual political decisions or
concrete solutions are influenced by the knowledge
produced. However, outcomes could claim higher
legitimacy than traditional scientific knowledge produced
inside of rather closed research institutions.
More societal groups were allowed to participate and
could represent different forms of knowledge to be
included in the processes. Although political decision
makers do not consider consensus conferences a
legitimate substitute for political decision making
processes, they acknowledge the outcomes of the
consensus conferences as a good indicator for public
opinions which might have an impact on their decision
making.
Procedures varied slightly in all the examples presented
in this paper, even though all employed some form of
group discussion with direct interaction of the participants.
Differences occurred in the assigned tasks,
phases and moderation styles. In terms of the different
functions identified by Mayer (1997), the procedures
focused on information, consultation, anticipation
of the future, co-ordination of different forms
and fields of knowledge, co-production of problem
solutions and social learning less so on mediation of
conflicts even though this played a role in the consensus
building at the consensus conference. All
procedures relied on the potentials of face-to-face
communication which proved successful to come to a
fruitful exchange of knowledge and to facilitate mutual
learning, at least on a cognitive level. This
strength of these procedures at the same time embodies
its main weakness since face-to-face interaction is
limited to small to medium-sized groups and to a
certain location where all participants have to be
present. Large scale problems with a large number of
individuals from various backgrounds and with numerous
languages can hardly be dealt with in these
procedures.
Processes of learning have purportedly taken place in all
cases. However, not all project teams actually analysed
these processes thoroughly so that no final
answers could be given to the question of which kind
and how far-reaching the learning was. Those project
teams that studied the learning processes found encouraging
evidence of higher level learning involving
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
re-evaluation of personal values and deeper reflections
on individual behaviours and political processes.
To a certain extent, the objectives of participatory
processes as platforms for mutual learning and moral
development towards a somewhat higher recognition
of sustainability related problems has been fulfilled at
least amongst the participants of the procedures.
Nevertheless, the focus of these studies was on mental
changes rather than on actual behavioural changes
which is by far means a much more difficult topic to
investigate. The precise outcomes in the behaviour of
the participants or in the behaviours of the groups
they represent cannot be judged.
In terms of the products of these procedures, most of
them remain quite limited. None of the projects
triggered ongoing social processes on a larger scale.
Most outcomes are targeted to the realm of political
decision making and less so on the involvement of a
growing number of citizens. Therefore, most outcomes
are concepts, scenarios and new insights.
There have been only very few practical outcomes
that directly led to changes in behaviours or environmental
improvements. However, in many cases
changes in cognitions and values are fundamental to
resulting revisions in behaviours and often more
profound than changes in actual behaviours that are
not supported by reversed knowledge and values.
5 What have we learned?
The examples presented here demonstrate that the
call for participatory approaches to sustainability
science has been heard by researchers in the field.
They successfully proved that there could be overall
benefits from the involvement of larger stakeholder
and actor groups into processes of knowledge generation
even though not all of the proclaimed targets
have been met. The application of participatory approaches
to diverse issues such as public understanding
of and future strategies to combat climate change,
technology assessment and waste management shows
the potential of the procedures to be applied also in
other fields.
In all cases the initiative originated in the scientific
community and not from the stakeholder groups.
This might be ascribed to the fact that scientists have
better opportunities to secure funding for these processes
which is vital for their professional careers.
Nonetheless, the results of the projects were also
accepted by other actors such as political decision
makers as valuable and legitimate sources of information.
This fact might also indicate that the overall
value for the stakeholders remained rather limited.

What can be concluded for future attempts to facilitate
social learning processes towards sustainable
development through participatory procedures? In
retrospect, four conclusions appear to be relevant
here. First, the relatively scarce successes in triggering
ongoing learning processes beyond the actual projects
should be a focus of future attention if sustainability
related learning should be fostered in different angles
of society. Therefore, the follow-up process of the
projects deserves more attention by scientists and
funding agencies. It might be worth considering to
extend project funding in the aftermath of participatory
procedures to support practical implementation
of the results or to foster the development of more
practical solutions if the process itself remained on a
more conceptual level.
Second, the link between these participatory processes
and political decision making processes should
be strengthened. Further attention should be given to
the means and the ways how the newly generated
knowledge could be effectively feed into political and
economic decision-making processes.
Third, the link between the participatory processes
and the overall targets of sustainability should be key
to the design of future participatory processes in the
realm of sustainability science. Whereas most of the
projects presented here, build on the research needs
as perceived by the researchers involved, future projects
might focus more attention on identifying the
most urgent issues sustainable development in a
participatory manner in order to better involve the
potential users’ needs.
Forth, more research will be needed to analyse the
social learning processes involved in the processes
themselves and in their aftermath. This research
should also focus on the question of how to keep
learning processes dynamic and how to extend it to
other individuals and actor groups.
Acknowledgement
This paper is part of the ongoing research in the
GELENA research project on social learning and
sustainability hosted by Oldenburg University and the
Institute for Ecological Economy Research, Berlin. It
has profited a lot from personal discussions with
Matthijs Hisschemöller, Bernd Kasemir and Jill Jaeger
whom I thank for sharing their thoughts with me. I
am also grateful for critical comments by Maria Hage.
Financial support from the Federal Ministry for Education
and Research is gratefully acknowledged.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 85
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Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 87-101.
Science-Stakeholder Dialogue and Climate Change. Towards a
Participatory Notion of Communication
Ingmar Jürgens ∗
“Die Deutschen besitzen die Gabe, die Wissenschaften
unzugänglich zu machen.”
“The Germans have the gift, to make science inaccessible.”
1. Introduction
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
“There is at least one philosophical problem all thinking
humans are interested in: to understand the world
we live in […] (Popper 1958)” , and this can be seen
a7s the most fundamental motivation behind science.
Stakeholders
Model
Scenarios
Bio-physical Impacts
Socio-economic Impacts
Risk Analysis
Adaptation Strategies
Policy Recommendations
Existing Policy Framework
Research
Group
Figure-1: Flow of information in the climate impact discourse
This analysis is about how scientists and stakeholders
relate to knowledge and power, their motivations, and
∗ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO), Italy. Contact: Ingmar.Juergens@fao.org
how they relate to one another. Figure 1 shows the
conceptual understanding of research – stakeholder
interactions with regard to environmental (or climate
change) impact assessment and modelling. The arrows
constitute the links that are of major interest for
the flow of information between the scientists and
the stakeholders, which refers to the original research
question: How can the communication of (preliminary
and final) results to stakeholders at different
stages be achieved most effectively. The task was thus
to develop a strategy for effective communication –
but strategic with regard to which effects?
A strategy can be defined as a plan that is formulated
for the intended courses of action in order to maximise
the probability to produce the effects that are
preferred by the respective actor.
We might – in discussing and analysing a strategy for
effective communication in the field of climate
change research – draw the conclusions that we want
to be strategic alone about the goals of the scientists
in communicating their research. This would not
account for the concept of science and the role of
science in society underlying
this study. Social accountability is a dominant motif in
climate impact research that – per definition – is
dealing with what is perceived (constructed) as an
impact on (or problem for) society (Bäckstrand 2001,
Hajer 1995, Hannigan 1995).
Thus, apart from the – legitimate – interests and
goals of scientists, this study aims at an appropriate
consideration and elaboration of the role of science
to contribute to the solution of the problems posed
by CC. This needs an expansion of our understanding
of communication to an interactive and participatory
mechanism. Interactive in that it is not limited to
communicate results but that communication starts
early in the research process and constitutes a dialogue,
a mutual exchange of ideas on a regular basis.
Participatory in a sense of not limiting participation
to the policy-making process [as demanded in the Rio
Declaration (UN 1992a, Principle 10), the Agenda 21
(UN 1992b, p.1), the fifth European Community
programme of policy and action in relation to the
Environment and sustainable development (European
Communities 1993, p.22) i.a., see van den Hove
2001] but to actually start at the research level, where
the knowledge-, information- and/or data-basis for

88 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
decision-making is created. “For the stakeholder in
order to formulate respective needs of the assessment,
leads to the following hypothesis: Communication
between scientists and stakeholders in the field
of climate change has to be participatory!
First, the understanding of knowledge, the roles of
scientists and stakeholders and their interests and
motivations will be analysed to explore the importance
of broad, participatory communication.
Then, the analysis of the communication process,
comparing different approaches and experiences with
communication or stakeholder dialogue so far and
integrating it with findings from the interviews (conducted
for this study) and the analysis of the stakeholder-workshop
1 will be used to elaborate on “effective
participatory communication” and to show the
best ways of doing it.
2. The conceptual understanding of
communication between scientists and
stakeholders
2.1. SCIENCE – KNOWLEDGE –
COMMUNICATION
In the analysis of science and its role in environmental
policy-making, the 3 different perspectives on
science as power-based, interest-based and knowledge-based
are put forward as competing concepts
(Bäckstrand 2001, p.67).
This study seeks to understand science and the science-policy
dialogue as being mutually constructed by
and as expressing or reflecting all – power, knowledge
and interests – and their inter-relatedness.
Science is approached from a constructionist standpoint,
sharing notions of science as a process and a
product, as a social institution and as a body of
knowledge (ZIMAN 1984; in: Bäckstrand 2001, p.24).
How are power and knowledge related? In how far is
knowledge conditional to interests? In the following
sections, the context of knowledge will be discussed:
1. Knowledge and its relation to power
2. The motivation and interests behind its generation
and communication and
1 This stakeholder workshop was part of a research project on
climate impact assessment called the ATEAM (Advanced Terrestrial
Ecosystem Analysis and Modelling), funded by the EU
and led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
(PIK)1. ATEAM partners from 13 and sub-contractors from 6
different universities and institutes are responsible for the research
and – as integral part – a stakeholder dialogue.
3. The involved actors and their different roles
and goals
2..1.1. Discourse theory, knowledge and power
Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and sociologist
sees topics as being constructed by discourse.
Discourse “defines and produces the objects of our
knowledge” (Hall 2001, p.72/73)
“The same discourse, characteristic of the way of
thinking or the state of knowledge at any one time
(what Foucault calls the episteme), will appear across a
range of texts, and a forms of conduct, at a number of
institutional sites within society. However, whenever
these discursive events ‘refer to the same object, share
the same style and […] support a strategy […] a common
institutional, administrative or political drift and
pattern’ (Cousins and Hussain, 1984:84-85), then they
are said by Foucault to belong to the same discursive
formation.”
In analysing the relation between knowledge, power
and truth, Foucault expanded the understanding of
knowledge as a form of power to ‘define truth’ to the
application and effectiveness of knowledge as an
expression of the power to have real effects in the
real world, i.e. defining conduct and shaping disciplinary
practice, “distinguish true and false statements”
and give status to “those who are charged with saying
what counts as true” (Foucault 1980, p.131; in Hall
2001, p.77).
Knowledge is defined “as a productive network
which runs through the whole social body” (Foucault
1980, p.119; ibid.). “Without debating that the state,
the law, the sovereign or the dominant class may have
positions of dominance, Foucault shifts our attention
away from the grand, overall strategies of power,
towards the many, localised circuits, tactics, mechanisms
and effects through which power circulates –
what Foucault calls the ‘meticulous rituals’ or the
‘micro-physics’ of power.”
“Discourse is then seen as internally related to the
social practices in which it is produced” (Hajer 1995,
p.44). Where so in the discourse is the role for the
agents or actors? Foucault gives the answer himself:
“The subject can become the bearer of the kind of
knowledge which discourse produces.”
Although Foucault regards the conscious, interestdriven
actors as less influential in discourse formation,
we will turn to these “subjects” as the first building
block in our understanding of science-policycommunication:
scientists and their interests in climate
change research and communication, and how
they fit in the climate change discourse. This is, where
we link the spheres of science and stakeholders, developing
an understanding of stakeholders’ interests
and of stakeholders, how they fit in the climate

Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 89
change discourse and which roles they play. The role of scientists in regime building is played on
at least two grounds, being involved with interna-
2.1.2 Different Roles for Scientists
The firmness of scientific statements has been replaced
by the insight in the conditionality of implied
decisions, the dependence upon methods and the
reliance on its context 2 (Beck 1991, p.140). “Realities”
are differing with “different computers, different
institutes, different contractors” (Beck, ibid.).
Although a specific discourse can be characterised by
homogeneity in the scientific (causal etc.) beliefs and
agreement upon common validation procedures, we
have to be aware of the different roles of different
scientists at different levels and – being within different
discourses. “[…] Conservation and environmental
organisations typically have their own scientific advi-
Knowledge
Generation
tional institutions (e.g. the secretariats to the conventions,
the EC) and “national bureaucracies”(Bäckstrand
2001, p70).
These different or multiple roles of scientists are
influenced by and in turn generating different interests
and motivations.
2.1.3. Interests and Motivations
Figure-2: Scientific community and policy-makers and their goals and interests in communication
sory committees and call upon the voluntary support
of university scientists and civil servants who are
scientists” (Yearley 1992; in: Hannigan 1995, p87).
And the international epistemic communities are
constituted by scientists and groups of scientists (e.g.
national or university research institutes) that are
acting and exercising their science within a framework
of varying scale (local, regional, national) and
multiple dimensions (regulatory, legal, cultural).
2 The German original text is: “Die Eindeutigkeit wissenschaftlicher
Aussagen ist der Einsicht in deren Entscheidungsbedingtheit,
Methodenabhängigkeit, Kontextgebundenheit gewichen.“
The motivations behind the research itself and for
considering stakeholder dialogue as integral part of
the research are multiple. These motivations have to
be identified, as they are decisive for the realisation of
the dialogue process and the exercise of power.
Once we have (re-) constructed the space of motivations
or interests within which the communication takes
place, we have to understand the interaction of these
motivations that might be mutually supportive as well
as contradictory.
The sociology of science emphasises the relevance of
interests (or what we have called motivations here)
for scientific expertise:
“[…] Dominant interests control expertise and hence
shape the available knowledge to reinforce their interests.
[…] Scientific knowledge tacitly reflects and reproduces
normative models of social relations, cultural
and moral identities, as if these are natural:” (Wynne
1994, p.176)
Figure-2 reflects schematically the interplay of differ-

90 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
ent interests and goals in the process of knowledge
generation and communication. The communication
process is situated in the centre of science-policy
relations and is decisive for the different goals to be
reached. How they are balanced depends on the
communication process and the communication
process on the knowledge that is generated in the first
place.
But what are the major interests of scientists, in general
and with regard to model-based understanding of
climate change?
2.1.3.1. The interests of scientists
Foucault is expanding his idea of knowledge and
power from knowledge as a form of power to ‘define truth’,
to the struggle for power to shape the (public and
scientific) understanding of a topic (in our case: climate
change) as one major interest of scientists.
The social-constructivist point of view is expressed
by BIRD (1987, p70 in: Risk, Environment and Modernity,
p258) as follows:
“[…] Scientific paradigms are socio-historical constructs
[…] Every aspect of scientific theory and practice
expresses socio-political interests, cultural themes
and metaphors, personal interactions, and professional
negotiations for the power to name the world”.
Obviously, for different authors, even if they weigh
the importance of power in science differently, power
is one of the governing principles and the pursuit of
power (in whatever expression) is one important
interest behind the enterprise of science.
Other interests of scientists are:
1. Scientific interest in the field of preoccupation;
curiosity, willingness to explore and
understand
2. Recognition by the scientific peer-group and
accordingly a good scientific reputation
3. Social accountability, i.a. to create useful
knowledge
4. Funding
It is obvious that these interests cannot be regarded
as independent from reflections upon power.
While funding and the epistemic interest can be assumed
as being essential in the first place (Popper
1958, p.4), the interest in recognition stems from the
rules and rituals of scientific enterprise, (Shackley and
Wynne 1996, p.279, Beck 1991, p.141). The success
of “policy-oriented learning” depends on “prestige,
professional norms and peer review (Hajer 1995,
p.71). And to get published “in the right journal and
to work within the academic discipline’s framework”
can be more important than to establish or sustain
the link to society (Vanderstraeten 3 2000 in: Lothigius
and Loughran 2000).
2.1.3.2. The interests of stakeholders
Before analysing the interests of stakeholders in climate
impact assessment, the term stakeholder has to be
defined.
What is a stakeholder?
ENGI and GLICKEN (1995, 1, cit. in: Glicken 2001,
307) give a very general definition:
“A stakeholder is an individual or a group influenced
by – and with an ability to significantly impact (either
directly or indirectly) – the topical area of interest.”
As a stakeholder, individuals are rarely representing
themselves as an individual person, but participate
through a group of individuals with common goals.
In that sense, the group (or organisation, institution,
association) is considered the stakeholder, usually
represented by an individual person.
WELP (2000) gives a definition through four independent
characteristics that constitute a stakeholder:
“A stakeholder can be defined broadly as one who: (a)
is affected by or affects a particular problem or issue
and/or (b) is responsible for problems or issues and/or
(c) has perspectives or knowledge needed to develop
good solutions or strategies, and/or (d) has the power
and resources to block or implement solutions or
strategies.”
While the first definition implies the power to have a
significant influence in order to ‘gain’ the status of a
stakeholder, the latter definition includes also those
who are simply affected. In the latter sense, stakeholder
participation is more open for a broader inclusion
not only allowing for those in power but – the
other way around – empowering and representing the
whole of society. To shed light on the relations of
these definitions of participation to the research
process, we can employ our conception of knowledge
discussed above.
First, participation in the context of research as different
from the traditional notion of participation
related to political decisions means to equip citizens
with the “argumentative ammunition” (Hajer 1995,
62), the necessary knowledge to confront these political
decisions under more equal terms (Lothigius and
Loughran 2000, 12), as not all actors can be assumed
to have a defined interest – interests are rather being
constructed through the discourse (Hall 2001, p.73).
3 Martine Vanderstraeten, Belgian Federal Office for Scientific,
Technical and Cultural Affairs, at the ‘Bridging the GAP’conference
in Stockholm

The second point in WELP’s definition that also goes
beyond the more traditional notion of participation
and which also gains impetus from our understanding
of knowledge as discussed above, is the potential on
sides of the stakeholders to provide input to improve
and develop new ideas. This point is also expressed in
the view of stakeholder dialogue as being a “two-way
flow of knowledge and information” (Hisschemöller
and Mol 2000).
These two ideas provide two very strong arguments
in favour of broad stakeholder participation (or what
CORTNER (2000, p.1) calls “meaningful public
involvement”). Although we side with GLICKEN
that “stakeholder is a relative term” and participation
is so accordingly, being “specific to time, site and
issue” (Glicken 2001, p.307), it is in the nature of
environmental problems in general and climate impact
assessment specifically, that the uncertainty,
complexity, long time- and spatial scales (van den
Hove 2000, p.458; Walker 2001, p.11) of the issue
relate to a rather unspecific set of stakeholders.
We will see later in the analysis of the actual process
(especially the workshops) that the view of participation
that has been presented here is shared by ‘practitioners’
in the field of stakeholder communication
and climate change.Due to the large range of stakeholders
in climate change impact assessment, we limit
the following discussion by focusing on the stakeholder
policy maker.
The interests of policy-makers
The interaction between policy-makers and citizens
(stakeholders) is basically twofold: informative and
regulative and – concerning climate change – the
‚success’ of these interactions depends on information.
On the “Bridging the Gap” – Conference in Stockholm,
Margot Wallström, the EU Environment Commissioner
emphasised that: “As a policy-maker I can try
to protect the environment […] but it is up to you in
the research community to make sure that I can do
this in the best way possible”(Lothigius and
Loughran 2001).
Kjell Larsson, the Swedish Minister for the Environment,
pointed out that he “couldn’t envisage another
policy area being more dependent on research than
environmental policy (Lothigius and Loughran
2001). In the light of the traditional conception of
science-policy interaction, the interest of policy is to
employ science in order to make decision more rational
(Brooks and Cooper 1987; in: Bäckstrand 2001,
p.56), especially in areas “with high stakes or high
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 91
‘error costs’ 4 (Bäckstrand 2001, p.58).
Sir John Houghton (1994), chair of the Scientific Working
Group of the IPCC, sees scientific forecasting as
delivering “best estimate[s]” as a basis for “sensible
planning” or what Jasanoff and Wynne call “the
policy-makers’ needs for sensible and usable planning
instruments” (Jasanoff and Wynne 1998, p.71)
WYNNE and SHACKLEY (1996, p.275/276) point
out that ”many decision-makers” want scientific
knowledge to build and strengthen consensus around
environmental policy-issues and to reduce scientific
uncertainty in order to reduce policy-uncertainty –
social consensus as a necessary consequence of reduced
technical uncertainty (Wynne 1994, p.175).
In their “Guide to the IPCC Approach” to “Climate
Impact and Adaptation Assessment”, PARRY and
CARTER (1998, p.3) state that “Policy-makers require
climate impact assessment to provide them with
the necessary scientific information for policy decisions.”
The demand for knowledge or information expresses
different underlying interests:
1. Generally, as a base for decision-making
2. Help with problem-formulation
3. Support for decisions already taken (“Legitimising
already favoured policies”, Bäckstrand
2001, p.58)
4. Support for specific actors in their own
views
5. Design and evaluation of alternative policies
6. How do these interests align with scientists’
interests that have been identified before?
2.1.4. Bringing together the analysis of the interests of
science and policy – The common interest space
Figure -3 sketches the interest-space around modelbased
understanding of climate change.
The interests directly linked to the object of scientific
activity (the model-based understanding) are the
motivations of the scientists to get involved in this
type of research. They are in the left part of the diagram
(green/lighter font).
The interests of non-scientists (in the right part of the
diagram, black font) are linked to the object of research
indirectly, via the scientists’ interests (which is
pretty trivial as the non-scientists are simply not
modelling climate change themselves!). Instead, they
can demand the consideration of their interests
4 such as climate change

92 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
through funding (which in most cases is conditional
to the satisfaction of the interests of the funding
body) or in postulating social accountability of the
research (even though their interests might be considered,
as scientists themselves see an urge to be
socially accountable (Bäckstrand 2001, p.59)), i.e. to
demand from science to produce useful, relevant
information.
Scientific interest
Recognition, reputation
Model-based
understanding of
Climate Change
Social accountability
Funding
The most realistic picture is a combination of all
interests. The way of balancing and weighing depends
on the scientists’ self-understanding, which is usually
somewhere between the independent, epistemologically
motivated researcher and the socially accountable problem
solver. It also depends upon the chosen or designated
role within the science-policy continuum.
Stakeholders’ (especially policy-makers’) call for research
to inform policy-making is widely heard, although
the concepts of how this should take place,
depend very much on the views of the relevance of
different kinds of knowledges (“the cultural/hermeneutic
character of scientific knowledge”,
non-expert knowledge (Wynne 1996, p.45/46)), the
policy-science interface, the policy process and its
content (Van Daalen et al. 1998, p.9; Welp 2000,
p.43; Bäckstrand 2001, p.53 ff).
In the above section though, knowledge has been
treated as something generated and delivered by
experts to non-experts. Developing our understanding
of communication from this idea, the interaction
is all about the results that have to be presented in an
understandable way. Scientists use their perception of
Scientists, in order to be able to pursuit their interests,
will either seek to comply with the conditions of
the funding agency (IF the funding is conditional) or
they just operate according to their ‘other’ interests,
which means compliance with the scientific codes of
their (scientific) peer group, exploring their favourite
field of science or securing social accountability (see
chap. 3.1.3.1).
Design and evaluation of alternative policies
Help with problem formulation
Basis for decision-making
Support for specific actors in their own views
Support for decisions already taken
Figure -3: The interest-space of model-based Climate Change Research
policy-needs to ensure the usefulness and applicability
of their data. SHACKLEY et al. describe the influence
of concerns of policy makers – in this case, for
long-term scenarios – on the modellers’ decisions:
“[…] If it [influence of policy-makers’ concerns on decisions
of modellers] occurs, it does so through indirect
influences more than via explicit policy-led demand.
Such indirect avenues could operate via research funding
agencies – especially when such agencies are also
government departments – and through indirect pressure
from scientists’ participation in policy-orientated
scientific assessment organisations, especially the IPCC.
To the extent that institutions like the IPCC and its deliberations
constitute an important arena for negotiation
of status, credibility, and influence, perceptions of
policy needs are built seamlessly into scientific interactions.
Internal and external audiences for scientific research
become blurred.”(Shackley at al. 1999)
How can we constructively employ our understanding
of the construction of knowledge and of the
interests of scientists and policy-makers that we have
developed so far, in order to step away from a dualistic
one-flow mode to an integrated, interactive and
participatory communication model?

2.1.5. Knowledge and power, and a few
relevant ideas about the science-policy
interface
Our analysis so far has tried to show the importance
of the intertwinement of knowledge and power and
the roles of scientists, policy-makers and their interests
within the discourse(s). Knowledge as a form of
power to ‘define truth’ (Hall 2001, p.77) and interests
of science and policy-makers “as a struggle for discursive
hegemony” trying to “secure support for their
definition of reality” have been argued to be important
factors governing the enterprise of science in
general as well as climate impact assessment more
specifically. Still, we do not want to over-emphasise –
in line with Foucault’s understanding of the ‘subject’
– the role of the actors in science and policy as conscious,
autonomous and stable entities that define the
problems and the solutions and set the agenda. “[Subjects]
are operating within the limits of the episteme,
the discursive formation, the regime of truth, of a
particular period and culture. […][They] must submit
to its [the discourse’s] rules and conventions, to its
dispositions of power/knowledge.” (Hall 2001, p.79)
Anyway it has been discussed earlier that the “positions
of dominance” (Foucault 1980, p.119) that
scientists and policy-makers hold, are important for
the constitution of boundaries between their domains,
which are “critical for the stabilisation of the
prevailing forms of power” (Wynne 1996, p.75). Even
if these boundaries are not clear-cut and we have
been arguing against their continuity and dominance,
we have to acknowledge that indeed scientists and
policy-makers may perceive policy and science as
separate domains. It is the meaning that the actors
attribute to this divide, which is part of the reality of
science-policy interactions, too. 5
We can summarise this point by our observation that
the balance between the actual differences of positions
of actors in relation to power within the discourse
and the more or less active and conscious
“role of actors in science and policy” to hold or define
these positions is very delicate and discoursespecific.
It is beyond the scope of this study to deliver a complete
conceptualisation of the science-policy space, to
explore the competing interpretations of the sciencepolicy
interface and to develop a synthesised idea to
5 This point is analogical to LAU’s and KELLER’s (2001, p.90)
criticism of Latour and his ‘equalisation’ of nature and humans.
They point out that ‘the meaning of the nature-humandifferentiation
for human actors” is part of the webbing (of
nature and humans or nature and culture) that is necessary for
its understanding.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 93
most accurately frame the science-policy interaction
on a meta-theoretical level. Without fully presenting
the ideological, disciplinary framing, this study simply
employs ideas that are considered useful to sketch the
space within which we operate in developing our
understanding of communication
While the traditional understanding in International
Relation Studies and in Political Science define separate
domains of facts (science) and values (policy) (Merritt
and Jones 2000, p.83) and the exchange between
them as objective and neutrally produced knowledge to
make policies more rational, the “question of how scientific
knowledge can shape interest, further interest, frame problems
and empower actors is ignored” (Bäckstrand 2001, p.79).
To step away from the (realist-positivist) view of
science and policy as two entirely separate entities,
separated by a sharply defined border, a whole range
of ideas have been formulated in order to more properly
describe the science-policy relations in terms of a
continuum of different domains of core science and
applied science that are intertwined with policy in a
“hybrid activity”, where “research agendas and policies
are mutually constructed” (Bäckstrand 2001,
p.77).
SHACKLEY ET AL. strengthen this view – they take
the case of use of flux-adjustments in Global Climate
Models (GCM) to emphasise their view of a deep
intertwinement of science and policy:
” […] The scientifically do-able problem and the needs
of policy may have been constructed together, and the
validation of flux adjustments as a [scientific] technique
cannot, we suggest, be divorced entirely from policy requirements.
Use of flux adjustments therefore may imply
an implicit model of policy, and of its knowledgeneeds;
likewise, policy may contain an implicit version
of what is credible and good science in the climate
change modelling domain (Shackley et al 1999, p.24).”
A whole range of different role-specific actors can be
identified between and within the different domains:
trend-spotters, theory-builders, science communicators
and policy analysts. Having their own agendas
and tasks, their roles still overlap frequently (Hannigan
1995). WALKER ET AL. (2001) differentiate
between managers, planners and researchers.
The different domains or spheres or actors are connected
in a space of mutual inter-dependence (see the
interest space, Figure-3).
2.2. INTEGRATION OF RESULTS FROM THE
CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF
COMMUNICATION BETWEEN SCIENTISTS
AND STAKEHOLDERS
Our hypothesis is that the communication process
can be a means of bridging the gap between science,

94 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
policy and the public, the gap between different discourses
when all interests and all types of knowledges
are considered in the process of problem formulation
and problem solution. It is the communication process
that can bring together the societal actors and
their knowledges to negotiate “reliable knowledge of
nature” (Wynne 1996, p.77) and decision-making
(Grove-White 1996, p.270) in an inter- or transdiscursive
way.
While these conclusions are valid for science in general,
the call for participation is even more urgent in
environmental issues and climate impact assessment,
where problems are characterised by their complexity,
uncertainty, (Walker 2001, p.11; Zillessen 1998, p.49)
large temporal and spatial scales and irreversibility”
(van den Hove 2000, p.458).
3. Communication and Participation
3.1. FROM THE ANALYSIS OF KNOWLEDGE
AND ACTORS TO THE ANALYSIS OF COMMUNICATION
As shown in the analysis above, the generation of
knowledge is not limited to the science domain alone
and for our communication process this implies an
extension from a simple one-way flow of information
from science to stakeholders to an early participation
of stakeholders in the research process (Wynne 1994,
p.74).
The concepts of stakeholder dialogue or participation
have gained ground since the United Nations Conference
on Environment and Development 1992 in Rio
de Janeiro, where it was included in the Rio Declaration
(UN, 1992a) and the Agenda 21 (UN, 1992b).
In the context of climate impact assessment, participatory
integrated assessment has incorporated the idea of
broad involvement of different actors (or stakeholders)
to add meaningful information (COOL
2001, p.10) and to acknowledge the more substantive
intellectual status of lay knowledges (Wynne 1994,
p.74).
To summarise the discussion about the reasons for
stakeholder participation, we can formulate three
main rationales for broad participation:
1. Substantive: To create a better, vaster
knowledge base for decision-making
2. Normative: To realise the legally guaranteed
right of participation and empower
more people by including their interests in
the negotiations about knowledge and decisions
3. Instrumental: To build trust in knowledge
and decision-making
(Stern and Fineberg 1996, p.23; Wynne 1996,
p.45/46; van den Hove 2000, p.458; Grove-White
1996, p.270; Walker et al. 1998, p.9; Glicken 2000;).
The question we have to answer now is how to translate
our findings about the importance of stakeholder participation
into practice?
Discourse theory gives us the “story-line” around
which we will organise our analysis of experiences
with stakeholder participation so far (comparable
cases taken from relevant literature) and with the
ATEAM-workshop and the interviews conducted
during this thesis.
3.2. STORY-LINES 6
“To be able to analyse this inter-discursive communication
the argumentative approach puts forward the
concepts story-line and discourse-coalition as middlerange
concepts that can show how discursive orders
are maintained or transformed. The political power of
a text is not derived from its consistency alone but
comes from its multi-interpretability. SCHÖN points
at the widespread use of generative metaphors in
politics to reproduce scientific findings in nonscientific
discourse. They are considered to provide a
common ground between different discourses, enabling
actors to develop their own understanding of
the problem (Schön in: Hajer 1995, p.62).
Story-lines are ways of integrating elements from
different discourses in a “narrative on social reality”
(Hajer ibid.) that – through symbolic power of expression
– delivers a common base for understanding.
The story-lines have the function to “facilitate
the discursive complexity of the problem”, to combine
knowledges and to position actors in relation to
each other. “Analogies, historical references, clichés,
appeals to collective fears or senses of guilt” and
metaphors are the practices of discourse that meet
under the umbrella of the story-line to form communicative
networks.
Climate change can be seen as a story-line that, “as a
causal story […] gives meaning to previously singular
and unrelated events” (Hajer 1995, p.64, on acidrain),
as changes in forest-productivity, agricultural
practice and emissions from transport and heating.
With the story-lines of climate change and global
change, actors might be able to make sense out of
unexplainable events, also being able to position
6 The concept of story-lines as presented here, is not identical with
the one in the context of climate change scenarios (see: Parry
and Carter 1998, p.18). The latter can rather be seen as an application
of the more theoretical concept that is presented in
this following part.

themselves in relation to CO2-emissions and climate
change.
“The discourse […] is thus empowering in the sense
that it gives the fisherman and the forester a focus for
protest and the argumentative ammunition to argue
their case” (Hajer ibid. p.62).
Still, as shown in the chapter before, even in the
process of participation, we have to regard the actors
as being driven by specific interests, thereby limiting
the potentials for co-operation (Ueberhorst, p.402).
3.3. SCIENCE-STAKEHOLDER INTERACTION
In the following part, we are evaluating the results of
different processes of science-stakeholder interaction
in environmental science and climate impact assessment
to draw general conclusions for the communication
between scientists and stakeholders. This
evaluation will then be integrated with the experiences
from the ATEAM-workshop to finally develop
the participatory notion of communication.
As well as the ATEAM-project, the projects discussed
below are all characterised by computer-based
climate change research, using computer-modelling as
analytical tool for the generation of the information
that is then used as basis for the communication
processes.
To pursuit the aggregation of results from the different
processes, in a systematic way, it will be divided
into two parts:
1. Criteria for the information to be communicated
or the topics to be discussed
2. Procedural aspects of the workshop
3.3.1. Criteria for the type of information employed in the
communication process
JONES ET AL. (1999, p.3) identify four necessary
conditions for the integration of scientific information
and policy-making:
1. Research results have to be: relevant, compatible,
accessible
2. Policy makers have to be receptive
In order to determine whether the conditions are
fulfilled, criteria are formulated. The most important
and relevant for our purpose are:
1. Matching time-scales
2. Uncertainty
3. Compatibility to existing policy-making procedures
4. Credibility
Matching time-scales of computer simulations with
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 95
policy-planning horizons are critical to the relevance
of the data. In the first workshop within the Delftprocess7
for example (van Daalen et al. 1998, p.5), the
policy-makers pointed out that the “consequences of
various long-term emission profiles” which had been
analysed by the modelling team, “did not adequately
address their needs”, as they were more interested in
“issues related to the necessity of short-term actions”.
Uncertainty is one of the most important “challenges
to the authority of science” (Jones 2001, p.21;
Shackley and Wynne 1996, p.275). In the UKCIP 8
stakeholders were found to be reluctant towards
taking adaptation measures due to uncertainty about
the climate impacts (UKCIP 2000. p. viii). Also in the
DELFT process, questions of uncertainty and
reliability concerning the model were raised (DELFT
1998, p.14).
JONES (2001, p.21 and 27) identifies uncertainty and
stakeholders’ perception of uncertainties as one of
the major difficulties in communicating risks under
climate change.
This uncertainty in climate change relates to (Tol
1999, p.221):
1. Imperfect understanding of the mechanisms
at work
2. The stochastic nature of the system(s)
3. Long lead-times of cause and effect
From her analysis of natural resource management,
WALKER concludes the necessity to manage and
communicate uncertainties and ignorance (which
stem from the high systems’ complexities), “so that
they become recognised inputs to the decisionmaking
process” (Walker 2001, p.11). The same conclusions
can be made for climate impact assessment.
7 The Delft process constituted a series of five workshops between
1995 and 1997, where the IMAGE 2 model was used in “support
of international climate negotiations. The name stems
from the major involvement of scientists from Delft University
in the Netherlands (see: van Daalen 1998).
8 The UKCIP: United Kingdom Climate Impact Programme

96 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
+
Broad Knowledge base
+ +
'Quality of research
+
Degree of Participation
Broad representation of interests
+
Relevance and compatibility
Transparency
+
+ Credibility
+
Sucessfull Communication of Uncertainty
Compatibility to existing policy-making procedures
“Translating basic research into the terms that
will be understood by policy makers requires resources
and expertise. As a result, available information
is more likely to be used, the less translation that
is needed.” (Jones et al. 1999, p.4).
In the COOL process (COOL 2000), the authors
emphasise 3 parameters to measure the usefulness of
knowledge, where of 2 relate to the compatibilitycriteria.
The “strategic parameter” expresses the need
for a “matching” definition of the research problem
with the definition of the policy-problem.
The “implementation parameter” refers to the potential
influence of the research, i.e. whether the information
relates to elements that could possibly be
changed or influenced by policy.
The third parameter relates to credibility.
Credibility is of major importance for sciencestakeholder
interactions ((Hajer 1995, p.59) and one
building-block is the ”scientific quality of the work”
(i.e. validity, reliability) or the “epistemological parameter”
(COOL 2000, p.17). In the Delft-process,
the recognition of the used computer-model
(IMAGE 2) as “representing ‘best available knowledge’”
de-emphasised the relevance of model reliability
and uncertainty, and the conclusion was drawn
that “the credibility of analysts/advisers and adequate
communication may be more crucial to the policyoriented
use of model results than the qualities of the
models themselves” (van Daalen 1998, p.15; see also:
Greenberger 1976).
An analysis of the knowledge utilisation in the Na-
+
+
+
Legitimacy
+ +
Receptivity of stakeholders
Figure -4: The basic understanding of participation in climate
+
+
+
tional dialogue shows that the many participants are
receptive to use the information they are offered,
only after they have had the possibility to express
their own opinion and viewpoint (For an elaboration
on the issue of knowledge utilisation is referred to
Hisschemöller and Mol 2000, p.30). Figure-4 summarises
the most important positive relations between
the factors of participation in science. It establishes
the most important causal links between different
levels of our analysis to explain how they work together.
The arrows represent causal links, constructing
causal loops between the system elements. The
‘plus’ at the inside of the arrowheads indicates a positive
causal link: increasing A increasing B (e.g.
better research higher credibility).
The criteria and conditions discussed above are very
useful for scientists to understand their policycounterparts
in the communication process or to
prepare for interviews.
After presenting the major conditions for the information
or the content of the communication the next
section deals with the practical side of how to realise
the science-stakeholder interaction, i.e. the interviews
and workshops.
3.3.2. Procedural aspects of the workshop
3.3.2.1. Criteria for selecting the relevant stakeholders
In her work about the planning of ecological risk
assessment, GLICKEN comes up with a set of
“Guidelines for stakeholder inclusion” (Glicken 2001,
p.5).
1. Is the purpose of the solicitation of input

from stakeholders clearly stated and communicated?
2. Are all the appropriate stakeholders identified
and included?
3. Are the information elicitation tools used
appropriate to the type of information requested?
4. Are the tools rigorously applied?
5. How are the resultant data analysed?
6. Is the entire process (including the methodology)
documented?”
This set of questions can be useful as a checklist for
preparing workshops as well as interviews. There are
different ways to systematically approach the question
of which stakeholders to include in the process:
In the COOL national process, stakeholders were divided
into 4 sectors - Industry & Energy, Built Environment,
Traffic & Transport and Agriculture &
Nutrition – and then the stakeholders were selected
for each of the sectors, including representatives from
different businesses, municipalities, Ministries and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Hisschemöller
and Mol 2000, p.24/25).
The Delft-process was set up in a more concrete context,
to provide scientific support for international
climate negotiations (van Daalen at al. 1998, p.2) and
even more specifically, of the “Ad-Hoc group on the
Berlin Mandate (AGBM)” (ibid. p.3) which was involved
in the preparations of the Kyoto protocol.
The criteria for stakeholder selection in an EC organised
set of five workshops, also in the context of
scientific inputs into the pre- and post-Kyoto periods
(van den Hove 2000, p.468) were:
1. The awareness of Climate Change in the participants
organisation or institution
2. A personal focus on climate change policy issues in
the person’s “professional capacity”
SHACKLEY (2000, p.47/48) defines the integration
of different stakeholders in an integrated manner with
the other process participants, as an “actor network”,
including different knowledges, such as academic,
bureaucratic, local/site-specific and political knowledge.
Although the general guidelines – as formulated
above – could be recognised throughout the stakeholder
processes, differences between them are obvious
in the way of approaching the homogeneity versus
heterogeneity – dichotomy.
The fact that “problem-solving requirements” for
policy-makers have been met so successfully can be
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 97
attributed to the more homogeneous and outputoriented
character of one of the processes (as described
by van den Hove 2000). In the COOL process,
participants found the inclusion of “stakeholders
who are not involved in the existing dominant science-policy
network” useful for the dialogue. (Hisschemöller
and Mol 2000, p.31)
3.3.2.2. Evaluation and Monitoring of a stakeholder workshop
Quality control is important for the success of the
communication process, the more, as it is not easily
quantifiable. The two categories of controlling the
quality of the process and the documentation of the
process and results (point 6 of the guidelines used
above) are (Hisschemöller and Mol 2000, p.9):
1. Monitoring during the workshops and
2. A continuous evaluation of results.
These categories give also expression to the idea of
applying the same rigour in the evaluation of the
communication process as in “scientific data collection”
(point 4 of the guidelines, Glicken 2000, p.310).
The procedural details of how this should be done
during the workshops are not discussed here, but
GLICKEN and HISCHEMÖLLER AND MOL give
examples, including “formal project documents” as
well as “videos, brochures, briefing packages, newspaper
articles” (Glicken 2000, p.310). In the COOL
process, the evaluation-sources were (Hisschemöller
and Mol 2000, p.22):
1. “The minutes of the project team meetings,
2. The reports of the dialogue group meetings (both content
and process reports),
3. The evaluation forms filled out by the participants
after each meeting and
4. The observations of the project team members during
the group meetings”
The benefits are: Firstly, it is easier to include new
participants into the process, as they can be brought
to the same level of understanding and locate themselves
in the ongoing process.
The second more fundamental point has to do with
the basic understanding of learning and this evidently
includes the learning from the communication process
(the workshops, the interviews) as well. This is
best achieved by establishing continuity as a basis for
science-stakeholder interactions.
The stakeholder dialogue is seen as a continuous
process for two major reasons: First, to develop an
atmosphere of trust between the participants
(Hischemöller et al. 2000; van den Hove 1999) and

98 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
second, to establish a learning process that employs
mechanisms of monitoring and evaluation to ensure
permanent improvement (van Daalen 2000, p.28).
3.4. INTEGRATION OF THE RESULTS FROM THE
WORKSHOP AND THE INTERVIEWS
How can the insights from the workshop and the
interviews be summarised with regard to the overall
goal of developing a participatory notion of communication?
What are the lessons learned from applying
criteria and conditions of good communication to the
practice and what type of extra-knowledge has been
gained?
The criteria were useful in that they could readily be
translated and applied. The substantive or knowledge-related
notion of participatory communication
is dominant in the case of the ATEAM and of Swedish
decision-makers that have been chosen as examples
for the application of the framework and criteria.
Knowledge gained from stakeholders is supposed to
improve the work of researchers with regard to relevance
and compatibility of the data, e.g. with regard
to spatial and temporal scales and data formats
(especially in the workshop) and by learning about the
existing policy-making procedures (especially in the
interviews).
In this sense, the application combines two of our
main notions of participation: The knowledge added
by stakeholders as a means of including the interests
of stakeholders (the normative or interest-related
notion of participation).
Uncertainties were identified as barriers to the receptivity
or willingness of the stakeholders to take part
in the dialogue and to receive and use the information
provided by the scientists..
During the workshops it was pointed out that (considering
competition with other research groups) the
quality of the computer models (developed and used
by ATEAM scientists), representing best available
knowledge, has to be communicated.
Transparency (regarding uncertainty and knowledge
gaps in the research) was also proposed during the
workshop as a good way to create trust and credibility.
The question of accessibility was expressed in the
discussion of procedural aspects, as the access to the
data is most effectively achieved during the workshops.
A few ideas were developed of how the data
can be presented in a most accessible (understandable)
way.
The presentation of data during the interviews was
inhibited by delays in the availability of data, so that
preliminary maps from the ATEAM could only be
shown in one of the interviews.
With regard to the procedural aspects, a lack of consideration
in the ATEAM’s planning and realisation
process of the stakeholder dialogue was evident.
Those elements of the guidelines for stakeholder
inclusion (Glicken 2000) that were related to the
scientific monitoring during the workshops and the
evaluation afterwards had no prominent status at all.
While the monitoring was only covered by protocols
written by two of the scientists during the discussions,
the evaluation was limited to the scientists.
Although all participants that were still present in the
final session were asked for their opinion, there was
no systematic collection of stakeholders’ responses
and their evaluation of the workshop (through e.g.
questionnaires), as proposed in other stakeholder
interactions (Hisschemöller et al. 2000, p.10, Glicken
2000, p.310).
Knowledge generation from the more practical interactions
was the other main point in the practical
dimension. So what did we learn from this process?
The function of the interview process – apart from
exploring the applicability of the conceptual framework
– was to use the interviews as a source of nonconventional
knowledge. The interviews were primarily
regarded as a means of exchanging information.
The conclusions were related to the four main topics.
1. The work of the interviewee and the institution
and the role of science
2. The role of climate change for the work of
the interviewee and the institution
3. Experiences with climate change research
and scientists
4. Interest in and needs for information and
data
Research has been shown to be very relevant for
decision-making about climate change on different
levels. The role of scientific research in decreasing
uncertainty for example has been addressed.
Climate change is considered – throughout the different
policy-levels – as an important issue, but the
focus has shifted from the understanding of the
mechanisms of climate change to climate change
mitigation and adaptation.
While the phenomenon of human induced climate
change is now widely accepted by different decisionmakers,
the focus is on the social and economic aspects
related to its consequences. In this sense, the
data delivered by the ATEAM will be of minor relevance
for Swedish policy makers.

This discussion has shown the links between the
different levels of analysis down to the application in
the practical dimension. The participatory notion of
communication has been treated in the practical and
the theoretical dimension. Criteria and conditions
have been identified, its potential for translation has
been proven both in relating the criteria/conditions
to specific issues and to the ATEAM work plan and
finally, on the application-level the practicability of
the higher, conceptual levels was shown.
4. Conclusions
The first part of the thesis was dedicated to the development
of a thorough understanding of the
knowledge as a basis for communication between
scientists and stakeholders. The understanding of the
interests of the actors involved was developed
accordingly.
From this analysis, we constructed our understanding
of the role of participation as a means of successful
communication.
The main rationales for broad participation and
measures of success of communication are:
1. To create a better, vaster knowledge base
for decision-making
2. To realise the legally guaranteed right of participation
and empower more people by including
their interests in the negotiations
about knowledge and decisions
3. To build trust in knowledge and decisionmaking
After the theoretical foundation was developed, the
further interest of this thesis was to explore the idea
of participatory communication on all relevant levels.
It has been shown successfully that the ideas of participatory
communication that have been developed
in this study, can be applied to the field of sciencestakeholder
communication in climate impact assessment
– on all relevant levels and dimensions of
abstraction.
A review of relevant studies about stakeholder participation
in the field of climate change was our starting
point for the following analysis.
On the most abstract level, we have organised the
rationales of participatory communication according
to the notion of knowledge and information (representing
theory) on one side and the actual procedures
(representing the dimension of practice) on the other.
The criteria and conditions for successful participatory
communication developed were then translated
into more specific issues and analysed as part of the
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 99
ATEAM work plan.
Finally, the analyses of workshop and interviews
proved applicability and relevance of the hypothesis.
The following major conclusions can be made:
1. Communication can only be regarded in the
context of knowledge and power; interests
of different actors are decisive in defining
the problems and the scientific solutions. If
interest is so essential, the inclusion of ‘all’
interests in society has to be realised, for the
sake of (democratically motivated) representative
and utilitarian interpretation of scientific
endeavour.
2. The representation of ‘all’ interests and the
increased transparency and credibility of science
through participation creates a higher
degree of legitimacy for research and decision-making.
3. Communication is a two-way process; while
participation has traditionally been defined
as the process of communicating scientific
research to stakeholders (speaking truth
(science) to power (policy)), non-scientific,
non-conventional knowledge has been
found to make science and research relevant,
compatible and thus empowering for
stakeholders as representatives of society.
4. Forms of interaction like interviews and
workshops were shown to have the potential
to facilitate this input.
That is why communication between scientists and
stakeholders has to be participatory.
5. The two-way process of learning can also be
interpreted in terms of mutual trust-building,
While the workshop was seen as a means of
building stakeholders’ trust in science, it
could be observed that the workshop also
helped the trust-building of scientists in the
stakeholder dialogue.
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Appendix
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 101
The pre-interview information (stating the purpose and the rough outline of questions and topics)
The questions will be grouped around my research question:
How can research results in Climate Change Modelling most effectively be communicated to policy-makers?
From the interviews we want to learn about:
The actual policy-making process:
What is your / your agency’s / institution’s etc. role in climate change (CC) policy-making?
Does climate change play a prominent role in your policies?
How much of an impact does the input from CC research actually have on the policy- and decision-making (considering e.g.
uncertainty)?
Experiences with CC research:
1. Data and Research:
What type of data have you used before and what have you used it for?
In how far is the data we can deliver (maps of Net Primary Productivity and Carbon Balances) relevant to your
work?
What data are you interested in {type (net primary productivity, C-balance), format of presentation (maps, time series,
tables), temporal/spatial resolution}?
2. Communication:
Could you give examples for ways of communication that you feel have been successful?
What would be the perfect situation of communication?
General Discussion
What role do uncertainty and risk play in your usage and perception of CC data?
How do you see the relative weight/importance of science vs. policy in CC decision-making?

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 102-113.
Organising Research for Sustainable Development: An Assessment of
National Research Programmes
Katy Whitelegg ∗
Introduction
The more accepted the concept of sustainability
becomes, the more attention is paid to the contribution
individual areas of policy making can make to
achieving it. More recently, however, the focus has
shifted towards the integration of different areas of
policy making and conflicting goals. This development
from individual contributions to combined
activities can also be observed in research policy.
Research activities have always been valued for their
contribution to furthering the aims of sustainable
development through their activities on understanding
the natural environment and the way in which
human activity influences it. These activities have led
to the development of a wealth of tools for defining
what sustainable development means in concrete
areas and measuring the current distance from it.
More recently, however, the role assigned to research
activities has been changing and expanding. Research
is no longer seen as the mere provider of information
on the basis of which policy decisions can be taken,
but as a more active player in facilitating change. On
the one hand research activities are seen as one of the
key drivers of the direction of change. For instance,
the current technological trajectory could be changed
towards a more sustainable one where economic gain
and environmental goals did not conflict with each
other. On the other hand, research can also play a
fundamental role in identifying ways of creating
change. In doing so it can bridge the gap between the
research on goals and indicators of sustainable development
and the problem of finding context specific
solutions to implementing change that involve looking
at the expectations, values and behavioural patterns
of the actors involved.
As this new approach to the role of research has
gained strength, research programmes have been
established with the specific objective of facilitating
research activities that provide problem orientated
context specific solutions. This requires a combina-
∗ ARC Seibersdorf Research, Austria. Contact:
katy.whitelegg@arcs.ac.at.
tion of expertise from different disciplines together
with praxis relevant knowledge. This paper looks at
the challenges placed on the research process by such
aims. It focuses specifically on the definition and
design of national research programmes that aim to
support sustainable development. It claims that the
requirements place significant challenges on research
programmes that are often at odds with current research
methods and practises. The definition and
design of research programmes that support sustainable
development differ from those of more conventional
research programmes whether applied or basic.
The paper does not claim that sustainable development
programmes should become a substitute for
current methods of research. Instead, it claims that
programmes that support sustainable development
play a significant role in linking different types of
knowledge and in doing so form an important part of
understanding how to implement sustainable development.
Their success depends on the ability to provide
the link between a specific context and the abstract
goals and objectives of sustainable development.
The paper focuses on two separate programme aspects:
the definition and the design of research programmes
looking into detail at the steps involved in
each case. It then examines a series of national research
programmes and explores the ways in which
they meet these demands and overcome barriers
inherent in national research systems. The attempts
identify success stories and to look at the elements
that contributed to their development.
The paper draws on an analysis of the sustainable
development research programmes in seven European
countries1 . These programmes do not represent
a comprehensive review of research programmes in
Europe. However, they include a broad selection of
different approaches and methods for organising
research for sustainable development. Looking at
research programmes can also not provide a repre-
1 The paper is based on the results of the study Identifying and
Assessing National Research Activities on Sustainable Development set
up through the ESTO network in February 2001. The study
identified and assessed the national SD research programmes
of seven European countries: Austria, Belgium, Germany, The
Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK. 102 programmes
were assessed using both a set of thematic and processorientated
criteria.

sentative sample of research activities as they make
up only a small proportion of overall research funding
in each country. Research funding is channelled
through a variety of different methods including
institutional funding general university funds and
more generic funds. However, this research has
shown that in many cases programmes are an important
way for the policy making process to introduce
and direct new areas of research.
Sustainable development and research activities
Over the past two decades most European countries
have designed and established research programmes
that specifically focus on sustainable development.
Putting sustainability as the main goal of the programmes
has meant thinking about the implications
of translating the concept of sustainable development
into concrete research activities and defining the role
research should play.
This section concentrates on setting up an analytical
framework for the following analysis. It explores in
detail the requirements, the barriers and the concepts
involved in defining research and designing research
programmes.
REQUIREMENT ON THE RESEARCH PROCESS
The concept of sustainable development entails combining
environmental, economic and social goals. On
a relatively abstract level there is general consensus
that the current development model is unsustainable
and that we should be moving towards a more sustainable
model that is able to integrate different aims
and not trade one off against the other. Brand (2002)
defines the basis of policy for sustainable development
as being comprised of the following:
• A preventative long-term approach to secure
natural living conditions
• An integrative and horizontal approach so
as to assure the links between environmental,
social and economic problems
• Orientated towards the principle of social
equality
• Orientated towards global problems and
linking the global and the local
• Increased participation of civil society actors
in the formulation and implementation of
concrete
grammes
sustainable development pro-
Trying to define the concept on a more concrete
level, however, automatically leads to disputes. There
is no one vision of what sustainable development
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 103
means and different players have their own interests
and ideas. One of the main questions asked of researchers
is what exactly these aims could mean on a
concrete level and how to achieve the transition.
Research on sustainable development should not only
define aims, goals and visions and translate them into
strategies and indicators, but should also look at how
to embed sustainable development institutionally.
Supporting policy goals which are integrative in terms
of its policy aims, time scales, spatial dimensions and
actors challenges the current research system to provide
equally integrative answers.
BARRIERS IN RESEARCH SYSTEMS
Problem orientated sustainability research questions
cannot be adequately answered by one disciplinary
perspective alone but requires a variety of disciplines
(both from the social and natural sciences) and view
points in order to fully understand the problem.
However, current research methods and practises are
generally not supportive towards this type of interand
trans-disciplinarity research questions.
On a practical and organisational level this type of
research is difficult to perform due to the fact that
research systems are organised according to discipline-based
rules. There are barriers to performing
inter- and trans-disciplinary research at each of these
levels. This can be observed from their funding
mechanisms through to their networks to their career
possibilities whether at post graduate or professorial
level. However, it is not just the organisational set-up,
but also the logical that underlies current research
methods that favours disciplinary research. A research
process that is based on the collection of data
on the basis of a particular hypothesis, the search for
correlation and causalities, and objectivity is of limited
use for non-discipline-based, problem orientated
and highly complex questions (Frederichs 2001).
Recent studies have observed that this form of
knowledge creation is being slowly eroded and that
knowledge is being created by new actors using more
complex approaches in non-traditional settings. Beginning
with the concept of Mode 2 (Gibbons et al.
1994) other theories have included „post-normal
science” (Funtowicz/Ravetz 1993) and more recently
“sustainability science“ (Funtowicz/O’Connor 1999).
These studies suggest that the research system is
opening up and allowing inter- and trans-disciplinary
research to take place. However, other are more
sceptical as to the ability of the research system to
change and see the areas in which “Mode 2 research”
is taking place as not significant enough to represent a
paradigm change (Frederichs 1999, 2001, Weingart
1999). This new model of research is thought to be

104 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
too contradictory to current methods to gain any
more general acceptance and will remain a niche area.
Its praxis-related, problem orientated approach does
not provide any general theories but, can only produce
context-specific solutions that then have to be
re-interpreted for other situations. This form of
knowledge production thus produces many questions
concerning consistency and quality of the research
output that have not yet been answered.
It is therefore also one of the tasks of research for
sustainable development to ask how this type of
research works, how quality can be guaranteed and
how it can be institutionalised given the current research
structures. Research for sustainable development
is as much about defining the process of research
activities given the new framework conditions
as it is about delivering results.
This next section looks at the methods and the
mechanisms employed to establish research programmes
for sustainable development. These methods
form the bridge between addressing the issues
named above within the research systems described.
METHODS AND MECHANISMS
Although the programmes all aim to support sustainable
development, there is no single definition for
translating these aims into concrete research programmes
for sustainable development. Each country
and programme has so far developed its own definition
and designed its own methods. Having said this,
there are large similarities in the challenges and barriers
the programmes have to overcome and therefore
there are also large overlaps in the basic methods they
use to overcome them.
The two most important features of research programmes
for sustainable development are the methods
of defining and designing them. Although this
could be said to be true for all research programmes,
the emphasis placed on defining the role research can
play in the transition towards sustainable development
and design that facilitates this is more accentuated
in sustainable development programmes than in
more conventional research programmes.
The definition of research programmes can furthermore
be split into two elements: research type and
thematic content. Research type refers to the need to
define the type of activity that will take place and
what aim it is trying to pursue. The thematic content
refers to the need, as with all research programmes,
to break down the overall aims into concrete research
activities. The combination of these three elements
(research type, thematic content and design) make up
the basic structure of the majority of the programmes
that support sustainable development.
DEFINING RESEARCH PROGRAMMES FOR
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Defining the role research can play in supporting
sustainable development is one of the main elements
of a successful programme. A well-founded definition
and vision of the role research can play provides a
stable framework within which projects take place. It
gives the individual projects a clear goals as to what
the outcomes of the research should be aiming to
achieve.
The definition of research programmes can take two
main routes which are normally used in combination
with each other. It can focus on the type of research
and the aims to be reached or it can focus on defining
the thematic content of the research. Although these
two elements are essentially linked and both necessary
for the development of all research programmes that
focus on SD, the programmes analysed revealed that
the two are dealt with differently by the individual
national programmes. This initially sounds a very topdown
way of defining the direction research should
take. This is a method of goal setting often put into
questions by the scientific community who remain
sceptical about policy makers abilities to set research
agendas. However, the type of goal setting these
programmes try to establish is a mixture of top-down
and bottom-up. Once the type of research and the
way it should be performed have been established,
the definition of thematic content is the responsibility
of individual research groups.
RESEARCH TYPE AND AIMS
Research for sustainable development is often viewed
as developing a new way of knowledge formation. It
does not just concentrate on the generation of new
knowledge but, also on its application. The establishment
of research for SD requires the development
of concepts that go beyond the formation of the
individual thematic programmes. It requires concepts
that outlines the role research should play in supporting
the transition towards sustainable development.
Defining the type of research and its role is important
as it influences the way the programme is designed. It
is necessary to specify whether the main focus of the
research activities will be on sustainable innovation
systems (the Netherlands), on integrative search
processes (Germany) or on policy support mechanisms
(Belgium). Each of these three examples organises
the research process in different way.

THEMATIC CONTENT
Programmes that aim to support sustainable development,
like all research programmes, require a thematic
focus. This thematic focus can be reached
through a number of different methods which is
often related to the type of programme and the role it
should play. Methods range from linking the thematic
content to national sustainable development plans to
using methods such as foresight and backcasting to
identify long term goals and measures to achieve
them. All programmes, however, take a broader and
systemic approach to defining the thematic content
of the programmes. The focus tends to be on systems
or on chains and thus allows a problem to be looked
from different angles. These are either based on an
area such as a region or city or focus on systems such
as innovation, consumption or health. The six broad
programme categories are:
• Behaviour, organisation and structures
• Consumption, nutrition or health
• Region, city or a spatially defined ecosystem
• Sustainable technologies and sustainable innovation
systems
• Sustainable economic development
• Global change and sustainable development
Although many of the overall thematic topics appear
to be similar, there are also considerable thematic
differences between the programmes in the different
countries. The thematic approach is often determined
by national characteristics and problems. The national
and context specific focus of sustainable development
programmes is further evidence of the way in
which programmes attempt to bridge the gap between
the abstract goals of sustainability and the
operational level of finding operational solutions.
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING RESEARCH FOR
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT – PROCESS ELEMENTS
Defining programmes in support of sustainable development
on the strategic level or conceptual level is
only one half of the story of this type of research
activity. Equally important is the development of a
solid methodology for implementing research that is
context specific. The structure of the programmes
needs to be developed in such a way as to support the
aims identified above.
Since the first sustainable development programmes
were established in the Netherlands, the body of
literature on designing research for sustainable development
has been growing. On one level there is
considerable consensus that research for sustainable
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 105
development differs from more conventional types of
programmes and that more thought needs to be put
into the design of such research activities. Using
conventional research organisation methods in such
circumstances would not achieve the desired results.
Some programmes, notably the German programme,
have put the process design element first, in front of
thematic goals, claiming that achieving the right process
will have a significant effect on the thematic content.
Some of these criteria used for designing programmes
are now relatively well understood whereas the inclusion
of others in the design of research programmes
has not yet been fully operationalised. In many cases
this is due to the fact that these concepts are not
easily introduced but, entail a complete restructuring
of the research process. The most commonly used
elements for designing programmes are:
• Time frame: looks at the way in which the
programmes set objectives with respect to
different time frames (combining short term
and long term goals). Few programmes,
apart from the Dutch, mention time frames
specifically apart from acknowledging that
the threats to SD will take decades to solve.
• Scope: Looks at the way programmes can
ensure that global, national, regional and local
problems are addressed and that what
may appear to be sustainable on one level is
not an unsustainable option on another
level.
• Inter-disciplinarity: The integration of different
view points in a research project is a
prerequisite for problem solving research
activities and the majority of the SD targeted
programmes defined the inclusion of
different disciplines as a core element of the
research activities. It has, however, become
one of the main buzz-words in all sustainable
development programme documents.
Whether the programmes have actually understood
the difficulties involved becomes
clear on closer inspection.
• Stakeholder involvement: Developing solutions
to context specific problem can only
take place with the involvement of nonacademic
stakeholders who firstly, have a
different understanding of the problem and
secondly, of the options for change. It is an
area which has been pursued in the Netherlands
for the last decade but which other
countries are only just beginning to integrate
into research programmes. However, the

106 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
German Programme Research on the Environment
has made field partner participation
one of its key aims.
• Dissemination of results: This does not
only refer to the conventional methods for
disseminating results, but to processes for
extracting results from one specific project
that could be relevant for another one. This
type of research poses challenges that are
different to those faced by disciplinary programmes.
Setting up horizontal or support
programmes can significantly assist the establishment
and the development of such
research. They can encourage the transfer of
knowledge from one programme or project
to another. They can also develop methods
that allow an easier transfer of knowledge
from one discipline to another or they can
support the formation of new networks
Table 1: Overview of Targeted SD Programmes
Country Programme
Austria
(individual programmes)
Belgium
(umbrella programmes and
sub-programmes)
Germany
(umbrella programme and
sub-programmes)
The Netherlands
(umbrella programme with
structured and co-ordinated
individual programmes)
Sweden
(individual programmes)
across traditional disciplinary boundaries.
All these go beyond the individual programme
and are aimed at the longer term
development of research activities and
communities (Whitelegg et al 2002)
National sustainable development research
programmes – a comparison
Concentrating on the three elements research type,
thematic focus and design process allows a comparison
of what are essentially very different programmes.
Table 1 gives a brief overview of the programmes
involved in the study. The left hand column
also indicates the type of organisation, whereas the
right hand column lists the individual programmes or,
in the case of umbrella programmes, the subprogramme
level.
Austrian Landscape Research
Austrian Programme on Technology for Sustainable Development
PFEIL 05 Programme for Research and Development in Agriculture, Forestry, Environment
and Water Management
Scientific Support Plan for a Sustainable Development Policy 1
(Sustainable management of the North Sea, Global Change and Sustainable Development,
Antarctica 4, Sustainable Mobility, Norms for Food Products, Telsat 4, Levers for
a Sustainable Development Policy and Supporting actions)
Scientific Support Plan for a Sustainable Development Policy 2
(Sustainable Modes of Production and Consumption, Global Change, Eco Systems and
Bio-diversity, Supporting Actions and Mixed Actions)
Scientific Support to an Integration of Notions of Quality and Security of the Production
Environments, Processes and Goods in a Context of Sustainable Development
Research on the Environment
Research on Sustainable Economic Management, Regional Sustainability, Research on
Global Change, Socio-Ecological Research)
Economy, Ecology and Technology (EET)
Dutch Initiative for Sustainable Development (NIDO)
HABIFORM (Expertise Network – Multiple Use of Space)
Urban and Regional Planing
Infrasystems for Sustainable Cities
The Sustainable City
Economics for Sustainable Development
Sustainable Forestry in Southern Sweden

UK 2
(individual programmes)
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 107
Sustainable Food Production
Sustainable Coastal Zone
Sustainable Management of the Mountain Region
Paths to Sustainable Development – Behaviour, Organisations, Structures (Ways Ahead)
Innovation Systems Supporting a Sustainable Growth
Environmental Strategy Research Programme
Towards a Sustainable Urban Environment
EPSRC Infrastructure and Environment Programme
Environment Agency Sustainable Development R&D Programme
Sustainable Development Commission
Sustainable Technologies Initiative – LINK Programme
Source: Whitelegg, K.; Weber, M; Leone, F. 2002: National Research Activities and Sustainable Development, Research Report EUR 20389 EN.
ARC/JRC-IPTS: Vienna/Sevilla
Due to the importance of social, cultural, political and
geographical context, these programmes reveal considerable
differences. For this reason any comparison
should define its aims and objectives clearly.
BENEFITS AND PITFALLS OF COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Comparing methods and practises for organising
research programmes has obvious limitations. The
transferability of one particular method or practise
from one country to another or even to the EU level
is restricted. Each programme has been designed in a
specific national, cultural and political context and
there is no guarantee that a successful programme in
one country could be transferred to another. In fact,
without careful consideration of the context of research
programmes, “best practise” is difficult to
define and even more difficult to implement.
Comparisons do, however, play a valuable role. They
can be used as a useful tool to help reflect on each
individual situation. As Sheila Jasanoff (2002) points
out “comparisons offer a novel vantage point from
which to question ones own presumptions of
rationality – comparison is a tonic to liberate the
imagination. A comparison of sustainable development
research programme rationales and practises
can provide the basis for questioning and reflecting
on European practises in this area.
2 Not all UK programmes identified in the country report as addressing SD have been included in this table to be able to compare the pro-
grammes across the seven countries

108 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
There are already examples where one programme
has benefited from the experiences in another. The
German programme “Research on the Environment”
was influenced by the Dutch debate on approaches
for sustainability-based research policy. The current
concept of the German programme partially integrates
previous approaches to sustainable development
research but, also aims to extend them
methodologically (Coenen/Krings 2002). There are
other examples where sustainable development programmes
have started to learn from one another
through working jointly with each other. This has
been the case with the German funding priority
Socio-Ecological Research and the Austrian Landscape
Research Programme. In February 2002 these
two programmes issued a joint call for projects3 .
Another example is the Dutch programme NIDO
which has recently began looking at internationalisation
(Roome 2002).
The comparisons drawn on in this paper were originally
used to support the process of designing the and
co-ordinating research activities for sustainable development
on the European level during the preparation
of the sixth framework programme
(Whitelegg/Weber 2002).
The following section analyses examples from the
programmes to illustrate the three key factors in
organising research for sustainable development,
defining research for sustainable development,
including research types and thematic content, and
designing research for sustainable development. It
attempts to condense the main elements that underlie
the programmes in order to allow a comparison to
take place.
RESEARCH TYPE AND AIMS
The debate concerning the definition of research for
sustainable development has been prominent in many
European countries since the middle of the eighties.
Initially, the Dutch experience dominated the discussion.
More recently, however, the German approach
to organising research for sustainable development
has taken centre stage in the debate. Both these countries
have highly structured programmes that clearly
define the role research for sustainable development
should play and its different approach to current
research methods and practises. In contrast, research
policy in Belgium, Sweden and the UK reveal different
approaches. Whereas Sweden and the UK have
3 However, the future of research for sustainability in Austria is
less secure since a recent decision by the Council for Research
and Sustainable Development stopped funds for the next programme
phase.
both made attempts to establish new types of research
on a smaller scale and with a stronger thematic
delineation, Belgium has taken a more science-policy
approach to organising research process.
The Dutch sustainable development research policy
debate began in the late 1980’s and concentrated on
the development of indicators. Part of this definition
process was orientated towards assessing the scale of
the challenge of sustainable development. The results
concluded that resource activity would have to be
improved by a factor of 10-20 over the period to
2050 in order to secure economic growth, environmental
protection and greater global equity. This was
understood as a clear message to integrate sustainable
development into research policy. The main motivation
being that current productivity improvement
rates were unlikely to achieve the levels aspired to. It
was clear that there was a need for innovation in the
innovation process itself that would create a shift
towards a new development paradigm in which economic,
social and environmental policy aims can be
achieved simultaneously (Weaver/Jansen 2002). The
result was an Inter-Ministerial Sustainable Technology
Development Programme (1992-97).
The DTO/STD programme was an attempt to integrate
sustainability policy and technology policy. The
programme’s approach was to view innovation as a
social process where social networks play a key role in
creating and stabilising new technologies. It integrated
a series of tools that ensured the basic principles
of stakeholder participation, adaptive management
and “learning-by-doing” were implemented.
These included “back-casting”, “whole chain” approaches,
“constructive technology assessment” and
“social niche” management. An important element of
the programme was the identification of three different
time tracks, short, medium and long term. The
assumption behind the three track approach is the
long lead-time for developing and securing sustainable
technologies. Work on the medium term of five
to twenty years needs to start now. This runs in parallel
to short-term environmental protection aims and
longer-term system renewal aims.
The experiences of the DTO/STD programme have
had a significant impact on the development of subsequent
research programmes in support of sustainable
development in the Netherlands. The methods
developed for encouraging innovation in the innovation
process are being further developed in the
NIDO4 programme whereas several of the innova-
4 NIDO – Nederlands Initiatief voor Duurzame Ontwickkeling
(Dutch Initiative for Sustainable Development)

tion lines are being developed in the EET 5 and ICES-
KIS 6 impulse projects.
In Germany, the Scientific Council came to he conclusion
in 1994 that the “human science research
activities investigating the relations between society
and environment [....] are up to now little developed
elements of environmental research” (Wissenschaftsrat
94 quoted in Coenen/Krings 2002). The first step
taken to integrate the social sciences with environmental
research was the funding priority Urban Ecology.
It was, however, the establishment of the German
programme Research on the Environment in
1997 that marked the move from problem-orientated
research to sustainability-orientated research with
regard to the integration of environmental, economic
and social aspects of sustainable development
(Willms-Heget/Balzer 2000 quoted in
Coenen/Krings 2002).
The programme Research on the Environment is
comprised of four funding priorities, Sustainable
Economic Management, Regional Sustainability,
Research on Global Change and Socio-Ecological
Research. Each funding priority consists of four to
five thematic priorities. The strength of the programme
lies in the fact that it combines thematic
dimensions with a strong new methodological element
aimed at the integration of the three pillars of
sustainable development. The central features of the
approach are inter-disciplinarity and the integration of
field actors into the research process.
The new research process has been named “search
processes” as the research also includes projects
which aim to explore the potential of such research.
the funding priority Socio-Ecological Research is
such an example. The approach described here is,
however, not rigidly applied throughout the programme
and each funding and thematic priority
adapts it to suit its own needs and actors. It is more
important to communicate and establish this type of
research than it is to impose particular individual
elements.
In the Socio-Ecological Research programme this is
also achieved through the three central goals of project
funding, structural funding and executive training.
These three are specifically aimed at including
small, non-university and non-governmental research
5
EET – Economics, Ecology and Technology Programme
6
ICES-KIS is the Inter-ministerial working group that advises on
strengthening the knowledge infrastructure. It advises on the
spending of a budget drawn from natural gas revenues. This
budget funds the programmes HABIFORM – Expertise Network
„Multiple Use of Space“, CONNEKT – transport congestion
programme, NIDO - Economics, Ecology and Technology
Programme and SKB – Soil Quality Management
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 109
institutes in the research process and through the
establishment of a new generation of academics who
are qualified to do trans-disciplinary work.
The Dutch and the German programmes have in
common the fact that they have both defined what
research activities can do to support sustainable development.
Both programmes have large involvement
of non-academic participants and aim to sue research
as a driver of change towards a sustainable transition.
Although there are similarities between the two programmes
described previously (Dutch and German)
and the Belgium programme, the basic understanding
of the role of research for sustainable development
differs fundamentally. The similarity lies in the fact
that the Belgian programme is also highly structured.
However, the Belgian approach to organising research
for sustainable development does not place
the same emphasis on the research process and the
inclusion of different types of actors that can be
found in the Dutch and German programmes.
The Belgian Scientific Support Plan for a Sustainable
Development Policy does precisely what it states and
focuses on research that will support the policy making
process. The first support plan was conceived in
1996 and moved into its second phase in 2000. The
plan is closely linked to the Belgian Federal Plan for
Sustainable Development. Although the aim of the
programme is to support an integrated approach both
of policy areas and of scientific disciplines it does not
display the same level of methodological development
that forms the basis of the German and Dutch
programmes.
The final two national programmes described in this
section, Sweden and the UK, have had significantly
higher barriers to overcome in their respective research
systems. This has influenced their ability to
define research for sustainable development. The
funding structures of both countries are fragmented
and consist of individual research councils who bear
the main responsibility for defining research activities
in their own fields. The co-ordination barriers to
defining research policy for sustainable development
are considerably higher than in the three countries
described previously. In Sweden and in the UK there
are many more smaller and less co-ordinated research
programmes that thematically fit into the competencies
of one of the funding bodies. This does not
mean that the individual research activities are not
interesting and well developed, but that the approach
taken towards research for sustainable development is
neither methodologically nor thematically as developed
as in the Dutch or German case.
The UK has taken several steps in recent years to

110 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
rectify the lack of co-ordination and strategy regarding
research policy for sustainable development. It
has established a research network for sustainable
development. The network aims to become a clearing
house for research that addresses sustainable development.
Research for sustainable development being
defined as research that combines environmental
research with either the economic or social dimension,
the one-plus-one criterion (Eames 2001).
THEMATIC
The type of research and the role of research for
sustainable development identified by national research
policy to a certain extent defines the framework
for the thematic content. This can be seen in
the case of the Dutch programme described above
and its focus on innovation processes. However, the
focus in the Netherlands is equally formed by the
specific Dutch geographical, economic, social and
environmental situation. The thematic focus is closely
linked to immediate environmental problems. The
Netherlands has a particular geographical situation
consisting of a high water table and slow drainage.
On the other hand, the country generates high levels
of waste due to its processing activities mainly from
its strong refining and petrochemicals sector. The
Dutch economy is heavily dependent on adding value
to imports and exporting final products. Approximately
70% of GDP is derived from imported ecocapacity
(Weaver et al 2000).
The context in the Netherlands goes some way to
explaining the sustainable development research
policy’s focus on de-coupling economic growth from
sustainable development. The same thematic focus
can be observed in Austria. Although there are several
separate programmes that focus on sustainable
development in Austria, the programme with the
broadest thematic approach to sustainable development
is the Austrian Landscape Research Programme.
It focuses on the sustainable utilisation of
landscapes in Austria’s. Austria’s dependency on
tourism also goes someway to explaining the need to
focus research on integrating policy goals with regard
to its landscape.
The national, political, cultural and environmental
setting thus shapes the context in which the programmes
are developed. Within these contexts however,
a variety of concepts are used to define the
individual programme goals. In Germany and Austria,
the definition process is considered to be an integral
part of the research programme. The German funding
priority Socio-Ecological Research did not start
life as a call for proposals but, with an initial pro-
gramme phase of twenty five explorative projects that
aimed to develop the aims of the programme and to
mobilise researchers to get involved in interdisciplinary
projects (GSF 2002). The thematic focus
of the first call for tenders is based on the results of
the first phase. These are nutrition and health, policy
strategies, infrastructure of public utilities, and regional
sustainability.
Other national programmes have also developed
considerably different methods for designing the
thematic goals of the research programmes. Of particular
interest are the Belgium Scientific Support
Plan for a Sustainable Development and the Dutch
back-casting methodology used to help formulate the
DTO/STD programme.
The Belgium national sustainable development programme
aims to support the Federal Plan for Sustainable
Development 7 . The plan is developed by an
interdepartmental committee and follows the Agenda
21 guidelines. The research activities are designed to
provide advice to the policy makers who are responsible
for the Federal Plan. The specific programme
themes thus concentrate on those in the Federal Plan.
The research concentrates on the integration of the
three pillars of sustainable development and the implications
for the policy-making process.
Dutch sustainability research works on three different
levels based on sustainability targets with horizons of
30-50 years. Activities are designed to address the
different levels. The structured nature of the activities
in the Netherlands entails a good coverage of issues
and also consists of formal reviews that are able to
identify important gaps, also through foresight studies.
This is by far the most sophisticated method for
defining short, medium and long term goals in research
programmes.
DESIGN
Research for sustainable development and the generation
of context specific knowledge presents challenges
not just with regard to the definition of research
programmes but, also concerning the implementation
of such research activities. The goals and
objectives of sustainable development research differ
from those of current research practises. This means
also the implementation of such programmes has to
differ. These have needed to development ways to
include concepts such as trans-disciplinarity, inter-
7 It should be noted that Belgium (together with the Netherlands)
is one of the only countries that specifically links its sustainable
development programme to its federal sustainable development
plan. In other countries the responsibilities are divided
between different ministries or research councils.

disciplinarity, multiple time frames and different
spatial levels into research activities.
The development of concepts and methodologies for
the implementation of research for sustainable development
is more advanced in those programmes that
have defined a role for sustainable development such
as Germany and Holland. National programmes in
Sweden and the UK are interesting from a thematic
point of view but, the programme methodology is
not as developed.
The UK has interesting thematic programmes and the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC) has developed new programmes to support
sustainable development. The Infrastructure and
Environment Programme is of particular relevance.
This programme aims to set up a series of multidisciplinary
consortia who will work closely with the
users of the research. Another EPSRC programme is
the Towards a Sustainable Urban Environment programme.
It has also been designed to carry out interand
trans-disciplinary projects concerning surrounding
the future development of the urban environment.
There is, however, less understanding in these
projects of the difficulties of inter- and transdisciplinary
research activities and less support for the
consortia. This is despite the fact that the UK research
councils are aware of the difficulties faced by
such research activities (Joint Research Councils
2000).
Two examples from the German Research on the
Environment Programme give interesting examples
of how trans-disciplinarity can be used as a key element
to promote sustainable research activities at the
project level. The objective of the Regional Approaches
funding measure of the Regional Sustainability
priority area is to create social processes. Scientific
knowledge is combined with other different
perspectives including social and interest groups from
the region. The goal of the projects is to combine
theory with practise and to initiate social change
through developing new models and options for
acting. Experiences so far have highlighted the difficulties
of integrating the social dimension. Addressing
all three dimensions of sustainable development
together can cause conflicts. However, valuable lessons
have been learned concerning the involvement
of non-scientific actors. Such actors have to be included
in the project at an early stage and kept involved
throughout. They should not just be handed
the finished project.
Another example is the funding measure Framework
for Innovations Towards a Sustainable Economic
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 111
Behaviour. This sub-programme aims to expand on
the achievements made in technical efficiency by
including the social dimension. It looks at three central
questions: the role of the State, the development
of indicators for sustainable development and the
development of indicators. The integration of political
institutions such as the Federal Environment
Office, the Ministry of the Environment and the
Ministry of Trade and Commerce into the research
process as these institutions are responsible for the
framework conditions for innovation. One of the
interesting aspects of the Socio-Ecological Research
Programme is the continuous development of the
research methodology. An example is the project
Evalunet, an “infrastructure project”, aimed at developing
assessment methods and criteria for transdisciplinary
research.
The Belgian approach is different again as its current
Scientific Support Plan for a Sustainable Development
Policy (SPSD II) consists of two parts that are
linked by separate projects. The first part has a
greater social science focus on issues such as energy,
agro-food and transport and the second part has a
greater environmental focus on climate and ecosystems.
These two parts do not attempt to integrate
disciplines. This is left up to the mixed actions that
aim to draw on the results of both parts. The selection
criteria for these projects are based on the precautionary
principle, vertical and horizontal policy
integration and social equity to name just a few (Verbeiren
2002). The Belgium programme is very focused
on the requirements of the policy process. It
does not include actors other than those from the
policy making process.
Developing selection and assessment criteria that are
sensitive to research for sustainable development is
also important. The German Socio-Ecological Programme
has taken steps in this direction and assesses
a project’s ability to clearly formulate the problem
field. Projects are furthermore assessed as to their
relevance to three cross-cutting central topics: theoretical
development of methods and instruments, the
relationship between theory and practise and the
relationship between gender and environment.
Conclusions
A comparison of such complex programmes that
cover a wide range of subjects and use a variety of
methods can easily get lost in describing the benefits
of each individual programme in its own context.
However, the purpose of this paper was to identify
three elements (the role research should play in supporting
sustainable development, the thematic focus

112 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
of the programme and the process that facilitate the
development of sustainable development programmes)
and analyse different ways of dealing with
them.
The conclusion, rather than summarising the results
or trying to pick out best practise, will focus on an
element of sustainable development design that links
all three of the individual elements and in doing so
can be considered one of the key elements for successful
programme design.
UMBRELLA PROGRAMMES
The comparison of the programmes of seven countries
has shown that some individual countries have
established highly developed programmes and have
recognised the necessity to restructure the research
process through redefining each of the three steps. In
the majority of cases this has meant developing a
concept of sustainability research and giving the
programmes a high national profile. In Belgium,
Germany and the Netherlands sustainability research
does not take place on the level of the individual
programme, but is organised into a structured “umbrella
programme” that defines the focus of each
sub-programme and places this within the framework
of the whole programme.
There are many benefits to organising sustainable
development research under one programme and not
in separate programmes focused on thematic themes.
Firstly, synergies can be used through the development
of process and organisational aspects of programme
design. In “umbrella programmes” research
on the research process plays an important part in the
development of the programme. The development of
concepts and methods to deal with inter- and transdisciplinarity
and other concepts described above is
vital for the development of the programme. These
are supported as a separate element that feeds its
results into the other sub-programme and projects
and is continually fed with results from their experiences
Equally important is the continuity that “umbrella
programmes” provide. Research for sustainable development
aims to establish a research community
that is able to perform inter- and trans-disciplinary
research. This can be facilitated through “umbrella
programmes” that are able to run long term programmes
and have the visibility to attract actors who
would not otherwise have been involved. It takes
time to build up a network of research who can perform
such research. Individual research programmes
run by one ministry or research council find it more
difficult to establish a research community. This is
especially the case when the programme ends and the
networks that have been established are to a certain
extent lost if there is no follow up programme or
resources available for inter- and trans-disciplinary
research.
A final benefit can be seen in the “umbrella programme’s”
ability to co-ordinate research activities. It
is able to identify gaps and see synergies in the
themes and subjects that are addressed. Such programmes
also have opportunity to set aside a proportion
of the resources for definition at a later date.
That is, they are able to take stock of the results and
define the allocation of the second stage based on the
results of the first stage. The study on which this
paper is based gave the impression that individual
programmes tended to be more rigid in their planning
and have less room for change.
The transferability of the methods and concepts
depends on the ability to analyse the these in their
contexts and draw conclusions that are relevant for
each specific situation. The design and development
of “umbrella programmes” is one area where programmes
have learnt from each other.
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Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 113

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 114-125.
Sustainability Science: Towards an Evaluation Methodology for Research
Programmes
Raimund Bleischwitz, Philipp Schepelmann, Jürgen Schäfer *
1. Introduction
It has become increasingly clear that the political
concept of sustainability poses several challenges for
research. If science is about analysing problems and
developing tools to solve them, science ought to
understand what the problems are. To name but a
few: poverty, water scarcity and water pollution,
desertification, loss of biological diversity, climate
change, famine, etc. They are interrelated in several
loops. Challenges for science in this context are:
• Understanding of causes and effects of certain
problems,
• Analyse system interrelations and boundaries,
• Develop tools for response options,
• Monitor ongoing processes of change on
the level of both nature and societies.
The acknowledgement of that challenge is increasingly
visible in a number of international documents.
The International Journal of Sustainable Development
published a special issue on Sustainability Science
in 1999. In the same year, the US National Research
Council re-leased a report entitled “Our common
journey”. International programmes such as
IGBP and IHDP have made sustainability science a
centre point of their agendas. More recently, the
prestigious journal “Science” published a pathbreaking
paper entitled „sustainability science“ written
by an interdisciplinary, international team of researchers.
An internet-platform is provided by Harvard
University. No doubt that these activities now
gain more and more importance in the academic
community as a whole, and not just among a few likeminded,
concerned scientists.
A number of characteristics seem to exhibit sustainability
science. First of all, it is driven by the most
pressing problems as articulated by certain stakeholders
from societies worldwide. This, indeed, may
* Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy,
Germany. Contacts: raimund.bleischwitz@wupperinst.org,
philipp.schepelmann@wupperinst.org, juergen.schaefer@uniessen.de
lead to an agenda different from conventional science.
Such kind of problem-solving research needs to
ensure integration, encompassing communities and
actors in their various methodologies. Parts of such
integration may need to honour the vast amount of
informal expertise (“tacit knowledge”) derived from
practical experience. The implication here is a necessary
focus on regional and local scales, from which
horizontal connections as well as vertical lessons
towards the global scale might be derived. All those
characteristics have in common that they overcome
both the artificial divide between “basic” and “applied”
research as well as the usual disciplinary borderlines.
While maintaining the strength of those
disciplines, additional efforts will have to be devoted
towards interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.
In doing so, research needs to establish new
headquarters of knowledge that connect basic findings
with application, monitoring, assessment, review,
and decision-making in permanent loops.
Against this background, sustainability poses a formidable
challenge for research policy and research programmes,
too. As research relies on some kind of
public funding, ensuing policies bear responsibility of
how the new knowledge can be gained. It can be
expected that the over-all design and the processes of
formulating and administrating sustainability research
programmes needs some revision. As sustainability
has a strong background in policy-making, it may well
be the case that research policy administrations are
well aware of these challenges, while established
research organisations may hesitate to meet new
challenges. On the other hand, some researchers may
wish to go ahead, but lack of financial support due to
institutional constraints resisting to any change. Both
hypotheses make clear that institutions of re-search
policy are essential rules of the game in sustainability
science. They form both direction and speed by
which sustainability science emerges.
The following article gives an overview of how the
European research landscape responds to sustainability
science. More important than describing ongoing
processes of change in re-search policy, however, are
processes of adaptive learning that enable research
policy-makers to gradually improve their RTD policies.
This is a clear plea for an evaluation methodology
allowing an assessment of research programmes.
The aim of such an evaluation methodology would be

comparing different programmes, identifying bestpractices,
and adding scores to certain programmes in
order to arrive at a ranking among them.
After describing research policy on sustainability in
Europe, the following paper outlines a methodology
for evaluating related research programmes, which is
part of an ongoing EU project called “AIRP-SD”. 1 It
starts from the insight that sustainability science requires
an adaptation of prevailing evaluation approaches.
The paper explains that outcome is more
critical compared to other branches of research because,
by necessity, sustainability research is concerned
with societal change. In addition, a countryspecific
context ought to be taken into account. The
paper introduces a methodology that is largely based
upon certain standard questions added by stakeholder
interviews. Following the approach of adaptive learning,
this methodology is tested against the German
socio-ecologic research programme, which has started
in 1998. Some tentative conclusions are drawn.
2. Research Policy on Sustainability in Europe
Research policy on sustainability in Europe can be
traced back into the eighties. At that time, it included
diverse issues such as environmental research, climate
change research, environ-mental policy analysis, environmental
and resource economics, energy research,
agricultural research, transport research, clean technologies,
management of natural resources, etc. At
that time, those topics were hardly related to each
other. Also the 4th and 5th RTD-Framework programmes
of the EU have reflected the need for sustainability.
Further research policy activities have been prepared,
inter alia, by a study of the European Science and
Technology Observatory (ESTO 2001) on “National
Research Activities for Sustainable Development”. It
provides a common platform from which some
workshops and further studies moved to define more
concrete research requirements. The study results
show a considerable amount of convergence of thematic
priorities among analysed member states and
the EU. At the same time, some common problems
have been identified that seem to emerge during the
formulation and administration of those programmes:
goal setting, programme co-ordination, inter- and
transdisciplinary research, project selection criteria,
setting-up of research networks. 2 These problems can
1
See webpage http://www.airp-sd.net as well as the acknowledgements
of this paper.
2
See European Commission / Joint Research Centre (2002),
Expert Group on Competitive & Sustainable Production and
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 115
be considered partly due to the specifics of sustainability
science and partly due to translating these
challenges into the administrative needs of funding
organisations. The upcoming 6th RTD Framework
Programme now promises to be crucial for a focus
on sustainable development.
Though the thematic priorities in Europe converge
more and more, the organisational arrangements and
institutional features show great diversity. Some
countries (e.g. Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany)
provide a significant amount of government
research aid to funding projects (between 30 – 40 %),
whereas other states like e.g. France, Italy earmark
less than 20 % of their research budget for project
funding. This discrepancy suggests the existence of at
least two different “central” RTD-systems 3 in Europe
(Eastern European countries would probably constitute
a third group):
• One group of countries with (mainly) programme-oriented
RTD-structures,
• A second group of countries with (mainly)
institution-oriented RTD-structures.
This institutional framework may explain to a certain
extent why examples of SD-oriented programmes in
France and Italy are hard to find. Obviously, some
European countries with strong RTD tradition dedicate
an important share of their RTD funding to large
research organisations, such as Universities and National
Laboratories. In fact, a search for SD-oriented
programmes in Italy, France, Portugal and Spain
confirms that the development of RTD along national
research programmes has exceptional character
in all those countries. This is why the overall institutional
framework of RTD also has important influence
on the capacities and organisational forms of
SD-oriented research.
Another aspect is striking. Those countries that seems
to be ahead in terms of environmental policy formulation
also seems to have pioneering research institutes.
In particular Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria,
and Germany have several research institutes with
high profile in the sustainability debate. Other countries
such as UK profit from their well-known outreach
in research policy, which seem to help in advancing
excellent sustainability research, too. Without
overstretching both factors it seems plausible to
conclude that a) sound environmental policy and b)
excellent research in general are favourable conditions
in developing pioneering sustainability research. This
Related Service Industries in Europe (2001).
3
For more information on the French RTD-System, see Mustar /
Larédo (2002).

116 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
conclusion is backed when one considers other countries
where both factors are lacking. Countries like
Greece, Spain, and Portugal are lagging behind in
terms of developing sustainability research. This also
applies, by and large, to the accession countries of
Eastern Europe. Other countries like Italy, France,
Ireland may be seen as countries with ongoing catchup
processes. 4
After all, European research policy on sustainability is
more diverse than any view on thematic priorities
would reveal. This has important consequences for
future research policy. Obviously, research policy has
to keep an eye on capacity building, on the emergence
of networks among researchers of various countries,
on the different funding situation, and on the different
status quo of excellence. It may well be the case
that these institutional features are more important
for sustainability science than selecting thematic priorities
for mutual research.
A closer look at European sustainability research
policy shows some drawbacks of the prevailing surveys.
The large ESTO study could not cover all the
EU member states, non-EU states such as Japan or
USA and developing countries have not been covered
neither. The ongoing AIRP-SD project has widened
this scope by inclusion of some programmes outside
the ESTO scope. As a second drawback, ESTO
seems too broad in terms of programme de-scription
within the countries chosen. Further analysis has
been conducted in order to screen these programmes
and to select those programmes that can be considered
innovative in terms of entailing knowledge that
ought to be made explicut in order to diffuse to other
countries. A simple overview or a landscape typically
fall short in deriving that knowledge. Here, a science
on sustainability science might find its place as suggested
by Funtowicz.
A pragmatic step towards any science on sustainability
science might be seen in an evaluation methodology
that helps to improve ongoing efforts (Herrick /
Sarewitz 2000). By starting with ex-post evaluation of
research policies and programmes, scientific assessments
might be able to draw conclusions helpful for
furthering future policies. Towards that aim, one has
to analyse boundaries among ongoing research programmes
in order to set aside approaches that hardly
4 The access to information on sustainability research policy also
differs significantly from country to country. While some
countries have an open information policy others have not
and pose high transaction cost of search. Only in a few cases,
research programmes and/or results can be found in the
internet or in English. Also the willingness of ministries and
diplomatic services to co-operate varies considerably. See for a
good example the German webpage www.fona.de.
contribute to sustainability and to select most promising
approaches. This is sensitive because clear-cut
criteria about what sustainability science exactly is are
not yet defined. Developing those criteria for screening
information and selecting innovative programmes
are thus a laborious task both for analysis and for
implementation during search. They ought to be
discussed with various stakeholders of research policy
in order to avoid any bias. The tentative criteria for
screening and selecting programmes suggested here
are as follows:
Programmes, which target sustainable development
especially aim at improv-ing the sustainability of
production and consumption patterns (e.g. by reducing
and/or restructuring energy and material
throughput) and at addressing challenges/threats to
sustainable development.
1) Programmes that aim at contributing to
greater equity in society (intergenerational and
intra-generational equity respectively) on a
larger scale.
2) Programmes that address the necessity of new
visions and systems redesign.
3) Programmes that aim at improving the capacity
for innovation and change in society.
4) Programmes that use innovative organisational
approaches for research within the programme
or that develop innovative methodological
tools.
Though these criteria might look simple, they are in
fact hard to meet if one starts with standard processes
of ordinal ranking via attaching single dots to certain
programmes. Criterion (1) almost entirely excludes
those parts of basic environmental research that have
no link to production and consumption patterns.
Other areas of basic research, such as material or
energy research will indeed remain relevant. Also,
basic research in the human disciplines re-mains its
relevance. Our point is that the huge amount of environmental
research is delineated towards the criteria
mentioned. A European expert group on competitive
and sustainable production (2001) as well as Suisse
experts (Defila/Di Gulio 1999) also underline such
an approach.
Criterion (2) follows directly from the well-known
definition of sustainability. When screening existing
research policies, however, programmes addressing
the notion of equity are underrepresented. Reasons
might be manifold and won’t be outlined here. By
and large, this criterion suggests rising the importance
of the few equity programmes within overall research.
Same remarks apply to criterion (3); Factor Four/Ten

as well as research on new paradigms/visions and on
new systems e.g. for energy, mobility and food are
relevant here. Both criteria are a special feature of
AIRP-SD and, indeed, subject to discussion.
Criterion (4) is especially targeted towards societal
impact of research. This follows both from specific
features of sustainability science as described above
and from the observation that any technical potential
for sustainability improvements lacks of information
and adaptation deficits within markets and society as
a whole. Based upon recent research findings of e.g.
Nobel laureate Douglass C. North, capacity for innovation
and change in society depends upon flexible
institutions and organisations that actively innovate.
Thus, participation of enterprises, environmental
NGOs, and others within research, targeting their
specific interests by research, and addressing framework
conditions for action are essential pillars for
research programmes. Sustainability science must be
concerned with its outcomes and impacts! Again,
sustainability research ought to address questions of
real societal change, and not only re-search itself. This
is a particular strength of the Suisse approach to
evaluation (Defila / Di Gulio 1999).
Criterion (5) refers to research management and
methodologies. It can be assumed that any network
of research organisations (as foreseen by EU framework
research programme, see also Luukonen 1998,
Laredo 1998) is superior to existing single organisations
for reasons of adaptation flexibility and avoiding
path dependencies. Georghiou (2001: 902) concludes
in his analysis on research collaboration in Europe
that coordination between institutions presents a
greater challenge than operating R&D programmes.
According to his view, the subsidiary principle should
also be applied in decision-making on research programmes
by institutionalising the concepts of variable
geometry, bottom-up participation, and by supporting
mobility of researchers. Thus, programmes that actively
foster international networking activities among
research organisations by innovative processes ought
to be identified.
As mentioned above, interdisciplinary research is
particularly important for sustainability research as
the notion is based upon integrating the dimensions
of economic, social and environmental development.
The Suisse study is very specific of how interdisciplinary
and trans-disciplinary research might be evaluated
(Defila/Di Gulio 1999). Interdiciplinarity, however,
can either be used as an excuse for methodological
vagueness or for a hidden imperialism by one
single discipline. Those who have reviewed single
project appraisals for one programme are well aware
of the different caveats! Criterion (5) to develop in-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 117
novative methodological tools hence primarily refers
to interdisciplinary research, but it might well include
a renewal within one single discipline, too. Within this
criterion (5), some further attention might be given to
the funding of small and independent research institutes
and to funding for young researchers.
3. Towards an Evaluation Methodology
According to the European Commission (1999):
“The evaluation of public interventions consist of
judging its value in relation to explicit criteria, and on
the basis of information that has been specially gathered
and analysed”. The European Commission distinguishes
three forms of evaluation applied by the
EU-Member States:
• Managerial evaluation (aimed at improving
management);
• Democratic evaluation (used for accounting
to citizens);
• Pluralistic evaluation (trying to bring about
agreement).
The AIRP-SD evaluation is a mixture between managerial
and pluralistic evaluation: it provides information
to improve management of the Communities rtd
programmes and for bringing about agreement on the
content of rtd for sustainable development in a
Common Research Area.
According to Rist et al (1990) evaluation appeared in
the 1950s, when the legitimacy and effectiveness of
actions of the public sector was subject to political
debate in the USA. The Planning, Programming,
Budgeting System (PPBS) emerged in the United
States and spread to the northern European countries
(UK, Sweden, the Netherlands). These countries
applied evaluation according to their specific cultural
background and political priorities that were often
connected to budgetary restrictions. In the U.K., for
example, the evaluation was linked to the public
service reform in the 1980s.
Evaluation became part of a more decentralised and
responsible governance, which is reflected in three
main objectives (see: European Commission, 1999):
• The cognitive aim of assessing the functioning
and effectiveness of policies and programmes;
• The normative aim of judging the value of
policies and programmes;
• The instrumental aim of improving the programme
implementation.
By pursuing these objectives evaluators introduce

118 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
value judgement into a process constituting the
evaluator’s specific mandate, which is distinct from
the more neutral functions of an administrator or
scientist.
The AIRP project works under the assumption that
rtd programmes for sustainable development are
complex adaptive systems. By this nature they are
inherently unknowable. Uncertainty and surprise are
inevitable. Therefore, the AIRP project partners tried
to structure a learning process to limit uncertainty
(integrated learning, see figure 1). Thus, the AIRP
Adaptive Integration of
R h d
Human
Di i
Assessment
Evaluation f
Methodology
– 6th December 2002,
B li
Policy
f
Sustainable
D l t
Cycle of Integrated
L Proposed i
for AIRP -
SD
Research Programs
Hypothese
Overview of
Pin light of
data, i d
experienc i i
With the general understanding that the AIRP-SD
project will not test a given evaluation methodology
for sustainable development rtd programmes, but
learn to develop a methodology the project, partners
set three central goals:
1. Development of an evaluation methodology
for SD research programmes;
2. Identification of best practices for research
programmes;
3. Development criteria for research programme
specifications and design.
The AIRP-SD project defines research and technological
development for sustainable development as
rtd practice with the following aims:
• Reorientation of the research process;
• Identification and evaluation of new innovation
trajectories;
Figure 1: Cycle of integrated learning
project itself is an adaptive system that observes other
adaptive learning systems.
The AIRP project itself is not only an observing
system, but also a system that is being ob-served by
relevant rtd stakeholders (usually programme managers
express the highest interest in the AIRP-SD project,
but also the research community such as the
constituency of the 2002 Berlin conference on the
Human Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change).
Evaluate
RPrograms h as Tests
Hypothese f
Page 6
• Management and reduction of uncertainty
and risk;
• Fostering of a dynamic, co-evolutionary,
systems level approach to mange transition;
• Creation of conditions for transition.
These criteria imply that rtd for sustainable development
is different than “traditional” rtd. AIRP-SD has
therefore identified different features that distinguish
rtd for sustainable development from more traditional
research. Usually rtd for sustainable development
aims at paradigmatic change and not just system
renewal; it is often connected to networks of innovators
which are cross-sectoral (research, industry,
policy makers, NGOs) and multidisciplinary with
open and transparent information exchange and it is
multi-criteria oriented (social, ecological, economic).
Furthermore rtd for sustainable development is prescriptive
rather than predictive as well as integral

ather than adjunct.
AIRP involves different stakeholders that either deal
with or are subject to rtd for sustainable development:
• national and local government
• European Parliament
• international organisations
• non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
• trade unions
• science
• industry
• small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)
• agriculture
• consumer groups
• citizens
Representatives of these stakeholder groups have
Adaptive Integration of Research and Policy for Sustainable Development
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 119
PROPOSED HYPOTHESIS
R & D Design Outcomes
Contextual
Conditions
Human Dimensions – 6th December 2002, Berlin Page 9
Figure 2: Proposed hypothesis
been invited to the project’s societal council and are
regularly informed about the progress of the AIRP-
SD project. Other interested par-ties can obtain information
about the project via the internet link:
www.AIRP-SD.net. Internal information such as
reports, deliverables and literature is also disseminated
via a protected internet site in combination
with an advanced project management software.
The AIRP-project’s analysis is performed on the basis
of the following hypothesis (Figure 2 and 3): Contextual
conditions (in society) determine the organisational
structure of rtd programmes. Programme design
and processes influence the outcomes of a project.
The loop should ideally be closed when programme
outcomes influence (improve) society and
thus the contextual conditions of future rtd programmes.

120 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
AIRP SD Working hypotheses
I
Contextual conditions and
Design and Process characteristics
of the programs strongly influence
the nature and quality of Outcomes
of a program.
The following information is used to analyse and
judge different programs and to gain experience in
using the preliminary evaluation methodology:
Outcomes: nature and quality, including impacts on
societal change;
Design and Process characteristics: what, how and
how well,
Contextual conditions: dominant factors.
Nature and quality of the outcomes will be related to
contextual conditions and design and process characteristics
and process characteristics will be checked on
their consistency with a sustainability orientation.
To this end factual information concerning the following
aspects will be collected and judged:
The context of a rtd programme for sustainable development
is determined by the develop-mental and
sustainability status and trends, the understanding and
conceptualisation of these trends within society and
at political and research policy making levels, the
organisation of science and research and the status of
scientific capital and capacities. These factors result in
a specific design and processes within the programme
structure. The important features of the programme’s
organisation are the management and finances of the
programme, the research, decision-making, communication
/ dissemination strategies and the management
of uncertainty and risks. The design and processes
of a programme result in outcomes.
AIRP-SD evaluates the contribution of these outcomes
to:
proposed or actual solution to expansion and quality
of choice set;
proposed or actual solution to achievement of sustainability
goals and objectives;
strategic re-orientation and path finding;
II
The degree of correspondence to
sustainability orientation of
Design and Process characteristics
of the programs strongly influence
the nature and quality of Outcomes
of a program.
Figure 3: Project hypothesis
III
Contextual Conditions, Design
and Process characteristics,
and Outcomes of a program
are interconnected in a loop.
Outcomes
=
Output / Results aimed at + Impacts
scientific capital/capacities;
social capacities and capital;
influencing and transforming stakeholders, actors,
insiders and outsiders.
Evidently, part of these outcomes relate to impacts
on societal change rather than research output per se.
This is justified by the specific characteristics of sustainability
science bit different to conventional scientific
assessment methodologies.
Applying the preliminary evaluation methodology
may yield in suggestions to improve or to adapt the
AIRP-SD methodology. The methodology will be
tested on eight governmental and one nongovernmental
research program:
Sweden Eco-Cycle Program
Ways Ahead Program
Austria Austrian Program on
Technology for Sustainable
Development
Cultural Landscapes
Portugal Human Resources and
Employment in the
Fishery Sector in Scenarios
of Crisis and Change
Netherlands Sustainable Technology
Development
HABIFORM
Germany Socio-Ecological Research
Friends of the Earth Sustainable
Europe/Sustainable
Societies

4. Evaluating the German Socio-Ecological
Research Programme
The socio-ecological research programme is one of
the selected case-study programmes for the first
evaluation phase of the AIRP-SD project. After the
screening of programme-related information sources,
publications and internet sites the AIRP project decided
that the socio-ecological programme would be
among those that would meet most AIRP criteria –
although the programme is just in a starting phase
which decreases the availability of research results.
Furthermore, the programme seems to be well
documented and innovative.
The AIRP-team has invited programme related experts
to participate in the evaluation process. According
to the described methodology, these actors are
regarded important sources to gain information. The
opinions, experiences and judgements are considered
helpful in reflecting and comparing the high demands
of the programme attribution with the problems and
needs in reality.
AIRP has consulted actors from following relevant
groups:
• Funder: German Federal Ministry of Education
and Research (BMBF)
• Institute for Social-Ecological Research
(ISOE): engaged with the preliminary studies
and important actor in the conceptualisation
phase of the programme
• Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) as
representative of the stakeholders
• Project manager of the post doc research
support programme.
The consultation process was subdivided in two
blocks. In order to validate the AIRP criteria, to get
information on additional important criteria, which
might be useful in refining the criteria of the screening
processes and to set the terms of reference, questionnaires
were sent first by email asking
a) for personal important thematic criteria for SD
oriented RTD activities,
b) for the relevance of our five criteria for the programme,
c) for the indication whether the programme meets
our criteria.
In a second step we interviewed relevant actors from
the groups mentioned above.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 121
INTERVIEWS AND COMPLEXES OF QUESTIONS
AIRP had agreed on a certain structure and a number
of “attention points”, aiming at a set of specific questions
and a general evaluation methodology. The
process of adaptive learning, i.e. not starting with a
fully elaborated methodology, has five reasons and
also indicates basic problems of evaluation-processes
related to normative and complex strategies such as
sustain-able development:
1. The project partners are in the process of
agreeing upon a set of questions and methods
for analysing answers,
2. The complexity of possible questions for a
sustainable related research programme is
high,
3. Without categorizing the questions and the
answers the results would be almost worthless,
4. Stringent questionnaires might neglect potentially
explorative interviews in narrative
form,
5. The study group understands the first
evaluation phase as learning and experimental
stage, which will be followed by further
analysis based upon the revised methodology.
In doing so, AIRP-SD has developed an interview
scheme, in which the core questions are subdivided in
three complexes. The first complex is thought as a
first approach including institutional and societal
related questions asking for the role of the interviewee
and his/her institution/organisation in the
programme related surrounding during the preliminary
phases and in the present. Interesting are also
the status of the institution/organisation for and
within the programme, the status of sustainability
within the institution/organisation, etc. It seems that
this set of questions is likely to gain answers on the
context, too, as well as on the ideas of programme
designers behind the officially stated position.
Complex two and three are both process and content-related.
Both are subdivided in questions proving
the results of the screening process (already identified
criteria) and in questions to explore further programme
relevant criteria. We expect to get to know
by this way what is important for the programme and
what can be improved.

122 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
IDENTIFICATION OF CRITERIA
Four from our five basic criteria – as mentioned
above – were subject related. Just one criterion considers
aspects of the design of a research programme.
The thematic criteria are thus not sufficient to judge
the quality of a research programme. The criteria for
the programme design are at least as important as the
thematic criteria and only the combination of both
complexes lead to proper results. The questions on
design are very important for the realisation and
determination of the programmes outcome as its
outcome on project level. During the evaluation of
socio-ecological programme documentation the following
challenges were often reported as important
for sustainable science:
• international relations,
• interdisciplinary,
• transdisciplinary,
• preliminary (exploration) phase,
• construction as a learning programme and
• communication phases and –structures.
The interview partners thus have confirmed AIRP’s
hypothesis that questions on the programme design
should become a high priority in the preliminary
stages of the programme development. According to
the results of the interviews AIRP-SD discussed two
central aspects of design, which might be considered
Figure 4: Interview question scheme and expected benefit
for future programme conceptualisations:
• innovative project selection procedures and
announcements for applications,
• administrative excellence and sufficient administrative
capacities to guarantee efficient
communication-structures and -flows between
project- and programmemanagement.
The outcome of the conceptualisation process of the
socio-ecological programme is recognized as an innovation
in programme design necessary to fulfil the
high demands of sustainability related research activities.
The consultation process during the preliminary
stages of the programme can be seen as exemplary.
Questions remain, whether the design process followed
the demands of the research themes or – the
other way round – whether the design and its mostly
technical needs predetermined the thematic approaches.
GENERATING KNOWLEDGE FOR SUSTAINABILITY
RELATED RESEARCH
The structure of AIRP’s attention points is subdivided
in three basic categories:
• Context
• Design and process
• Outcomes
The concept of the first evaluation report based on

this attention points was completed by a short report
on the analysis on context, design and process and
outcomes. The analysis report detailed mentioned the
strengths and the weaknesses of each of the basic
attention points and can be used as a knowledge base
for the design of future research programmes as well
as a resource to improve the running programme.
The following contextual attention points have been
reflected and analysed:
• Conditions for change (societal/political)
• Aims of the programme
• Societal context
• Scientific challenge and conceptualisation of
the programme
• Thematic context
Regarding to the design and process and as constitutional
essentials of the programme AIRP has detected
and reflected the elements below:
• Programme genesis, consultation and design
process
• The four constitutional elements of the programme:
o Preliminary studies
o Project funding priorities
o Measures for supporting the socioecological
research infrastructure
o Executive training of young researchers
in interdisciplinary working
projects
• The strategic advisory council
• Programme Evaluation and reflection
• Application procedure and project selection
The analysis lead to tentative conclusions to improve
the:
• Application procedure and project selection
• Programme on design level (e.g. better
communication; more cooperation etc.)
• Measures to improve the thematic range
The following attention points regarding to the outcomes
were (could be) detected and reflected according
to the design and the aims of the programme:
• Exploration studies: Results and evaluation
• Project funding activities (not yet available)
• Infrastructure: Example EVALUNET
• Support of young researchers
Accordingly, the analysis has thus lead to knowledge
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 123
about:
• The constitution of a strategic advisory
council
• Exploration studies
• Infrastructure support
• Support of young researchers
• Documentation and information
Tentative Strengths of Tentative Weaknesses
SEP
of SEP
Financing of small and Lack of international
independent research orientation.
while involving them with
more established organisations.
Financing of young re- Lack of integration with
searchers
real processes of change
& implementation.
Inter- and transdisciplinary Strong feature on human
review process
sciences, but weak connection
to natural science.
Tackling the social dimen- Strong conceptual focus
sion of sustainability re- on transition may not
search
attract research on new
visions.
Inherent programme
evolution due to learning
processes via conferences,
strategic advisory council
and conceptual review
Figure 5: Strengths and weaknesses of the socio-ecological
programme
Though the outcome of the programme is limited as
it just started, AIRP could further detect a need for
improvement and / or draw some attention on the
following critical aspects:
• Policy integration
• Project selection and efforts for “sustainable
communication”
• Target- versus problem- oriented research
• Management support.
These aspects have been identified with the help of
the methodology, i.e. the attention points. It thus
seems that AIRP will be able to detect strengths and
weaknesses of research programmes for sustainable
development. The results of the exploration phase to
developing a evaluation methodology for sustainability
related research-programmes; this may well include
some thoughts to improving the structure of
the socio-ecological research programme.
To conclude: The first approach to the socio-

124 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
ecological programme was to get relevant information
available in publications and websites published by
the relevant actors. As every search process it was an
evolutionary development to identify the characteristics
of the programme. After analysing the information,
the study group was able to detect the programme
features. This was necessary to prepare the
interviews, to choose the interview partners and to
get first ideas for the complexes of questions asked
for during the interviews.
The results of the evaluation of the socio-ecological
programme has led to proposals for improving the
methodology based upon experiences in the fields of
criteria selection and inter-view design. Theses characteristics
are usable in general to create indicators
and are able to identify important criteria on designand
thematic level as a recommendation for the
evaluation and creation of (future) sustainability related
research programmes.
5. Conclusions
The overwhelming need for an evaluation methodology
is obvious and has been confirmed by several
stakeholders during the last months. Developing such
a methodology, however, takes some time. Adopting
the approach of adaptive learning in this regard
means that any evaluation has to start when the overall
methodology has not yet been fully spelled out.
This process of try-and-revise imposes additional
workload to both researchers and the manifold stakeholders
involved. The benefit of such a methodology,
on the other hand, can be seen in exactly such a
learning process. It can be expected that the final
outcome will serve the needs of researchers, research
administrators, and possible evaluation organisations.
It then has been tested and revised.
Nevertheless, further tests must be done in order to
check the methodology, to develop a handbook on
how to use it, and to tentatively explore an application
outside the scope chosen. Outside the scope, so
far, are research organisations conducting programmes
by their own. As this is an essential feature
of research policy, the application so far may be seen
limited. If, on the other hand, the AIRP-SD projects
helps to stimulate further discussion and is useful in
assessing programmes, it already serves its purpose.
The policy relevance of such an evaluation methodology
seems obvious. Future research programmes as
well as other organisational features of research can
draw upon horizontal diffusion of experience, leading
to cross-country improvements in Europe and elsewhere.
Knowledge generation among research fund-
ing agencies, thus, will be enhanced. While this methodology
has been developed by researchers and is
devoted to the involvement of other re-searchers, one
may also see a window of opportunities for selforganisation
of sustainability science.
Acknowledgements
This paper benefited much from a grant for the socalled
AIRP-SD project by the European Commission
as part of the STRATA Programme. We wish to
thank Belmiro Martins from DG XII as well as our
AIRP colleagues Gisela Bosch, Fritz Hinterberger,
Silvio Funtowicz, Hogberg Sverker, Leo Jansen,
Renata Mayer-Rieckh, Suhita Osorio-Peters, Angela
Peireira, Hans-Guenther Schwarz, Jan Sendzemir,
and Paul Weaver. For valuable information on the
German socio-ecological programme we also wish to
thank HansVolker Ziegler, Angelika Zahrnt, Angelika
Willms-Herget, Bernd Fischer, Fred Luks, and Thomas
Jahn.
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126 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Part II
Sustainability Knowledge in Political Decisionmaking

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 127-142.
International Institutions, Sustainability Knowledge and Policy Change:
The North American Experience
John Kirton ∗
Introduction
The North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) that took formal effect on January 1, 1994,
and its accompanying North American Agreement on
Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), brought a
revolutionary change in the historic regime for international
environmental governance in North America.
In place of the long established bilateral relationships
between the US and Canada on the one hand,
and the US and Mexico on the other, came an unprecedented
trilateral arrangement directly joining all
three countries. Along with trilateralism came regional
organization, for the NAAEC gave birth to the
first true international organization in North America,
the Commission for Environmental Co-operation
(CEC) (Rugman, Kirton and Soloway 1999, Kirton
1997, Audley 1997, Munton and Kirton 1994,
Mumme and Duncan 1996, Magraw and Charnovitz
1994). Morover, within the CEC and larger NAFTA
regime, the US and Canada from the developed
world, and Mexico from the developing world, were
joined as equals, with virtually no special and differential
arrangements arising as a result of Mexico’s
more limited capacity in financial, scientific and other
fields.
Although many had sought during the NAFTA negotiations
to have the new regime’s extensive environmental
provisions enforced by trade or other sanctions,
few such sanctions were embedded in the actual
agreements. Part 5 of the NAAEC did allow the
US and Mexico to impose trade sanctions against
each other for environmental infractions, and Canada
to use fines with the US and Mexico for similar violations.
However these provisions have never been
employed. In addition, the NAFTA regime came with
a CEC Secretariat with an overall annual budget of
only US$9 million, and with no lending or major
granting funds for sustainable or other forms of
development, of the sort that the European Union
and multilateral development banks have long had.
Only once the CEC had started its operations, and
∗
University of Toronto, Canada. Contact:
john.kirton@utoronto.ca.
was unable to expend its full budget on its regular
programs during their start up phase, did the CEC
create a tiny North American Fund for Environmental
Co-operation (NAFEC). Yet as the CEC’s
regular programs became fully operational, the surplus
available for NAFEC diminished, even as the
overall CEC budget remained frozen in nominal
terms (and thus declined in real terms), and the environmental
needs of North America grew.
With neither “sticks” nor “carrots” of any consequence,
the CEC has been forced to rely for influence
not on heavily bureaucratized, “hard law”, commandand-control
processes or monetary incentives (Abbot
2000, 1996, Hufbauer et al. 2000), but through the
creation, dissemination and application of sustainability
knowledge throughout an open, democratic North
American society. To enhance the effectiveness of
such processes, the CEC could take advantage of the
scientifically-respectful, problem-solving “diplomatic
culture” that has long prevailed in the largely trusting
and co-operative Canada-US relationship (Fox, Hero
and Nye 1976). It could also follow the established
precedents and processes for public consultation and
contributions long employed in Canada-US environmental
governance, led by its central institution, the
International Joint Commission of 1909 (Spencer,
Kirton and Nossal 1982). The outstanding challenge,
however, was whether the science-based, inclusivelyoriented
new CEC regime could work in and for
Mexico. For here the tradition of trusting, scientifically-based
cooperation with the United States, and
open consultation and co-operation between state
and civil society, was far less entrenched.
This study analyses how well and how the sciencecentered
CEC environmental regime has worked for
its member countries, and above all for developing
country member Mexico, as the first decade anniversary
of the CEC’s operation approaches. To do so, it
traces the impact of four mechanisms at the centre of
the CEC’s capacity for knowledge-based change
(Johnson and Beaulieu 1996). The first is the “top
down” Article 13 procedure through which CEC
Secretariat staff can on their own initiative independently
investigate and report on any matter related to
the CEC’s extensive co-operative work program. The
second is the “bottom up” Article 14-15 “citizens
submission” procedure, through which any interested
party can call for a “factual record” on whether na-

128
tional governments are systematically enforcing their
own environmental laws. The third is the standard
scientific Article 10-2 “Taking Stock” state of the
environment report. The fourth is the analytically
innovative Article 10 (6) D “NAFTA Effects” program
of “considering on an ongoing basis the environmental
effects of NAFTA.”
Together these four mechanisms display wide variation
on several key dimensions, notably: the centrality
of civil society (Article 14-15) rather the international
Secretariat (Article 13); the reliance on law (Article
14-15), social science (Article 10-6) or physical science
(Article 10-2); the use of long established (Article
10-2) or not-yet-invented (Article 10-6) assessment
methodologies; and the degree to which Mexico
has or has not participated in the process (fully and
unavoidably in Article 13 and 14-5, reluctantly in
Article 10-6-D, and not at all until very recently in
Article 10-2).
This variation allows for a focused test of those three
mechanisms identified as important ways in which
scientifically-based global environmental regimes
generate change in developing countries (Biermann
2002). These are: 1. expert participation, or “the
participation of Southern experts in international
advisory institutions”; 2. research potential, or developing
countries’ endogenous capacity to assess environmental
change; and 3. issue prominence, or the
salience of environmental issues in the media, legislature,
interest groups and the domestic political process
as a whole. In all three cases the NAAEC-CEC
experience constitutes a “hard test” case of the hypothesis
of international science producing national
policy change through the “three P’s”. For North
America is notable for the overwhelming size of the
US in the NAFTA community, for America’s world
leading community of scientists, research capacity and
non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), and for
the high salience of the NAFTA debate and its environmental
dimensions in American political life
(Steinberg 1997). These distinctive features of the
NAFTA regime suggest either a hegemonic American
scientific imposition on a reluctant but unable-toresist
Mexico, or a Mexico that abandons any effort at
national policy change that is directed by an American-dominated
CEC. Conversely, if the “three P’s”
that have proven their worth in the multilateral realm
also work in the U.S. dominated North American
region, by producing willing, ecologically-enhancing
policy change in Mexico as a result of CEC’s scientific
work, then they will be potent causal variables
indeed.
This analysis finds that the CEC’s science-based
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
programs have generated national policy change in
developing countries, both in NAFTA member Mexico
and prospectively in developing countries outside
(Deere and Esty 2002). In producing such change,
the “three P’s” do indeed matter. But they in turn
depend on additional, deeper factors and alone are
not enough to account for the observed policy
change. In the first instance, expert participation that
has fully and equally included Mexico has made the
hypothesized and ecologically desired difference. But
the outcome has been dependant on: the limited
resources, legal autonomy and strategy of the CEC
Secretariat; the strength of the new regime norms of
trilateralism and civil society participation; and the
focus on environmental problems in or involving
Mexico and its ecological distinctiveness (where
Mexican experts are far less likely to be left out); the
directness of the environment-economy link; and the
availability of established and appropriate scientific
assessment methodologies. Second, research potential
also produces the hypothesized effects but only in the
most general sense. For the research potential in
question is often more issue-specific, locally particular,
and thus empowering of developing country
Mexico, than the “global” cases of climate change
and biodiversity suggest. And in genuinely new areas,
such as trade-environment assessments, even the
most powerful US has very little lead in research
potential relevant to the case. Third, issue prominence
matters, in the general sense that trade considerations
trumped environmental ones as Mexico
embarked upon its revolutionary NAFTA regime. But
this initial domestically embedded, developing country
preference pattern changed, as an ever more
transparent media and NGO process, and, above all,
an international institutional secretariat and ultimately
a new government, gave these domestic political
environmental forces an enhanced political voice.
1. The Article 13 Secretariat “Roving Spotlight”
The first science-based instrument the NAAEC gave
to the CEC was the “top down” Article 13 “roving
spotlight” procedure through which CEC staff can,
on its own initiative, independently investigate and
report on any matter related to its extensive cooperative
work program. Thus far, as Table 1 shows,
there have been five Article 13 cases initiated, and
four completed, for an average of about one every
two years. As these five reports have been evenly
spaced over the past nine years, there is no trend
toward making more frequent use of the instrument.
Moreover, it can take over two years from the start to
the final release of a report.

The five cases thus far have embraced all the major
environmental media of air, water, land and living
things. All five cases have dealt with environmental
problems in Mexico. The first case, on the Lake Silva
Reservoir, and the most recent, fifth case, on maize,
both focused exclusively on Mexico. The third case,
on the San Pedro River, involved Mexico and the US.
The second case on airborne pollutant pathways and
fourth case on electricity each involved all three
countries. It is thus Mexico that has been the largest
targeted “beneficiary” of the Article 13 scientific
instrument.
The infrequency of the Article 13 cases reflects a
strategic desire on the part of the CEC Secretariat to
make Article 13 a muscular instrument, by having
only a limited number of high quality reports. The
imperative has been to establish the credibility of the
reports. Article 13 cases have tackled difficult and
complex issues, which have required the CEC to seek
expertise well beyond its very limited in-house staff.
These cases have consumed considerable resources,
in time, effort and money.
The length of time to produce each report stems
from three factors, beyond the sheer complexity of
the issues involved. The first has been a recognition
that the process of producing the report is as important
as the final report in mobilizing attention and
action on the problem involved. Second, the CEC
secretariat has not been willing to undermine the
value of the reports by having weak or absent information,
as this would have negatively effected the
way reports were received and acted upon. The third
has been the norm of trilateralism, in this case linguistically,
as an Article 13 report takes about 13 weeks in
editing, translating, and printing once the writing has
been done. As currently constructed, an Article 13
report takes about 18 months to complete, with its
usual array of panels, workshops, editing, and translation.
The CEC Secretariat faces the currently open
question of whether it should conduct only a very few
strong investigations or a larger number of more
rapidly produced but inevitably less thorough reports.
Any change in the latter direction could, with the
current fixed overall CEC resources, endanger the
scientific authority and credibility of the Article 13
process and reports, and position the CEC more as
just another NGO whose valued added comes in
rapidly raising awareness about breaking issues.
The Article 13 cases conducted to date, on the prevailing
high-science and extensive participation
model, have had a clear effect in stimulating action,
mobilizing a broad array of stakeholders, giving
greater attention to environmental concerns, and
inducing ecologically enhancing policy change. Here
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 129
the report itself has been less important than the
process of producing it. The seminal Silva Reservoir
case was conducted by the CEC’s Mexico office,
rather than run from CEC headquarters in Montreal.
It brought together a set of efforts from wildlife
biologists, botanists, toxicologists and the local community,
to contribute to the process. The process and
report probably helped produce the current status of
the Silva Reservoir as an eco-tourist site and a protected
area for Migratory birds. The San Pedro River
case, led by the CEC’s American Director in Montreal,
inserted the CEC into a highly conflictual local
situation involving cattle rancher, farmers, bird
watchers, governments, and the US military, in a
decades long dispute over water sharing and watershed
rights. The CEC’s intervention catalysed a process
of multi-stakeholder dialogue that led the local
stakeholders onto a process aimed at finding cooperative
solutions.
The Electricity report was a pure CEC Secretariat
initiative, in that there were no stakeholders inviting
the CEC to intervene to solve a particular local dispute.
The CEC wanted to take an issue with a continental
perspective such as energy, continuing it work
with the long range transport of pollutants. It also
wanted to validate and build credibility for the case
that energy programs involve environmental considerations
by putting together a team of leading experts.
It further wanted to build on its existing capacity in
this issue, acquired as a consequence of the case study
on electricity it had produced as part of the initial
effort to apply to specific sectors the methodology it
was constructing on NAFTA’s environmental effects
(see below). The CEC Secretariat made its decision to
proceed knowing that electricity had been denied as a
work program task for the CEC by its member governments.
In keeping with the broader pattern of the
NAFTA-CEC relationship, the economically-oriented
North American Energy Working Group (NAEWG)
never involved the CEC in its deliberations, even
though the CEC invited NAEWG to its electricity
report consultations, and representatives from the
governments; relevant departments came. At the end
of the process, there were efforts from the part of the
US government to modify or prevent the release of
the report.
The report contained a rich analysis, and strong recommendations,
including those on renewable energy.
It considered information no one had taken before. It
led to the discovery that all three scenarios offered by
the US FERC scenarios were frequently wrong. It
pioneered a process of examining environmental
issues associated with energy. Within member national
governments the report strengthened the hands

130
of the environmental ministers for their involvement
in the energy issue, for instance, in the need to start
taking new measures dealing powerplant emissions.
The report also touched on the hitherto taboo question
of whether there should be a common market
for emission trading.
The report went to the annual CEC ministerial Council
meeting in June 2002. It generated immediate
policy change at the international level, within the
confines of the CEC. It produced a CEC working
program, with a large budget (within a CEC context),
of US$350,000. per year. The report’s recommendations
served as the impetus for an agreement on cooperative
work to look at the controversial subject of
tradeable emissions permits in North America in
conjunction with Kyoto. Canada pushed this initiative
very strongly. US EPA agreed. A small group met in
Dallas to begin this work on a “Kyoto parallel” policy
of emissions trading between signatory and nonsignatory
countries.
A second international policy change was an initiative
was for a common approach to air pollution. This
involved the harmonization of data. And comparability.
It includes C0s as well as just NOx S02 and
PPM’s. Unlike the OECD State of the Environment
consisting of country reports based on specific national
data from NOAA and other agencies, this
effort went into much greater depth, drawing on the
Taking Stock work underway elsewhere at the CEC
(see below).
The most recent case of maize, as with that of electricity,
was based on the CEC’s previous sector application
work under NAFTA’s environmental effects.
NGOs and the Mexican government had raised the
issue with the CEC. The Secretariat judged it to be a
relevant issue in trade, not only for Mexico, but also
in providing lessons in government trade law and
other trade areas. The report also had catalytic timing,
relevance and significance on a higher scale. It is
currently being conducted under the leadership of the
CEC’s Montreal headquarters. Here the secretariat is
seeking to keep focus, and build a strong, strategic
case to keep on developing the credibility of the
institution. CEC has to expand out of its strengths
and successes.
2. The Article 14-15 “Citizens Submissions”
The second major CEC mechanism for generating
knowledge-based national policy change is the “bottom
up” Article 14-15 “citizens submission” procedure.
Under this procedure any “interested party”
from civil society can call for a “factual record” on
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
whether national governments are systematically
enforcing their own environmental laws. The Article
14-15 program has the largest budget within the
CEC. The program has always been managed at the
Montreal headquarters by an American national,
assisted by a Mexican lawyer on staff.
Since its start through to November 2002, there have
been 35 cases submitted by “interested parties” to the
CEC. Of these, only three have proceeded all the way
to the release of a factual record: Cozumel against
Mexico, starting on January 17, 1996 and ending 21
months later with the release of a record on October
24, 1997; B.C. Hydro against Canada, running from
April 2, 1997 over 38 months to June 11, 2000; and
Metales y derivados against Mexico, running from
October 23, 1998 over 40 months to February 11,
2002. In addition, in November 2001, the CEC Ministerial
Council approved the CEC Secretariat’s recommendations
to have five additional cases proceed
to factual records: Oldman River 2 filed against Canada
on October 4, 1997; BC Mining filed against
Canada on June 29, 1998; Aquanova, filed against
Mexico on October 20, 1998; Migratory Birds filed
against the US on November 19, 1999; and BC Logging
filed against Canada on March 15, 2000. As all
five of these additions are expected to be released by
the 2003 Council session, the CEC will have produced
a total of eight factual records within its first
ten years.
Of the 35 cases initiated, Mexico has been the subject
of 15, Canada 12 and the United States 8. Of the
eight cases destined to produce a factual record, Mexico
has been the subject of four, Canada three and the
United States only one. Mexico was also the subject
of two of the three records already issued, and of the
very first record, over Cozumel. And it was Canada,
not Mexico, that was the subject of the only two case
recommended by the CEC Secretariat for a record,
but refused by the three ministers on the CEC Council
(as they are empowered to do on a two-thirds
vote). 1
There have thus been a sufficient number of cases
initiated, recommended and completed, and ones
covering all countries, all environmental media, and
all levels of government, to make all North American
governments know that they might be the subject of
an investigation and publicly-released record if they
do not systematically enforce their own environ-
1 The ministerial vetoes, taking place in May 2000, concerned hog
farming in Quebec (where only the US voted to proceed), and
the Oldman River’s fish habitat in Alberta (where all three
governments unanimously vetoed). At the time the CEC Secretariat
had recommended that five cases proceed, including
these two that had been vetoed by governments.

mental laws. This “deterrent effect” is most likely to
have inspired ecologically-desired national policy
change in Mexico, which has been the subject of
more of the cases than its two partner countries, of
two of the three records actually released and of a full
half of the eight record destined to come during the
first decade. However this focus of the Article 14-15
mechanism on Mexico is ultimately a rational reflection
of Mexcio’s continuing ’s lack of capacity to
enforce all of its vastly NAFTA-expanded environmental
laws. This growing commitment-capacity gap,
and the lack of any substantial NAFTA facility to
narrow it, places an ultimate limit on the extent of
Article 14-15 induced national policy change and
environmentally-enhancements as a result.
A second indirect indication of Article 14-15’s influence
is the observed behaviour of the civil society
submitter community in initiating cases for the CEC
Secretariat and its ministers to judge. There have thus
far been an average of four submissions a year, composed
as follows: 1995 = 2; 1996 = 4; 1997 = 7; 1998
= 7; 1999 = 2; 2000 = 6; 2001 = 3; 2002 to date = 4.
This cadence indicates that the submitter community,
despite its extensive doubts and criticisms of the
value of the Article 14-15 process, considers it at least
potentially able to produce the desired national policy
change, and presently of proven value relative to the
alternatives at hand (Tollefson 2002, Markell 2000).
The fact that some ENGO’s have been repeat submitters
further suggests that the ENGO’s see continuing
value in the mechanism, despite their initial
and early experience. Mexican ENGO’s, such as
Mexico’s Centre for International Environmental
Law which pioneered the first case producing a factual
record, have been prominent among these repeat
submitters. Thus far seventy different groups or
individuals have made submissions, of which eight
(led by the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth) have
done so on multiple occasions. Of these eight members
of the “loyal opposition,” four have come from
Mexico. The fact that seven of the eight repeat submitters
have had their first submission terminated
suggests that the Article 14-15 “discouragement effect”
is very low.
A more direct sign of the CEC’s Article 14-15 influence
on national governments is the effort of the
latter to curtail its use. The first move was to veto in
May 2000 the two cases recommended for factual
records by the Secretariat, both of which targeted
Canada (in Alberta and Quebec). This move to curtail
the mechanism was led by Canada. The resistance to
restriction was led by the United States (which voted
to allow one of the two cases proceed). Developing
country Mexico voted with Canada to stop both of
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 131
these two targeted-at-Canada cases that the Secretariat
had recommended proceed.
The second direct sign of Article 14-15 influence
through member government counterreaction was
the subsequent effort, culminating at the June 2000
Dallas Council meeting, to “clarify” in a restrictive
manner the entire Article 14-15 procedure itself.
Once again Canada was the initiator of this move
toward restriction, while the United State led the
resistance once again. Mexico stood more in the
middle, not visibly active in the effort at restrictive
procedural reform. Here the US government and
CEC Secretariat skillfully used the media, ENGO
community, and the CEC’s own Joint Public Advisory
Committee (JPAC) to produce a compromise
result (Wilson 2002).
The third direct sign of Article 14-15 influence on
national governments was the November 2001
Council decision to proceed, after a long delay, with
five new factual records. The decision more than
doubled the number of records that had been produced
during the first eight years. This decision represented
a compromise. The Council accepted the
Secretariat’s recommendation to proceed, but limiting
the submissions filed from the broad policy issues
highlighted by the submitters to issues dealing with a
few specific locales. It is noteworthy that this decision,
made under the new US administration of
President Bush, for the first time put the US as the
target of an Article 14-15 factual record, through the
inclusion of the highly charged Migratory Birds Convention
case. Both Canada and the US led the impetus
for restricting the terms of reference. Mexico,
with only one of the five new cases targeted in it
(Aquanova), could finally see the Article 14-15
mechanism working with some balance, rather than
being used primarily to single Mexico out as the
North American region’s greatest pollution haven
and polity that does not regularly and reliably enforce
its own environmental laws.
More direct evidence of Article 14-15 influence in
inducing ecologically enhancing change within Mexico
comes from the reaction to, and results of, the
two specific cases where factual records have already
been released in regard to Mexico, against the referent
of the one similar Canadian case. In the seminal
case of Cozumel, the Mexican government reacted
very negatively against the Mexican ENGO that had
filed the case. The Mexican environment minister,
Julia Carbias, felt betrayed by her CEC ministerial
colleagues when they voted to have the case proceed
to a publicly released record (Alanis Ortega 2002.
However the Mexican government counterattack
served to give the issue great publicity within Mexico,

132
and called forth a constituency supportive of the
environmental case. Following the counter-reaction,
conflict and release of the record, the Mexican government
quickly produced considerable ecologicallyenhancing
policy change. President Zedillo declared
the Cozumel reefs to be a natural protected area. The
Mexican government signed a collaboration agreement
with the submitter to manage the natural protected
areas around, and plan the ecological zoning
of, Cozumel. The government also denied permits to
proceed with the planned construction of new tourist
facilities around the Cozumel terminal port. More
broadly, the case influenced the reform of Mexico’s
environmental law in 1996, created environmental
awareness in the Cozumel region, and encouraged
other cases to be sent through to the factual record
stage. Environmental assessment procedures are now
followed more closely throughout Mexico as a consequence
of the Cozumel case.
Driving these widespread policy impacts were not
only the substance of the factual record, but also the
local publicity and political pressure aroused by the
submission, the autonomous power (in the form of
the two-thirds majority voting provision) of the
NAAEC regime, and the Mexican government’s
ultimate redefinition of how it should meet its international
obligations to NAFTA at the early stage of
the new regime. Here the initial reaction, based on
the narrow judgement that the ecological protection
of Cozumel would harm the tourist trade that the
new pier for the cruise ships would bring, began to
give way to a larger judgement that the NAFTA
community’s environmentalists would support the
overall trade liberalization project of NAFTA only if
their environmental concerns, embedded in Article
14-15 were respected to at least a minimal degree.
The Mexican government was also led to embrace a
new version of the trilateral norm, by becoming more
willing to allow factual records that would show that
members other than Mexico might be failing to adequately
enforce their own environmental laws.
In the second case where a factual record was released,
that of B.C. Hydro, the CEC Secretariat faced
little opposition in its recommendation to proceed to
a record. The U.S. was eager to go forward and Canada
did not veto. The record dealt with the strengths
and weaknesses of the existing watershed management
program. The record has led to a better integration
on the Watershed Management Plan, in ways
that the submitters themselves recognize and approve.
The case did, however, help inspire the Canadian
move, discussed above, to restrict the Article 14-
15 process in general.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
The third completed case of Metales y Derivados,
again involving Mexico, also promises to produce
pro-environmental change. The CEC and the panel
of experts it assembled to produce the report filled in
gaps with additional information and assessments.
The factual record lifted an issue from a circle of
controversy fed by allegations, misallegations, and
misconceptions between parties to a point where the
parties approached the problem with a fresh perspective.
The record has generated hope, and early indications,
that the US EPA might work with the Mexican
government to remediate the site.
The Article 14-15 experience does show how the
expert participation of scientists from developing
country Mexico facilitated ecologically-enhancing
national policy change. It also shows how the initial
priority on economic development through trade (at
Cozumel’s cruse ships and the Metales maquiladora)
led Mexico to resist the use of the Article 14-15
mechanism against it in particular cases and in general
as a CEC procedure. However the full participation
of Mexican experts was guaranteed by the initial
targeting of Mexico, the local nature of the cases, and
the trilateral norm. In addition, the provision for civil
society participation and initial Mexican government
resistance gave Mexican NG0’s the media and other
stakeholders a political voice. Mexico’s limited research
potential, broadly conceived to encompass a
growing gap between environmental enforcement
capacity and environmental laws to be enforced
amidst rapid economic growth and ecological stress,
kept the Article 14-15 processes directed at Mexico.
But it and the absence of a CEC facility limited the
amount of real ecological improvement that would
result from national policy change, as the Metales
case in particular showed. Issue prominence, moreover,
underwent a transition, as Mexico came to
adopt a broader conception of the trade-environment
tradeoff (through the NAFTA compromise), and
even moved toward putting ecological values in their
own right in first place.
This latter transition points to the great reversal
among the three member governments in their approach
to Article 14-15 over NAFA’s first decade.
The United States remained generally supportive, but
only when the founding relatively “green” Clinton-
Gore presidency was followed by the ecologicallyresistant
Bush administration did the US allow a case
to proceed against the US. An initially sympathetic
Canada turned resistant, as the number of cases directed
against it began to mount, and as control of
the file within the Canadian government passed from
the founding generation negotiators who had forged
the initial NAFTA compromise to more junior law-

yers committed to protecting their Canadian government
client at all costs. And an initially opposed Mexico
became the leading Article 14-15 sympathizer, as
the new Fox administration, with former CEC Executive
Director Victor Lichtinger as its Environmental
secretary, took power. The Article 14-15 experience
thus points to the broader importance of
political change within national governments, the
circulation of senior staff from the international secretariat
into other power positions, and the importance
of the NAAEC rules – for civil society initiation
and participation, and two-third majority voting
– in keeping the Article 14-15 process alive when it
was most under threat.
3. Taking Stock
The third major NAAEC mechanism for generating
national policy change is the annual North American
Pollutant Transfer and release Inventory, or “Taking
Stock” state of the environment report called for
under Article 10-2. 2 The Taking Stock reports use
long established, scientifically standard data and
methods, pioneered by the US in its Toxic Release
Inventory, to compare the annual record of subfederal
jurisdictions within North America on their release
of specified pollutants each year. As Table 3
indicates, there have been six such annual reports,
starting in 1997 (with data based on 1994). Only in
2001 did Mexico, under the new Fox government,
indicate for the first time that it would produce data
to participate in future reports.
Since the start the Taking Stock program has been
supervised at the CEC Secretariat by an American
national. Its budgetary allocation is about I million
dollars a year. The program has been overseen by
Working Group, where the Mexican representative is
the Director General of the Mexican Environmental
ministry, Semarnap. As a scientific exercise, the Taking
Stock model is the complex result of difficult
work. It examines data quality, its comparability,
accuracy, baselines, and models about baselines. In
many respects it is a more ambitious undertaking than
that of other international institutions (such as the
OECD’s work on hazardous waste), or member
governments (as the EPA’s work on air pollution
uses proxy emissions methodologies).
The process of preparing the reports, and the report
themselves, have had several impacts. The CEC has
2 The first and only comprehensive “State of the Environment”
report from the CEC came out only in January 2002. It was produced
at the Secretariat under the supervision of a Canadian
national.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 133
had a catalytic role in getting the three governments
together, to produce a more productive and accessible
system. The CEC’s action plan to enhance the
comparability of pollutants has been particularly
important for Mexico which is in the process of defining
its environmental inventories. Here a team of 6
people, including experts loaned from Washington
and Ottawa, have been assisting Mexico to define its
relevant environmental regulations. The meetings to
prepare the reports have developed a considerable
network. Much work and resources are put into the
annual meeting of the consultative groups, which
involve trilateral staff, NGOs and individuals.
A more direct policy impact has been the expanded
comprehensiveness of the process of comparing the
three countries’ inventories. Canada covers the most
industry sectors. The U.S. has the longest list of
chemicals traced. Mexico has relied until recently on a
voluntary program, with industries were self reporting
from 104 sectors. Mexico is planning to translate its
program into a mandatory reporting by 2002, although
their legislation is not yet in place and industries
will need time to adapt once it is. The mandatory
program is to be based on self-estimations and reporting,
enforced by possible government inspections.
At present, the Mexican system has 5 sections in the
integrated national report. Two sections are 2 mandatory
and 3 voluntary. The first (mandatory) section is
for the company’s information. The second is for air
pollution. The third is for energy use. The fourth is
for water and waste water. Only the fifth is chemical
specific, and thus comparable to Canada’s NPRI and
the US TRI. At present only 5% of the companies fill
out the sections under the current voluntary program..
The new laws will apply to the federal and
municipal level, and Mexican authorities are currently
working with the states to bring them into the new
regime.
CEC played a very important role in moving Mexico
to its voluntary and now prospective mandatory
program. It urged all three countries to have operational
systems. It engaged in capacity building through
a pilot project since 1994 in Queretaro as a trial
to design a national process, infrastructure support in
the form of computers, and support for workshops,
NGOs, and consultants in Mexico. NGOs have been
highly supportive of CEC during the process. In all
the CEC has been perceived as a very engaged organization
in Mexico. It has been able to offer suggestions
to most of stakeholders, due to good relations
with them.
More broadly, Mexico’s altered policy and practice

134
could have a broader impact, on its NAFTA partners
and the wider world. Mexico’s integrated system for
collecting and reporting data for various reasons in a
single format could serve as a model for the more
fragmented efforts of the US and Canada. The fact
that both Mexico and Canada include SOx and NOx
in their criteria, and collect data annually, could inspire
the US to take a similar step, as part of the CEC
process of matching data and bringing the inventories
of the three countries together. Internationally, in
discussions to prepare a UN PRTR protocol, the
North American model has been set as an example,
as it is most advanced in assembling the reported
data. 3
The slow but substantial policy change in Mexico
produced by the Taking Stock program does show
the importance of expert participation on the part of
Mexico, and the initial lack of research potential in
preventing Mexico from participating until 2002 in a
trilateral report; and the prominence of economic
over environmental values in inhibiting Mexico from
using national resources to put a state-of-the-art
mandatory system in place in 1994. But it also shows
the importance of CEC-fostered network creation,
CEC capacity building assistance, the growing demand
of Mexican civil society for the Mexican government
to participate in the Taking Stock report.
More broadly, the advent of the Fox administration
has helped push Mexico to trilateral participation and
to a legislated mandatory national system as a foundation,
although the previous PRI was also cooperative
and the three ministers were working together well on
this program during that time. Also of relevance was
the fact that Mexico served as a pilot project for
UNITAR until 1994, when the CEC, thus providing a
functional foundation and multilateral legitimation
for the CEC related work.
4. NAFTA’s Environmental Effects
The fourth CEC scientifically-based program for
producing environmental policy change in Mexico is
the analytically innovative Article 10 (6) “NAFTA
Effects” program of “considering on an ongoing
basis the environmental effects of NAFTA.” This
mandatory program assigned to the CEC by the
NAAEC began in 1995 with the creation of a group
of non-governmental experts from several, largely
social science disciplines in all three member countries,
a scoping study to identify stakeholder con-
3 The EC’s EP emissions register is not a full PRTR,
as it only covers air and water and does not cover
transfers.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
cerns, and a conference in California to discuss the
initial barebones framework. There followed a period
of resistance on the part of Mexico to the independent
CEC-expert working group effort, resulting in the
suspension of the program for most of one year.
However the program was resumed, now with an
intergovernmental working group to oversee it. The
resumed program generated ever more elaborate
versions of the framework, a supporting study on
NAFTA’s institutions, studies applying the framework
to the sectors of maize in Mexico, cattle feedlots
in the US and Canada, and electricity in North
America (CEC 1997). The final framework and sectors
studies were published by the CEC (CEC 1999).
They served as a foundation for two “call for papers”
and ensuing conferences sponsored by the CEC, with
support from major multilateral organizations (The
World Bank and UNEP), through which a wide range
of civil society organizations and individual experts
publicly and independently applied and extended the
framework on a broader scale.
The CEC trade-environment program has not thus
far been particularly successful in generating national
policy change. However, it did develop pioneering
methodologies that identified the nature and scope of
the undertaking, demonstrated the difficulty in specifying
discrete NAFTA effects, and showed ecological
trends in sectors that, while not fully caused by
NAFTA, were still worth examining and addressing.
It underscored the need for good environmental data,
by making clear to governments that it was easier to
deal with the economic side, where all governments
are good at collecting economic data, than the environmental
side, where the relevant data is hard to
secure. It showed governments that those concerned
with the environmental effect of NAFTA were not
crazy, left-wingers out on the street protesting, and
that there was space to address the issue in depth and
in serious analytical and empirical terms. Many government
officials participating in the exercise left
impressed by the policy implications identified by the
work. On the other side the ENGO’s realized that
NAFTA was not all bad, and that it produced some
positives for the environment, especially through the
investment channel that was featured in the framework.
It thus dispelled myths on both sides of an
initially polarized and politically charged debate. In
addition, within civil society more broadly, the methodology
was picked up and improved. It thus proved
the value of the CEC’s desire for a forward looking
methodology that would focus in more serious ways
on how to get at the issues and address them on a
preventative basis, rather than simply issuing an all
negative or positive verdict ex post on what

NAFTA’s past effects had been.
The NAFTA Effects program has now reached the
point where some direct impacts on national policy
processes can be discerned, even if these are still at an
early stage. The clearest case comes from Canada,
where the work has alerted responsible ministers to
environmental problems and led to action on their
part. 4 Within Mexico, the results relating to the investment
channel have led to additional money being
devoted to clean production. More broadly, the
NAFTA Effects framework, with its innovative attention
to the connecting process of “social organization”
in particular, has importantly infused subsequent
sustainability assessments of trade liberalization
arrangements between developed and developing
countries on a much wider international and multilateral
domain.
Mexico’s resistance to, and the delayed national policy
impact of, the NAFTA Effects program can be
linked to Mexico’s initial lack of research potential on
the issue, and the way in which Mexico’s initial preference
for economic and trade values over ecological
ones were activated by a program which so directly
linked the two domains and did so on a broad policy
plane. But the CEC’s norms of trilateralism and civil
society participation led to Mexican experts being
equally involved in the work from the outset, and
Mexico’s expertise on this rapidly evolving “science”
expanding enormously (as it did in the two other
member countries) as a result of the CEC program.
However it also took a dedicated CEC Secretariat, a
growing citizens network within Mexico with political
consequence, and the skillful use of publicity through
the media, to keep the program alive when it was
most under national government assault. And it epistemic
contribution to the world outside NAFTA has
depended on the circulation of senior CEC Secretariat
staff to other consequential positions in the
trade-environment community. Here again change
comes more through people rather than on paper,
and through institutional processes more than disembodied
ideas.
4 One of the commissioned conference papers, on hazardous
waste, showed a 400% increase in hazardous waste coming into
Canada since NAFTA. The paper received front page coverage in
Canada’s elite national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and Le
Devoir. The paper received a response from the relevant Quebec
minister. Based on the paper Canada’s federal Environment Minister,
David Anderson, said at the subsequent Council meeting that
there were allegations that hazardous waste inflows were due to the
fact that Canada’s own laws on disposal were weak He added
“That’s pretty much true.” There is now an intergovernmental
group working on the issue.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 135
Conclusion
This analysis of CEC’s impact as it approaches its
first ten years in operation shows that all four of
these knowledge-centric CEC programs have in varying
degrees generated ecologically enhancing national
policy change in member countries, including developing
country Mexico, and potentially in t he wider
world. The pattern confirms the intervening causal
importance of the “three P’s” of expert participation,
research potential and issue prominence. But its highlights
the critical role played by civil society as a political
force, the CEC norms of trilateralism and civil
society participation, voting rules and Secretariat
strategy, and political change within member national
governments.
Expert participation fully and equally involving scientists
from developing Mexico does matter. But such
inclusive, balanced participation depends on other
variables and alone is not enough to ensure policy
change. Given the very limited scientific and other
resources of the CEC Secretariat, and its strong attachment
to the norms of trilateralism and civil society
participation, it has had to rely on heavily on
trilateral working groups in which scientists, civil
society actors and national governments, have had a
major role. The impact of this process has been most
apparent in regard to the Article 13 “roving spotlight.”
Here the Secretariat has chosen to focus most
of the five investigations to date, starting with the
seminal Silva Reservoir case, on Mexico. It has thus
relied heavily on the CEC’s regional office in Mexico
and on Mexican experts to conduct its work. Similarly,
the Article 14-15 process, starting with the
seminal Cozumel case, has disproportionately focused
on Mexico, thus fully involving its scientists, as well
as civil society actors and officials, and thereby produced
clear policy change. The converse conditions
have come with Taking Stock, where Mexico has
been slow to participate at all and where few policy
changes in Mexico have come. In between stands the
instrument of NAFTA’s environmental effects. Here
Mexican scientists, civil society representatives and
government officials have participated fully. But
entrenched economic priorities in Mexico, the directness
of the economy-environmental linkage, and the
absence of established scientific methodologies that
could quell Mexican fears that they would be disproportionately
harmed has led to limited and lagging
policy impact within Mexico, even as the circulation
of Secretariat staff and the scientific authors has
spread its intellectual influence well beyond Mexico
itself.
Research potential is also important, but in a broader
sense than that often assumed. Local environmental

136
knowledge and anecdotal evidence have mattered,
especially where the issues have focused on Mexico.
Here the lack of built in science capacity in the CEC
Secretariat and the norms of trilateralism and civil
society participation have again forced a reliance on
outsiders and assured that Mexican perspectives,
while generically less scientifically” robust than
American and Canadian equivalents, have assumed an
equal voice and value. In the Article 13 and 14-5
cases, its was the Mexican focus and local nature of
the issues, and thus Mexico’s comparative local scientific
knowledge, together with the CEC’s embedded
trilateralism, that led to policy change in the predicted
and desired way. In Taking Stock, the one instance
where US capacity was overwhelming, with its longstanding
national Toxic Release Inventory, and longproven
physical science methodologies, Mexico long
chose the abandonment option of not participating at
all, despite the trilateralist norms. Here fears of how
trilaterally legitimated “evidence” of Mexico’s poor
performance would empower American critics of
NAFTA, at substantial economic cost to Mexico,
dominated Mexico’s approach, while the lack of the
CEC’s own scientific capacity eliminated any option
of the CEC providing balancing scientific capacity to
Mexico on its own. In the case of NAFTA’s Effects,
where American and Canadian scientists came with
no “proven” scientific methodology (beyond the
skeleton OECD framework), there was greater room
for the anecdotal evidence and traditional knowledge
from Mexicans to gain a place. But the very absence
of such knowledge, and the directness of the environment-economy
link in the program, fed Mexican
fears and thus resistance at the start. In all four instances,
then, the research potential – policy change
relationship works as hypothesized in a general sense.
But the research potential in question is often more
issue-specific, locally particular, and thus empowering
of the developing country, than the “global” cases of
climate change and biodiversity suggest. And in genuinely
new areas, such as trade-environment assessments,
even the most powerful US has very little
research potential lead and thus relevance to the case.
Issue prominence also matters; in the general sense
that trade considerations trumped environmental
ones as Mexico embarked upon its revolutionary
NAFTA regime. But the four instruments also show
how this domestically embedded, developing country
preference pattern can change, as an ever more transparent
media and NGO process, and, above all, an
international institutional secretariat give domestic
political environmental forces a consequential political
voice. In the seminal Silva Reservoir Article 13
case, it was the CEC Secretariat and the Mexican
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
scientists it recruited who came to Lake Silva to help
solve an environmental issue of high, deadly local
salience, and an issue where trade concerns were
unknown and indirect. In regard to the seminal Article
14-15 Cozumel case, trade and environmental
concerns directly intersected. But the CEC created a
voice opportunity for the local environmental NGO’s
(ENGO), thus created a political firestorm in Mexico
that put environmental concerns onto the public
agenda, and ultimately provided scientific support for
Mexico’s nascent environmental concerns. In regard
to Taking Stock, low local issue prominence, in part
bred by a focus on earlier generation environmental
problems, as well as the deterrent effect of the publicity
aroused within Mexico’s NAFTA partners sustained
Mexico’s preference to stand aside for so long,
despite the powerful norm of equal trilateralism in the
CEC regime. Even in regard to NAFTA Effects, the
clearest case where trade and environmental values
directly intersected, trade values did not ultimately
carry the day even during the early years. Mexican
trade officials were unable to terminate, as opposed
to merely suspend a project, where so many Mexican
scientists, civil society and environmental ministry
officials had a stake, and where the CEC Secretariat
could use the media to help mobilize supportive
political forces at the critical time. Almost a decade
later, with a completed methodology applied to an
ever expanding array of sectors and problems, Mexican
trade officials could see how the instrument was
far less threatening to their traditional trade interests,
and could even be used to support their cause.
The CEC experience points to the policy payoff of an
enhanced CEC budget and funding for capacity
building and remediation, and the rotation of its
senior personnel into consequential positions in
member governments and the multilateral community,
and a tighter integration of the regional and
multilateral processes. As the NAFTA members take
up the tenth anniversary task of building NAFTA for
the next generation, and as the broader trade liberalization
processes of the FTAA and WTO approach
their targeted 2005 completion date, the time will be
ripe to put such proposals into effect.
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Rugman, Alan, John Kirton and Julie Soloway (1999), Environmental
Regulations and Corporate Strategy: A NAFTA Perspective. Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
Spencer, Robert, John Kirton and Kim Richard Nossal. 1981. The
International Joint Commission Seventy Years On. University of Toronto,
Centre for International Studies, Toronto.
Steinberg, Richard. 1997. ‘Trade-Environment Negotiations in the
EU, NAFTA and WTO: Regional Trajectories of Rule Development’.
American Journal of International Law 91(2): 231–267.
Tollefson, Christopher (2002), “Stormy Weather: The Recent
Hisotroy of the Citizen Submission Process of the North American
Agreement on Environemntal Cooperation,” in John Kirton
and Virginia Maclaren, eds., Linking Trade, Environment and Social
Cohesion: NAFTA Experiences, Global Challenges, (Ashagte: Aldershot),
pp. 153-182.
Wilson, Serena (2002), “Article 14-15 of the North American
Agreement on Environmental Cooperation: Intent of the Founders,”
in John Kirton and Virginia Maclaren, eds., Linking Trade,
Environment and Social Cohesion: NAFTA Experiences, Global Challenges,
(Ashagte: Aldershot), pp. 187-193.

138
Table 1. Article 13 Reports
1. Silva (1994-1995)
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
The report addressed the Death of Migratory birds of the Silva Reservoir. It concluded with recommendations for preventing
future mass mortalities and offered lessons for the management of bird habitats in other areas of North America.
2. Pathways (
The report addressed the long range transport of air pollution in North America. It concluded by establishing links between
pollutants and health issues, indicating major sources of pollutants, stating the need of effective monitoring, and emphasising
the need for collaborative mechanisms between different parties within the North American region and among other regions.
3. San Pedro (
The report addressed the preservation of the transboundary migratory bird habitat on the upper San Pedro river. It concluded
with a number of suggestions for pragmatic actions aimed at balancing human activities with the preservation of important
wildlife habitat along the upper San Pedro River.
4. Electricity (
The report addresses the ability to secure North Americas electricity supply without compromising environmental and health
objectives. It aims to conclude by showing how it is possible to achieve ample electricity supply and simultaneously protect the
environment through increased co-operation and collaboration mechanisms.
5. Maize (
The report addresses the potential effects of transgenic corn on traditional maize varieties in Mexico. It will examine issues
related to the conservation and sustainable use of traditional maize varieties. It is expected to conclude in 2004.
Table 2. Articles 14 and 15 Cases, January 1, 994 to November 10, 2002
Case Date of
filing
01 Spotted Owl (SEM-
95-001)
02 Logging Rider
(SEM-95-002)
03 Cozumel (SEM-96-
001)
04 Aage Tottrup (SEM-
96-002)
Environmental Law in
question
30/06/95 Endangered Species
Act
30/08/95 All applicable federal
environmental laws
17/01/96 LDEEPA, Instructivo
para Desarrollar y
Presentar el Impacto
Ambiental, Ley de
puertos
20/03/96 Fisheries Act,
DOEAct, Clean Water
Act, Environmental
Protection and Enhancement
Act, Waste
Regulatory
Initiator
(jurisdiction)
U.S.
(federal)
U.S. (federal)
Mexico
(federal)
Canada
(federal)
Challenger (country) Status/Outcome
(elapsed time in the
process)
Biodiversity legal
foundation et al.
(U.S.)
Sierra Club et al.
(U.S.)
Comité para la protección
de los Recursos
Naturales et al.
(Mexico)
Aage Tottrup
(Canada)
Terminated 11/12/95
(6months)
Terminated 8/12/95 (4
months)
Proceeded, factual
record released on
24/10/97 (21 months)
Terminated 28/05/96
(2months)

05 Oldman River I
(SEM-96-003)
06 Fort Huachuca
(SEM-96-004)
07 Río Magdalena
(SEM-97-002)
08 BC Hydro (SEM-97-
001)
09 Quebec Hog Farms
(SEM-97-003)
10 CEDF (SEM-97-
004)
11 Biodiversity (SEM-
97-005)
12 Oldman River II
((SEM-97-006)
13 Ortiz Martínez
(SEM-98-002)
14 Lake Chapala (SEM-
97-007)
15 Guadalajara (SEM-
98-001)
16 Great Lakes (SEM-
98-003)
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 139
Water and storm
Drainage Regulation
20/03/96 Fisheries Act, Canadian
Environmental Assessment,
Law List
Regulation.
Canada
(federal)
14/11/96 NEPA U.S. (federal)
15/03/97 Ecological Balance and
Environmental protection
of the State of
Sonora, LGEEPA
02/04/97 Fisheries Act, National
Energy Board.
04/04/97 Laws of the province
of Quebec
26/05/97 Environmental Assessment
and Review
Process Guidelines
Order (EARPGO)
21/07/97 Privy Council authorizing
bringing into force
the UN Convention on
Biodiversity
04/10/97 Fisheries Act, Canadian
Environment Assessment
Act, Law List
Regulations
10/10/97 LGEEPA, Law on
Administrative Procedure,
Forestry Law and
Regulations
09/01/98 LGEEPA, Internal
Regulations of the
SEMARNAP
09/01/98 NAAEC, Constitution
of the United Mexican
States, LGEEPA,
Federal Criminal Code,
Federal Criminal Procedures
Code
05/05/98 Clean Air Act, Pollution
Prevention Act,
Transboundary Move-
Mexico
(federal
and subfederal)
Canada
(federal)
Canada
(subfederal)
Canada
(federal)
Canada
(federal)
Canada
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
U.S. (federal)
The Friends of the
Oldman River I
(Canada)
The Southwest Center
for Biological Diversity
et al.
(U.S.)
Comité Pro Limpieza
del Río Magdalena
(Mexico)
BC Aboriginal Fisheries
commission et al.
(Canada)
Centre Québécois du
droit de
l’environnement
(Canada)
Canadian Environmental
Defence Fund
(Canada)
Animal Alliance of
Canada et al. (Canada)
The Friends of the
Oldman River II
(Canada)
Hector Gregorio
Ortiz Martínez (Mexico)
Instituto de Derecho
Ambiental (Mexico)
Instituto de Derecho
Ambiental AC et al.
(Mexico)
Department of the
Planet Earth
Terminated 02/04/97
(13months)
Withdrawn 05/06/97
(7 months)
Proceeded factual
record ordered
12/03/02 (60 months)
Proceeded, factual
Record released
11/06/00 (38 months)
Terminated, Secretariat
recommended factual
record but council
denied 16/05/00 (37
months)
Terminated 25/08/97
(3 months)
Terminated 26/05/98
(11 months)
Proceeded, factual
record ordered in
11/01 (47 months)
Terminated 18/03/99
(17 months)
Terminated 14/07/00
(30 months)
Terminated 18/03/99
(14 moths)
Terminated 05/10/01
(45 months)

140
17 BC Mining (SEM-
98-004)
18 Cytrar I (SEM-98-
005)
19 Aquanova (SEM-98-
006)
20 Metales y derivados
(SEM-98-007)
21 Methanex (SEM-99-
001)
22 Migratory Birds
(SEM-99-002)
23 Nestle Canada
(SEM-00-002)
24 Molymex I (SEM-
00-001)
25 Jamaica Bay (SEM-
00-003)
26 BC Logging (SEM-
00-004)
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
ment of Hazardous
Waste between Canada
and the United States
29/06/98 Canadian Fisheries Act Canada
(federal)
11/08/98 Official Mexican Standard,
LGEEPA
20/10/98 LGEEPA, National
Waters Law, Fishieries
Law, Federal Criminal
Code, Forestry Law,
Federal law on AdministrativeProcedure,SEMARNAP
internal Regulations,
etc.
23/10/98 LGEEPA, Penal Code,
Law on International
Extradition, Extradition
Treaty between the
U.S.A. and Mexico
18/10/99 Underground Storage
Tank Regulations,
California Water code,
Safe Drinking Water
Act, U.S. Clean Water
Act.
19/11/99 Migratory Bird Treaty
Act, and several international
convention on
migratory birds and
endangered species
21/01/00 Safe Drinking Water
Act, U.S. Clean Water
Act, California Water
Code (CA), and Underground
Water
Storage Regulation
(CA)
27/01/00 LGEEPA, Official
standards for SO2 and
PM10
02/03/00 Migratory Bird Treaty
Act and Endangered
Species Act
Mexico
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
U.S. (federalsubfederal)
U.S. (federal)
U.S. (federal
and
subfederal)
Mexico
(federal)
U.S. (federal)
15/03/00 Fisheries Act Canada
(federal)
(U.S., Canada)
Sierra Club of British
Columbia et al.
(Canada)
Academia Sonorense
de Derechos Humanos
et al.
(Mexico)
Grupo Ecológico
Manglar AC (Mexico)
Environmental
Health Coalition et al.
(U.S. and Mexico)
Methanex Corp.
(U.S.)
Alliance for the Wild
Rockies et al. (Canada,
U.S., Mexico)
Nestle Canada (Canada)
Rosa María Escalante
de Fernández (Mexico)
Hudson River Audubon
Society of Westchester
(U.S.)
David Suzuki Foundation
et al. (Canada)
Proceeded, Factual
Record ordered on
11/01 (41 months)
Terminated, 26/10/00
(26months)
Proceeded, Factual
Record ordered on
11/01 (37 months)
Proceeded, factual
record released
11/02/02 (40 months)
Terminated 30/06/00
(8months)
Proceeded, Factual
record ordered 11/01
(24 months)
Terminated 30/06/00
(5 months)
Terminated 25/04/00
(3 months)
Terminated 12/04/00
(1 months)
Proceeded, Factual
Record ordered on

27 Molymex II (SEM-
00-005)
28 Tarahumara (SEM-
00-006)
29 Cytar II (SEM-01-
001)
30 AAA Packaging
(SEM-01-002)
31 Dermet (SEM-01-
003)
32 Ontario Logging
(SEM-02-001)
33 Mexico City Airport
(SEM-02-002)
34 Pulp and Paper
(SEM-02-003)
35 El Boludo Project
(SEM-02-004)
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 141
06/04/00 LGEEPA, Official
standards for SO2 and
fuels
09/09/00 LGEEPA, Federal
Criminal Code, Convention
on the International
Labour Organisation
14/02/01 Federal Environmental
Protection Law,
LGEEPA, Federal
Criminal Code, Technical
Ecological Standard,
Mexican Official
Standard.
12/04/01 Article 2(3) of the
NAAEC
Mexico
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
Canada
(federal)
14/06/01 NAAEC, LGEEPA Mexico
(federal)
06/02/02 Migratory Birds Convention
Act
07/02/02 LGEEPA, Mexican
Official Standard,
Environmental Law of
the Federal District
08/05/02 Fisheries Act, Pulp and
Paper Effluent Regulations
Canada
(federal)
Mexico
(federal)
Canada
(federal)
23/08/02 LGEEPA Mexico
(federal)
* NAAEC- North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation
Academia Sonorense
de Derechos Humanos,
Domingo
Gutiérrez Mendívil.
(Mexico)
Comisión de Solidaridad
y Defensa de los
Derechos Humanos
AC
(Mexico)
Academia Sonorense
de Derechos Humanos
(Mexico)
11/01 (21 months)
Proceeded, Factual
record ordered (
months)
Ongoing, Secretariat
informed council that
submission warrants
development of a
factual record. (26
months)
Ongoing, Secretariat
informed council that
submission warrants
development of a
factual record. (21
months)
Names withheld Terminated, 24/05/01
(1 month)
Mercerizados y Tenidos
de Guadalajara,
S.A. (Mexico)
Canadian Nature
Federation et al.
(Canada, U.S.)
Jorge Rafael Martinez
Azuela et al. (Mexico)
Friends of the Earth
et al. (Canada)
* LGEEPA- General Law on Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (Mexico)
* NEPA- National Environmental Policy Act
Arcadio, Leonico,
Fernanda and Milagro
Pesqueira Senday
(Mexico)
Terminated, 19/10/01
(4 months)
Ongoing, Secretariat
informed council that
submission warrants
development of a
factual record (9
months)
Terminated 25/09/02
(7 months)
Ongoing (6 months)
Ongoing (3 months)

142
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Table 3. Reports under North American Pollutant and Release Transfer Register (Taking Stock).
Annual
Report (date
according to
reporting
year)
Taking
Stock, 1994
Taking
Stock, 1995
Taking
Stock, 1996
Taking
Stock, 1997
Taking
Stock, 1998
Taking
Stock, 1999
Date of Publication
Number
of Pages
Countries
considered
(National
Inventory)
1 July 1997 165 US (TRI),
1 October
1998
Canada
(NPRI),
Mexico
(RETC)*
196 US (TRI),
Canada
(NPRI),
Mexico
(RETC)*
1 August 1999 347 US (TRI),
Canada
(NPRI),
Mexico
(RETC)*
1 May 2000 551 US (TRI),
Canada
(NPRI),
Mexico
(RETC)*
20 July 2001 379 US (TRI),
Canada
(NPRI),
Mexico
(RETC)*
29 May 2002 406 US (TRI),
Canada
(NPRI),
Mexico
(RETC)*
Number of
Facilities
Reporting
24,451
(93%U.S., 7%
CA)
21,092
(94%U.S., 6%
CA)
23,482
(92%U.S., 8%
CA)
20,555
(93%U.S., 7%
CA)
21,974
(93%U.S., 7%
CA)
21,521
(92%U.S., 8%
CA)
Number of
traced Chemicals
US: 346
CA: 178
Matched
165
US: 606
CA: 178
Matched
165
US: 606
CA: 178
Matched
165
US: 604
CA: 178
Matched
165
US: 606
CA: 178
Matched
165
US: 634
CA: 245
Matched
210
Jurisdictions with
Largest Chemical
“Loading”
1. Texas
2.Tennessee
3. Ontario
1. Texas
2. Louisiana
3. Ontario
1. Texas
2. Ontario
3. Louisiana
1. Texas
2.Pennsylvania
3. Ontario
1. Ohio
2.Pennsylvania
3. Texas
1. Texas
2. Ohio
3.Pennsylvania
* Mexico participated into a very limited extent and under voluntary reporting basis. TRI- Toxic Release Inventory (U.S.A.),
NPRI- National Pollutant Release Inventory (Canada), RETC- Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes (Mexico)
Compiled by Daniella Aburto, November 30 th 2002.
Country with
dominant
Total Releases
and Transfer
of Toxic
Chemicals
U.S. (87.7%)
U.S. (88.2%)
U.S. (86.1%)
U.S. (89.9%)
U.S. (91%)
U.S. (91%)

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 143-153.
Imbued Meaning: Science-Policy Interaction in the IPCC
John Robinson and Alison Shaw ∗
Imbue: To impregnate, permeate, pervade or inspire
(with opinions, feelings, habits, etc.) Oxford English
Dictionary
Introduction
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) can be identified as peculiar scientific
assessment process. Not only is the IPCC explicitly
tied to the United Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) as its policy audience but
it also incorporates political delegations from the
UNFCCC into its internal assessment structure. The
science-policy interface established through two
innovations - the summary for policymakers (SPM)
and the policy relevant scientific questions (PRSQ).
These facilitate interaction between science and
policy communities and thus contribute to situating
the IPCC scientific assessment process within an
intergovernmental framework.
Over the past decade, the science-policy nexus
internal to the IPCC has sparked significant
controversy and criticism with regard to the
credibility of IPCC interpretations and products. The
purpose of this paper is to establish that the IPCC is
different from conventional scientific inquiry and
therefore its credibility and legitimacy must also be
evaluated differently. Rather than basing credibility
and legitimacy on the products of the IPCC, it is
recommended that a more comprehensive analysis of
the IPCC as a process in and of itself will contribute
to an understanding of the negotiated roles between
science and policy communities. The IPCC is an
experimental forum and, used as a case-study in
analyzing the science-policy interface, it has the
potential to shed light on ways that scientific and
political communities operating together can
negotiate roles that remain credible to both
communities; that can imbue the discussions and
process with both the scientific and normative
dimensions of climate change.
The IPCC as a Science-Policy Forum
The creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on
∗ Sustainable Development Research Institute, University of
British Columbia, Canada. Contact:: ashaw@sdri.ubc.ca.
Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 constituted a
watershed in the scale and scope of international
science assessment. Since 1990, the IPCC has issued
three Assessment Reports, each consisting of three
volumes, amounting to thousands of pages, and
involving the participation of thousands of experts
around the world as authors and reviewers in the
assessment process 1 . The mandate of the IPCC has
been to produce “policy relevant” but not “policy
prescriptive” assessments of the science of climate
change, including physical, technical, and social
scientific knowledge. The existence and development
of the IPCC in its three iterations since 1988 (first
(1991), second (1996) and third assessment (2001)
reports) provides a powerful case study of the way
science has been used in support of the policy
process. While much work has been conducted on
climate science research and its use in the IPCC, little
analysis has been done on what constitutes policy
relevant scientific information and the implications of
this overarching type of mandate for science in the
policy sphere.
The IPCC’s Synthesis Report (SYR) released in
September 2001 was a symbolic representation of the
best available policy relevant scientific information on
climate change. In an effort to draft “policy relevant
but not policy prescriptive scientific information”
(IPCC Bureau), the IPCC has developed two
innovative methods of synthesizing scientific
information: the summary for policymakers (SPM) to
summarize the results of its detailed working group
volumes, and the use of policy relevant scientific
questions (PRSQ) to structure the final Synthesis
Report (2001). Both of these methods require a
significant degree of interaction between scientists
and policymakers. This paper will explore three
perspectives on this interaction in an effort to focus
attention on these instruments as innovations and the
degree to which they respond to the need to build a
bridge between science and policy.
From the time of Compte, the role that science has
played in society has been influential and dominant in
social and institutional decision-making structures
(Fuller 1998). Public issues generally regarded as
1 The three volumes of the 2001 Third Assessment Report, and
the Synthesis Report, have been published by Cambridge
University Press, under the title Climate Change 2001. The full
text of each report and the various special reports can be
found on the IPCC website at www.ipcc.ch.

144
controversial and problematic in politics are often put
into what is perceived as the objective and rational
hands of scientists and scientific inquiry. However, in
scientific disputes “a fundamental dichotomy (exists)
between the potential dispute resolution objectives of
‘truth’ and ‘justice’” (Thibault and Walker 1978 in
Salter (1988)). Due to the burden of proof, the
scientific canon of hypothesis-testing rests on the
doctrine of “theory until proven fact” as a
fundamental component of the truth-seeking process.
This method makes it difficult for judgments to be
based on principles such as justice or precaution.
Thus it is difficult to connect science to decisions
required in a policy context. Conventionally, the
boundaries between science and policy have been
conceived of in a very strict sense - truth emerges
from nature through the realm of scientific inquiry,
and justice and power are negotiated in the policy
realm. The former is attained through the objective,
autonomous, and rational methods of science
whereas the latter is generally considered the locus of
battle among interests, values and subjectivities. In
this way, science and scientists have often been used
in scientific advisory and assessment processes, and
scientific testimonials to illustrate the ‘truth’ about a
specific issue and the implications of a particular
course of action. The traditional authority wielded by
science and scientists has come under critical
investigation over the past three decades since the
inception of the Bloor ‘strong programme’ 2
(Ashmore 1989; Bloor 1967) and later with the
ensuing Science Wars (Gross and Levitt 1996; Sokal
1996). The science involved in the IPCC
assessments has also come under similar scrutiny with
regard to both the rigor of methods used and the
robustness and integrity of the scientific
interpretation. In this work, the sharp distinction
between science and policy has been replaced by a
more nuanced argument about the mutual
interpenetration of scientific and political concepts
and values.
We examine three significant approaches to analysing
the IPCC scientific assessment and its connection to
the policy process. Each of these approaches
contributes important insights into the state of the
global scientific enterprise, and the role that science
plays and should play in the policy sphere. Each
model therefore has implications for the negotiation
of the science-policy interface in the IPCC. In the
2 The Bloor Strong Research Programme examined the ways in
which the production of scientific claims made about the
natural world is mediated through social relations and
processes. This approach has continued in the field of the
social studies of science.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
approaches of the Science and Environmental Policy
Project (SEPP) (web), Boehmer-Christiansen (1994)
and Shackley and Wynne (1995) introduce three
models of science –empirical, constructivist and
situational. Building on the foundation of these three
critiques and analyzing their implications on the
legitimacy of science-policy interaction, we will
construct a conceptual framework for analyzing the
science-policy interface, the level of acceptable
interaction and the two main instruments used to
facilitate and monitor the interface and interaction in
the IPCC – the summary for policymakers (SPM) and
the policy relevant scientific questions (PRSQ). We
will then propose a research agenda for exploring the
role of these instruments in facilitating science-policy
interaction and in turn, formulate “policy relevant
scientific information” in the IPCC.
The IPCC as Mandated Science . . .
‘Mandated science’ refers to science that is used for
the purposes of making public policy (Salter 1988). A
mandated science model can be identified when a
scientific panel or advisory body has, as its primary
audience, a governmental or regulatory body that
seeks recommendations from it (Salter 1988). In
these situations, either formal or informal protocols
are established that map the respective territories,
roles and types of interaction between scientist and
policymaker. Within these types of mandated
advisory processes, scientists may operate under
different assumptions about their roles than are
typical in their normal scientific activities. Salter
argues that the mandate to develop recommendations
and implications “exerts a pressure on science that is
reflected both in the activities of the scientists and in
their work or its interpretation” (Salter 1988, p.3).
She states that scientific work becomes “mandated”
when “an individual study is evaluated in terms of the
conclusions it can offer to policy makers about the
merit of particular regulations”(Salter 1988).
Scientific assessments operate very differently in their
methods of review and criteria for adequacy. For
example, in the area of science assessment, scientists
are encouraged to evaluate the overall state of
knowledge on a given policy issue and to draw from
multi-disciplinary literatures. This practice involves
judgments about who is included in the assessment
process, what information is considered acceptable
and adequate for review and the enclosure of a
particular interpretation among participating scientists
and the appropriate method for disclosing this
interpretation to a policy audience. These judgments
extend beyond the strict boundaries of scientific
inquiry; they have time-dependent aspects that force

scientists to make tacit assumptions about the needs
of the ‘user’ audience (i.e. policymakers) as they
contemplate and/or anticipate the social and political
implications of the information derived. Farrell et al.
(2001) find in their queries of environmental
assessment processes that “experts involved…
generally recognize that they are involved in a hybrid
activity in which scientific expertise is accompanied
by a considerable amount of social and political
judgment”. However, this scientific participation can
also be accompanied by a strong belief that scientific
contributions should nevertheless be objective and
value-neutral (Jasanoff 1995)(Salter 1988).
Salter’s (1988) mandated science framework identifies
important questions regarding scientific expertise in
the public policy realm. She argues that mandated
science is a unique practice of science where scientific
expertise has direct implications on social, economic
and legal considerations. Here the language used is
neither scientific nor policy but “rather it has its own
style, methods, argumentation” (Salter 1988: 4). She
suggests that normative questions of fairness,
democratic rights and moral dilemmas underlie the
process of negotiation and the considerations for
outcomes.
The IPCC was derived as a scientific advisory body to
(i) assess available scientific and socio-economic
information on climate change and its impacts and on
the options for mitigating climate change and
adapting to it and (ii) to provide, on request,
scientific/technological/socio-economic advice to the
Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) (TAR WGIII Foreword). The IPCC is
mandated to determine the current state of
knowledge with regard to climate research and
information in order to provide relevant material to a
policy audience. This illustrates the ways that the
traditional values of science such as autonomy and
objectivity are no longer adequate criteria for
evaluating an assessment process of the IPCC-type.
The conventional transfer of value-neutral scientific
information to legitimate the decisions of the valueladen
policy world becomes problematic when
assessing “policy relevant scientific information”.
Latour (1993) asserts that the attempt to ‘purify’ the
domains of science and policy is a fruitless modernist
project that denies the imbroglios that ultimately
result in a ‘proliferation of hybrids’. In order to
investigate the resilience of the boundaries between
technical scientific assessment and value-laden policy
in the IPCC, it is necessary to develop an
understanding of IPCC structure and the efforts to
increase the interaction at the science-policy interface
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 145
(through the SPM and PRSQ’s).
The summary for policymakers
The summary for policymakers (SPM), introduced
during the first assessment report (FAR), is a process
that facilitates the interaction between scientists and
governmental delegates (from hereon in these
representatives will be referred to as policymakers)
through what is called the “Session of the Panel”.
The “Session of the Panel” refers to a series of
meetings of the governmental representatives held at
the plenary level of the IPCC that include the Bureau,
lead authors and the observing role of nongovernmental
organizations. Each of the three
assessment reports (IPCC 1991, 1996, 2001) is
comprised of three distinct working group (WG)
reports. These three reports examine the climate
science (WG I), the impacts, adaptations (WG II) and
the strategies for mitigation (WG III) 3 . The structure
of each working group assessment is based on
chapter outlines previously approved by the
UNFCCC policy community. Upon completion of
the assessment of the underlying chapters, the
coordinating lead authors (CLA) synthesize the key
findings of their chapter into an executive summary
(ES). These executive summaries are collated into an
overall technical summary for each working group
report representing key scientific findings. The initial
draft of the summary for policymakers is then written
by the technical support unit (TSU) 4 , in combination
with coordinating lead authors of the various
chapters, for each working group. This is conducted
in order to synthesize and simplify the thousands of
pages of the assessments into a draft that provides
the most relevant information for a policy audience.
The initial draft of the SPM is first circulated to
expert reviewers and then circulated to participating
delegations for their examination of the content,
emphasis and clarity of information and comments
on areas for revision. These expert and government
comments are collated and accepted or rejected in a
meeting of lead authors. Once the comments are
3 In the third assessment report (TAR) (2001), WG I focuses on
the climate science, WG II focuses on impacts, adaptations
and vulnerabilities and WG III focuses on mitigation.
However the characterizations of WG II and WG III have
changed slightly over the past decade.
4 The role of the technical support unit (TSU): In order to
minimize bureaucratic costs, the IPCC rotates the
coordinating responsibilities of various working groups to
participating and willing developed nations. The role of the
TSU is to coordinate information and cover the operating
expenses involved in preparing the documents and WG
reports. The facilitator or co-chair for the WG is chosen from
this country in combination with a co-chair from a developing
nation.

146
included, the revised draft is then introduced into the
“Session of the Panel” (referred to as the Panel).
There is a discussion of comments whereby scientific
justifications are given for the exclusion or rejection
of comments made by expert or governmental
reviewers 5 . The text then becomes the domain of
participating delegations who scrutinize the SPM lineby-line
in order to determine the pertinence of the
information (as compared to other information in the
underlying report), the relevance to the various
commitments of the participating countries, and the
ways in which that information is communicated
(much attention is paid to prescriptive wording and
any prescriptive emphasis in the information).
Lead authors attend the meeting to answer questions
and to patrol the boundaries of science in order to
ensure that the underlying working group reports are
not misinterpreted or transformed (despite the many
changes in emphasis and semantics) in the SPM
document. It is typical for the original draft of the
SPM to be significantly altered and transformed in
order to meet the needs of participating delegations.
This negotiation of the scientific information by
policymakers is facilitated by consensus negotiation,
ensuring that approval of the document is achieved. 6
What is constructed and produced by this process is a
hybrid document that is intended to be both
scientifically credible and politically approved or
authorized. 7 Bob Watson, the previous chair of the
IPCC, sees this combined effort as a way to
strengthen the process of international assessment
(personal comm., 2000). He argues that by including
the international political audience in the construction
of a policy relevant scientific document, the process
of international treaty-making becomes a more
efficient and unified experience. In the synthesis of
the pertinent climate research, the SPM provides a
framework for nations to negotiate their particular
concerns, reactions and interpretations of the same
scientific information in an open forum. 8
5 Government comments can only be rejected with an explicit
rationale that could include the misinterpretation of underlying
scientific literature or inconsistency of information.
6 “Approval” in the SPM signifies that the material has been
subjected to detailed, line-by-line discussion and agreement
(IPCC definitions (Appendix A) in the Procedures for the
Preparation, Review, Acceptance, Adoption and Approval and
Publication of IPCC Reports (1999)).
7 The IPCC is a consensus process and therefore requires that
nations do not disapprove text and where problems arise.
Agreement is negotiated in smaller contact groups that often
run parallel to the process. There are a number of problems
involved in this form of consensus negotiation as revealed by
the initial research of Lahsen (2000) showing the inequality of
management in the IPCC between developed and developing
countries using Brazil as case-study example.
8 Jasanoff (1986, 1991) reveals how the same scientific information
can be interpreted and used differently in different national
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
The SPM process contributes to a translation and
interpretation of relevant information within a
governmental framework or authorizing forum.
However it is apparent that the text of the SPM is
itself based on the underlying science assessment
reports and is driven by a process that begins with the
framing and articulation of key scientific findings
rather than policy relevant findings. As a result, the
underlying information in the SPM may be an
illustration of key findings that are considered to be
scientifically interesting but not necessarily the most
useful for policy. In order to address this problem, in
the Third Assessment Report (TAR) process, the
IPCC Bureau under the leadership of Chairman Bob
Watson, introduced a new, more policy responsive
approach in the organization of the Synthesis Report
(a summary of all working group information in all
three assessments and any IPCC special reports). The
Synthesis Report represents an attempt to include
policymakers in the process of deriving and framing
relevant scientific information by having them
prioritize the relevant questions they face: policy
relevant scientific questions (PRSQ).
THE POLICY RELEVANT SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS
Acting as intermediary between IPCC and the
national delegations to the Conference of the Parties
(COP), the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical
and Technological Advice (SBSTA) approached
participating delegations with a task 9 . The task was to
derive the most politically relevant questions
important to policymaking that required underlying
scientific assessment. Ten policy relevant scientific
questions (PRSQ) (later consolidated to nine
questions) drafted by delegations to COP were agreed
to in San Jose, Costa Rica in 1999. These questions
determined the structure of the Synthesis Report
(SYR) and acted to guide scientists in drafting its text
with emphasis on the underlying Working Group
reports, technical summaries and SPM’s. The SYR
process thus allowed the policy community to frame
the way scientific information was collated, framed
and presented and to play a greater role in the
determination policy relevance. This report also
allowed the IPCC scientific process to be integrated
in a more explicit way with the concurrent political
process of the COP (see Miller 2001).
These SPM and PRSQ approaches facilitate a
negotiation of tasks and information that depend less
on technical information and more on
communication and coordination between the policy
contexts.
9 For an insightful analysis of SBSTA as a boundary organization
see Miller (2001).

and scientific community. The SPM and the PRSQ’s
can thus provide the basis for an exploration of the
ways these instruments renegotiate the boundaries of
and interactions between science and policy. In order
to investigate these interactions, it is first useful to
look to previous critiques and analyses of the IPCC.
The Empiricist Critique
In environmental issues where urgency and justice are
factors needing to be incorporated into the decision
structure, the unidirectional flow of scientific
evidence to the policy realm is inadequate to promote
a policy choice. As Jasanoff (1996) argues, anyone
familiar with policy relevant science understands that
“[w]hen knowledge is uncertain or ambiguous… facts
alone are inadequate to compel a choice”. This claim
is supported by Campbell (1985), who reveals that
uncertainty in public science information is, in
practice, an interpretive controversy of facts just as
dependent on a political interpretation of fact as it is
on a scientific interpretation. Recognizing the goaloriented
and time-dependent mandate to generate
‘policy relevant scientific information’ suggests that
participating scientists must concede to an openly
normative practice. That is, they must affiliate
themselves with the ‘user’ or policy community, and
in doing so, be willing to embed their scientific
research and their judgments within a larger social
framework or context.
The issue of climate change has revealed how
distinguishing between natural, social, political, and
cultural problems is not as easily distinguishable as
once thought. The IPCC’s attempts to assess “policy
relevant but not policy prescriptive scientific
information” have steered the IPCC from a
traditional ‘truth speaks to power’ conception of the
science-policy interface to an institutionalized
interaction between science and policy communities.
These practices are quite different from dominant
empirical traditions with regard to the practice,
authority and use of science and scientific
information whereby autonomy and objectivity are
endemic values. It is not surprising then that IPCC
science and participating scientists have been
challenged with performing ‘bad’ or ‘co-opted’
science. An examination of the controversy between
empirical scientific traditions and the science-policy
innovations of the IPCC reveal some of the tensions
involved in the models of science used to evaluate a
scientific assessment of the IPCC-type.
In their efforts to maintain traditional values of
objectivity, rationality and autonomy, a group of
climate and atmospheric scientists organized around
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 147
the Science and Environmental Policy Project
(SEPP) 10 and the signing of the Leipzig Declaration 11 ,
advance these empirical traditions by patrolling the
boundaries between science and policy in the IPCC.
The essence of their critique is asserted through the
Leipzig Declaration (1997), which states:
We believe that the dire predictions of a future
warming have not been validated by the historic climate
record, which appears to be dominated by natural
fluctuations, showing both warming and cooling. These
predictions are based on nothing more than theoretical
models and cannot be relied on to construct farreaching
policies.
Climate contrarians argue that the theoretical and
simulated techniques used to generate policy relevant
information do not constitute valid and credible
scientific inquiry. Familiar names such as Fred Singer
(SEPP, web) and Richard Lindzen (2001), and others,
assert that models used in the IPCC have not been
validated with real-world observations and are
therefore not accurate sources of description and
prediction for climate change and its causes. He
argues that the reliance on faulty and uncertain
theoretical models forfeits opportunities for science
to reduce uncertainties and to strengthen scientific
understanding of the global climate. In discussing the
use and implications of theoretical models in the
IPCC, Lindzen (2001) makes the distinction between
‘correct’ and ‘possible’ information. He charges that
IPCC scientists have used predictive models to focus
on the ‘possible’ adverse situations in order for policy
action to be taken. Moreover he states that this use
of predictive models is not correct and “…effectively
deprives society of science’s capacity to solve
problems and answer questions” (Lindzen 2001, 2).
In essence Lindzen (2001) argues that the use of
possible rather than correct predictive outcomes is
inadequate in the development of far-reaching policy.
The contrarian concern with the IPCC’s inadequate
methods and misrepresentation of uncertainties is
two-fold. First, the contrarians are acting as the
patrollers of the science-policy boundary in order to
10 The well-known climate contrarian, Fred Singer, heads the
Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), the goal is
to monitor the science and media surrounding global warming
to ensure the contrarian perspective is regularly reported.
SEPP was central in writing and coordinating signatures for
the Leipzig Declaration. (For a list of SEPP publications see
http://www.sepp.org). Few peer-reviewed articles have been
published by SEPP and therefore much of the information has
been retrieved from the website above.
11 Similar to the Heidelberg Appeal of the Rio Summit (1992), The
Leipzig Declaration of 1997 was an action taken by climate
scientists against the IPCC consensus on anthropogenicinduced
climate change, the Climate Treaty and the Kyoto
Protocol. The Declaration and its hundred signatories came
out of the International Symposium on the Greenhouse
Controversy, held in Leipzig, Germany on Nov. 9-10, 1995,
and in Bonn, Germany on Nov. 10-11, 1997.

148
ensure that the IPCC’s requirement for policy
relevance does not cause it to fail the criteria of
scientific correctness and robustness. The contrarian
interpretation of inadequate theoretical methods and
tools has increased the significance attributed to
scientific uncertainties in climate science. They argue
that these uncertainties have not been sufficiently
represented in the substantive product of the
summary for policymakers (SPM). This relates to a
second concern: the significant exposure and
attention IPCC products have within an international
policy audience. Singer’s (SEPP, web) comment “we
detect here a serious misuse of science and of
scientists for political purposes” speaks to the
pressures exerted on scientists in a mandated
scientific assessment such as the IPCC.
SEPP and the contrarian analysis depends upon an
empiricist model of science where the appropriate
role of the scientist is to provide valid and credible
evidence to the policy sphere. The empiricist
approach assumes that policymakers require robust
scientific evidence in order to legitimate their
decisions; where the rigor of science, when
adequately translated, will inform the most
appropriate policy decisions. The implicit suggestion
is that good data translates into good policy. This
interpretation relies on a particular view of an
autonomous and objective science.
Within the IPCC the intergovernmental audience
seeks information and recommendations from
science and scientists. It is feared that by making the
relationship between scientist and policymaker closer,
a sense of policy urgency around climate change may
lead to the premature use of not sufficiently validated
information. The contrarians argue that scientific
consensus in the IPCC creates a veneer of scientific
robustness even where significant uncertainties
exist 12 .
The empiricist model of science underlying the SEPP
approach has not gone unchallenged in the
science/policy literature. For example, the suggestion
that scientific facts are discovered in nature has been
problematized within the history and social studies of
science literatures. Research in the sociology of
scientific knowledge (SSK) suggests that the practice
and practitioners of science operate within a social
12 Campbell (1988) discusses the concept of the significance of
uncertainties in areas of scientific controversy. Using the
McKenzie Pipeline as an example, he demonstrates how
different experts will have different understandings and
estimations of uncertainties, depending upon their
interpretation of the adequacy in the information. As Wynne
(1991) has argued, the interpretation of how uncertain
scientific information is may depend on one’s disciplinary
distance from that information.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
and normative sphere that makes scientific inquiry
and fact construction permeable to cognitive and
epistemological interpretation. This creates a setting
where “[s]hared beliefs, discourses, practices, and
goals are all part of the context in which knowledge is
formulated and technologies are developed” (Jasanoff
& Wynne 1998). This is referred to as a social
constructivist approach, according to which scientific
investigation straddles the worlds of naturally and
socially constructed phenomenon.
Boehmer-Christiansen’s (1994) two-part analysis of
the IPCC explores the ways scientists’ epistemic
commitments and political alliances influence the
development and construction of the climate change
research program and the IPCC itself. She reveals
the way that power and persuasive authority act to
decrease the integrity and legitimacy of the scientific
climate assessment. In her interest-based analysis,
Boehmer-Christiansen (1994) argues that the
unidirectional science-policy relationship and the
desire for discrete boundaries described in the
empiricist approach, is simply unattainable.
A Constructivist Approach
The history and sociology of science studies have
suggested that the negotiation and dominance of
different interpretations of scientific data remains
cloaked within the “black box” of scientific fact
construction (Latour 1987; Collins 1981d). Opening
the “black-box” of scientific expertise that is both
packaged in its own language of mathematics, tables,
graphs, boxes and discourses, has revealed the
normative and social dimensions that contribute to
the crafting and closure of a scientific claim. A
constructivist account of science (Latour&Woolgar
(1979); Latour (1987)) traces the role of human
agency through asymmetries in peer networks, shared
discourses, epistemic norms, funding circles and in
cognitive, social, cultural and political influences. It
follows the crafting process involved in the
development of scientific information and analyzes
the political alliances and economic ties that
contribute to the dominance and enclosure of a
scientific interpretation. Boehmer-Christiansen (1994)
reveals that in the case of the IPCC closure on the
scientific interpretation of climate change and its
effects can change with the shifting policy
commitments. This form of analysis demystifies and
destabilizes notions of an objective science and
undercuts naive concepts of scientific autonomy.
Boehmer-Christiansen (1994) traces the behaviors,
alliances and economic ties of the leading climate
scientists (those scientists already operating within

prestigious institutions) to show how scientists have
used ideological not scientific persuasion to establish
climate change as a policy priority. She argues that the
inception of the international climate research
program (culminating in the IPCC) was motivated by
two incentives – the ability to secure funding and the
ability to coordinate and promote an environmental
policy agenda. In the FAR scientists aligned
themselves with an environmental agenda of ‘action
now’ supported by a small yet significant group of
upper level bureaucrats. Yet in the SAR this changed.
Greater significance was attributed to scientific
uncertainties in the SAR, the determinant that
promoted a ‘wait and learn’ approach to policy.
Boehmer-Christiansen suggests that, “(f)aced with the
complexity of environmental science researching at
the frontiers of knowledge scientific advocacy can
honestly switch from emphasizing certainties to
uncertainties, from the advocacy of ‘action now’ to a
‘wait and learn’ approach” (1994b 2:197; emphasis
added). In other words, climate science is sufficiently
uncertain that different legitimate interpretations of
are possible.
Boehmer-Christiansen’s (1994) constructivist
approach relies heavily on an assumption of social
agency. Although useful in establishing transparency
in science and revealing the ways that the empirical
ideal of an autonomous and objective science is
unattainable, Her analysis tends to assume that the
causal agency of scientific practitioners is influenced
by simplistic, traceable relationships that together
decrease the legitimacy of the information in the
IPCC. Similar to Latour and Woolgar (1979),
Boehmer-Christiansen (1994a) takes as a point of
departure the ways that scientists produce public
meaning through their ability to enroll allies and
through the manipulation of resources. She
determines that the preservation and enhancement of
scientific careers and the desire to secure future
funding is the overall interest of scientists. Latour
and Woolgar (1979) refer to this as the ‘credibility
cycle’ around which scientists revolve in an endless
sequence of producing work, receiving recognition,
and getting support. Boehmer-Christiansen’s
(1994ab) analysis reveals the role of funding circles,
epistemic networks and an established credibility
cycle where scientists adhere to underlying policy
commitments (in order to secure their personal
research interests). There is the implicit suggestion
that where epistemic consensus exists, scientists have
unilateral and persuasive authority within the policy
sphere. Yet where controversy and uncertainties
emerge scientists can “honestly” shift from one
interpretation to a different one. In this way,
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 149
Boehmer-Christiansen shows how the authority of
science has been used to legitimate both strong policy
(FAR) and status-quo policy (SAR) responses in the
IPCC. She reveals the contingency of scientific
interpretations in a policy sphere and suggests that
the ‘ad-hoc arrangements’ and the blurring of the
roles between the scientific and the bureaucratic
institutions decrease the legitimacy of the IPCC
information. 13
The implications of Boehmer-Christiansen’s (1994ab)
analysis for our purposes is that it goes beyond the
empiricist critique to reveal the degree to which the
‘front end’ of the scientific process is itself already
connected in strong ways to the policy process.
Jasanoff and Wynne (1998) discuss the ways that
policy-oriented research is the result of complex
forms of communal work between scientific and
bureaucratic institutions that can share in the mutual
legitimation of ideas, discourses, practices and goals.
Building on SEPP’s arguments of the contingency of
methodological adequacy and Boehmer-
Christiansen’s discussions of alliance-building in the
support of the policy sphere, the situational approach
assumes there is a strong form of engagement
between scientists and policymakers. The suggestion
is that the social influences involved in science not
only exist in its ties to the bureaucratic establishment
but are more implicitly defined by a shared social
environment and the cognitive commitments that
define that environment. This is referred to as coproduction
where social and cultural commitments
are built into every phase of knowledge production
and consequent social action (Jasanoff and Wynne
1998).
Shackley and Wynne (1995) use a situational model to
investigate the development of technical knowledge
in the IPCC and the social queries involved in
determining the adequacy of knowledge. The
situational approach is appropriately named, as it
assumes that science is situated and practiced in
regional scientific cultures that operate under
different expectations and constraints and where the
determinations of rational and irrational are
constituted in particular practice settings and
structures.
13 It is difficult to assess whether Boehmer-Christiansen (1994ab)
herself considers the empiricist approach to science for policy
approach to be ideal but unattainable or whether, based on her
interest-based analysis, she holds a constructivist interpretation
of science within policy that would renounce the empiricist
approach in principle.

150
A Situated Science --- Looking to Science in
Context
The situational model offered by Clarke and Fujimura
(1992) shifts the focus from an interest-based
approach, where the bureaucratic establishment and
scientist is the central motivating force behind the
dominance of a scientific interpretation, to a focus on
a multi-causal model for analysis. A situational model
of science encourages the researcher to examine a
wide variety of forces that act in combination (career
motivation and type of mental or technological
models) and in dynamic ways (skill sets, political
climate and cultural perception). It identifies many
interactive forces that exert pressures and constraints
on different scientists in different research settings.
This model not only recognizes that conceptual (or
ideological) models, theories and ideas act as filters to
organize scientific communities (as revealed through
BC’s analysis), but also that new instruments,
techniques, models and technologies can play a
significant role in the framing of and interpretation of
data as well.
Shackley and Wynne (1995) reveal are the ways
interpretations of knowledge adequacy are contested
internally among the ‘core-set’. Different scientific
interpretations, identified as purist and pragmatist,
not only have significant implications on the framing
and direction of climate research but on the policy
sphere as well. They argue that what is not realized is
that within the construction and interpretation of
GCM’s there are “implicit assumptions about the user
world, its needs and capabilities, and its structures of
agency and decision-making”(Shackley and Wynne
1995: 120). What they suggest is that the compilation,
construction and interpretation of these models is
dominated by a small number of scientists who,
based on original estimations and assumptions, tacitly
influence what information becomes tangible,
relevant and knowable both in the natural and the
social worlds of investigation and action. However
what is considered as acceptable with regard to model
uncertainty and approximation remain internal to the
domain of science despite the implications of these
judgments on the policy community.
Shackley and Wynne’s (1995) analysis is not an
attempt to undermine the basis of simulated climate
models or the assessments of the IPCC. Instead they
demonstrate the science-policy interface internal to
the construction of climate models. This argument
returns to the concerns expressed by SEPP about the
internal working of science. Like SEPP (web),
Shackley and Wynne (1995) paint a picture of science
as influenced by the conceptual judgments of
scientists structured in a way that colors the kinds of
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
conclusions reached both in future research efforts
and implicitly in the exploration of policy options.
Unlike SEPP (web), Shackley and Wynne (1995) do
not see this picture as problematic in principle but
simply provide a reflexive rendition of how science
interacts within a larger social world. An awareness of
such processes does not weaken or invalidate science
but allows a richer and more nuanced view of its
meaning to be expressed. By exposing these areas of
discontent, approximation and uncertainty between a
divided scientific community and the ‘user’
community (in this example, future researchers and
policymakers) there is a untapped potential – that is
to open the possibility of discerning together what
level of uncertainty in the climate models and other
scientific information is tolerable, and thus what is
considered to be adequate information and its
relevance to the policy domain. As noted earlier, the
judgment of the adequacy of information is just as
much a political judgment as a scientific one (Jasanoff
1991) (Campbell 1985).
Concepts of Imbued Meaning
Boehmer-Christiansen (1994ab) and Shackley and
Wynne (1995) look to the influences, negotiations
and practices that construct scientific information and
by doing so, challenge the discursive authority
attributed to both science and scientist. These
analyses reveal the contingency involved in the
framing of scientific problems, in claim-making and
fact construction and the pervasiveness of the coproduction
involved in the scientific advisory bodies.
However, does this reduce the credibility of the
science generated in the IPCC? The focus on
climate science and the substantive products
generated by the IPCC has deflected attention from
what could potentially be the most novel, innovative
and pertinent aspect of the IPCC – the IPCC as
process – as a means in and of itself. Understanding
the ways that credibility and legitimacy are formulated
both within scientific process and in science-policy
interactions is necessary in order to develop meaningful
policy relevant scientific information. 14
14 Meaningful is used a suggestive prompt in order to distinguish
between the values associated with traditional discourses of
credibility and legitimacy and the possibilities for the
credibility and legitimacy of information which may be neither
scientific nor policy but some hybrid blending of the two. As
stated by Ashmore (1985): “Logical positivism demarcates
meaningless from meaningful statements by the principle of
empirical verification: if a statement cannot (in principle) be
empirically verified, then it is meaningless; if it can be it is
meaningful. Unfortunately [or rather fortunately], a statement
of the verification principle cannot itself be so verified and is
therefore meaningless” (159).

Considering the nature of policy-relevant not policy
prescriptive scientific information, the question must
be asked whether information can become more
responsive if co-produced in a transparent way? A
defining aspect of a mandated science model is the
recognition that decisions or products are neither
entirely scientific nor entirely political. Wynne and
Jasanoff (1998) suggest that, especially at the sciencepolicy
interface, whether tacitly or explicitly, science is
a co-production that simultaneously produces social
order and scientific knowledge. Taken together, the
constructivist and situational approaches identify
areas of external and internal co-production where
the efforts of each knowledge community influence
the activities and responses of the other. The
situational approach embeds science within its social
and political context and recognizes that the socially
constructed boundaries implicitly, and often
unintentionally, overlap and result in the coproduction
of information.
Building from Shackley and Wynne’s (1995)
investigation, we are interested in extending the
situational model beyond the substantive (modeling)
issues of the IPCC and are instead interested in the
IPCC process particularly with regard to the
mediation of the science-policy interface. The
investigation into the science-policy interface of
global environmental assessments has been identified
as an under-appreciated element of design (Farrell et
al. 2001). However it is deemed to be a significant
focus in analysis and evaluation of the IPCC in order
to analyze: (i) the extent to which science-policy
boundaries become elasticized, (ii) the processes and
protocols that maintain the credibility and legitimacy
of the hybrid products and (iii) the mechanisms that
facilitate the transfer of different materials, rhetorics,
discourses, and meanings across this interface.
Similar to “boundary objects” (Star and Griesemer
1989, 404), the SPM and PRSQ’s coordinate two
divergent worlds to manage and maximize both the
autonomy and communication between worlds where
heterogeneous economies of information and
materials are required. They enable ambiguous and
multivalent information to travel across boundaries
and represent different meanings to different
communities. According to Star and Greisemer
(1989) standardization of methods and monitoring of
process make information compatible, allowing for a
longer reach across divergent worlds. In order to
understand the SPM and the SYR as boundary
objects, an analysis to discern what processes and
protocols maintain the credibility and legitimacy of
their final products is necessary. This will lead to an
analysis of how these instruments can contribute
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 151
more effectively to the advancement of policy
relevant scientific information.
These considerations suggest that the encouragement
of certain forms of science-policy interaction can
potentially increase the ability to derive policy
relevant scientific information without weakening or
undermining the scientific process or the science
itself. We believe the degree to which the SPM and
PRSQ processes act to translate, simplify and make
complex and extensive scientific information relevant
to a policy audience (SPM), situate science within a
governmental framework (SYR) and facilitate sciencepolicy
interaction in unique ways deserves further
study and exploration. An investigation into the
IPCC process has the potential to transform
conventional commitments to the boundaries
between the natural and social worlds, to
commitments that include new criteria and more
contextualized protocols for the development of valid
and useful knowledge.
Conclusion
Although the analyses of SEPP, Boehmer-
Christiansen, and Shackley and Wynne have quite
different assumptions, focuses and intents, implicit in
all of their characterizations of the IPCC are
challenges to the notion of an autonomous, precise,
accurate and disinterested science. In a way, each of
the three analyses contextualizes the previous
approach. SEPP maintains that the uncertainties and
theoretical models used in the IPCC misuse scientific
information and they act to patrol the boundaries
where only a robust science informs policy.
Boehmer-Christiansen points out that this desired
empirical approach to science for policy does not
correspond to actual practice. By revealing how
epistemic networks and policy commitments
influence the scientific interpretation of information,
Boehmer-Christiansen shows how traditional
conceptions of scientific integrity in the IPCC are not
very helpful in understanding the way science is
actually conducted. Shackley and Wynne (1995) build
on Boehmer-Christiansen’s analysis of the coproduction
involved in the IPCC between the
scientific and policy communities to suggest that the
even the most internal information generated from
the general circulation models (GCM) has tacit
assumptions and approximations about the adequacy
and relevance of information, in part influenced by
scientists anticipating the needs of the policy ‘user’
community. Shackley and Wynne (1995) argue that
the traditional science for policy model is not only
contingent and unattainable but may also be

152
undesireable in principle.
The question that surfaces in the Shackley and
Wynne (1995) critique is whether the tacit
assumptions made by many scientists about the needs
of the policy community may operate in direct
opposition to the desired outcome of “policy relevant
information”. Shackley and Wynne (1995) expose the
hidden cultural commitments and nuanced
understandings between science and policy. Rather
than assuming that science is a linear transfer of
value-neutral information from scientists to
policymakers, perhaps it is more useful to assume
that in areas of science for policy, the combined
expertise of both scientists and policymakers can coproduce
better questions, formulations, assessments
and products then either independently. “Policy
relevant scientific information” may require that
boundary science cease to be regarded as the
culmination of a universal scientific method resulting
in unified agreement. Rather it may be more
productive to see scientific assessment as a
negotiation between science and ‘user’ or policy
communities in the acceptance of problem definition,
methods, the adequacy of information and the
significance of uncertainties.
How is the IPCC dealing with the inherent
assumptions, normative judgments and ambiguities
involved in constructing scientific knowledge? What
types of expertise and which communities have the
credibility to inform judgments involved in problem
construction? How can knowledge claims and policy
decisions be developed through procedures and
practices considered to be legitimate? What
constitutes credible and relevant information on an
issue such as global climate change where everyone is
a stakeholder? These are some of the questions one
of the authors proposes to investigate by means of a
detailed examination of the processes and protocols
involved in the SPM’s of the IPCC’s Third
Assessment Report (TAR) and the SYR. 15
As the questions asked of science become
increasingly larger in scale (global) and magnitude
(with regard to the implications for decision-making)
and are found to intrinsically interconnect with
human systems, activities and influences, the
interaction of science and its cultural and policy
contexts becomes ever more important. By
acknowledging the normative and contingent
dimensions involved in both science and policy and
15 Shaw’s (forthcoming) dissertation research will study the IPCC
as a process. She will analyze the ways that the SPM and SYR
increase interaction between science and policy in the IPCC
and how this contributes to the combined areas of technical
and normative judgment in climate change information.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
the associated forms of practical expertise in both
communities, it may be possible to formulate new
relationships between these communities that
transcend culturally constructed and illusory
boundaries.
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Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 153

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 154-164.
Capacity Building and Sustainability Knowledge in the Climate Change
Regime
Joyeeta Gupta *
1. Introduction
Increasingly, there is evidence that developing countries
are unable to meet their commitments under a
number of international environmental treaties
(Gupta 1997, 2001 Jacobson and Weiss 1995, Young
and Moltke 1994, Keohane 1993, Sand 1992). The
diagnosis for this problem tends to be that this is
because of the lack of scientific and institutional
capacity and technology in developing countries to
deal with this problem (see, for example, Metz et al
(eds.) 2000). The solution, therefore, is to include
articles in the policies and treaties that call for the
provision of increased support for capacity building
activities in the developing countries and to promote
technology transfer to these countries (e.g. UNCED
1992, FCCC 1992, KPFCCC 1997, CCD 1994). Such
services are to be provided by the developed countries
and mostly at the request of the developing
countries. With the provision of such capacity building
support, it is expected that developing countries
will be able to meet their commitments under the
international environmental treaties and in the longterm
will be able to participate as full partners in the
global objective of achieving sustainable development.
This will increase the incentive of the developed
countries to also implement their commitments.
Otherwise the developed countries claim that it
serves little purpose for them to reduce their, for
example, emissions of greenhouse gas pollutants, if
those from developing countries continue to rise (e.g.
Bodanksy 1993; Grubb et al.1999). The diagnosis of
the problem and the solution is seen to be useful in a
range of different problem areas. This paper specifically
examines this diagnosis in the context of the
climate change regime and sustainable development.
In particular it focuses on the issue of capacity building.
The general question is: Is the problem poorly
defined and the solution self-serving? The specific
question is: Are the capacity building instruments
developed under the Climate Change Agreements
able to address the structural imbalance in sustainabil-
* Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Contact:
joyeeta.gupta@ivm.vu.nl.
ity knowledge between North and South?
This paper first examines the relationship between
climate change and sustainable development in science
and within the context of the climate change
agreements (Section 2). It then examines the problem
of developing country non-compliance and the solution
of capacity building as developed within the
climate agreements (Section 3). It then critically reexamines
the problem definition and the solution
(Section 4) and then draws some conclusions.
Although the thesis of this paper is more general, it is
going to be argued on the basis of the developments
in the climate change regime. The climate change
regime refers to the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (FCCC, 1992), the Kyoto
Protocol to the Convention (KPFCCC, 1997), the
Marrakesh Accords (2001) and the decisions of the
Conference of the Parties to the Convention.
2. Climate Change and Sustainable
Development
2.1 CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
This section puts forth the argument that it is the way
we are developing that causes the climate change
problem. The climate change problem and policies to
deal with the problem, by virtue of affecting almost
every sector in modern and traditional societies (Metz
et al (eds.) 2001) is essentially a challenge to the way
societies develop individually and the way the global
community globalises (Gupta 1997). The Brundtland
Commission (WCED 1987, 4) argued that a new
development path was required. The problem of
climate change thus questions the development paradigm.
The solution is – sustainable development (see
e.g. WSSD 2002).
However, although the Brundtland Commission
recognized this challenge, it did not go so far as to
question deeply into the causes of the problem and
the solutions. Chatterjee and Finger (1994, 16) suggest
that instead of being “blinded by the development
myth”, the Commission could have focused
more on re-distribution and de-industrialisation. One
could of course argue that de-industrialisation is close
to the de-materialisation paradigm and that the latter
is a key element of the new path that needs to be

sought towards sustainable development. At the same
time, although the words are close in meaning, possibly
what Chatterjee and Finger were pointing out was
that the processes of globalisation were poised for
major take-off, and that such globalisation was going
to internationalise existing production and consumption
processes and not the alternative development
paths or industrial transformation paths. They were
critical of the fact that neither Brundtland nor the
United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development appeared capable of developing policies
that could cope with the forces of globalisation.
While the Brundtland report put sustainable development
on the agenda of the global political and
scientific community, the term has been used as both
a means (“path”) and as an end (“goal”) and often on
the same page (eg. WCED 1987, 4). The term is
clearly fuzzy and can be used to mean any number of
things and can be adopted by all social actors without
committing them to any specific and measurable
responsibility (Gupta and Hisschemöller 1997).
The fuzziness does not diminish the value of the
concept; instead it calls for more and better sustainability
science. This has been recently recognized by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). It is only since the IPCC Third Scientific
Assessment Report that global sustainability has
become an issue of scientific importance in the climate
community (Banuri et al 2001, 78). At the same
time, Banuri et al (2001, 75) take a cautious approach
to the relationship between the concept and climate
change and put it more mildly like this:
“Climate Change involves complex interactions between
climatic, environmental, economic, political, institutional,
social, and technological processes. It cannot
be addressed or comprehended in isolation from
broader societal goals (such as sustainable development),
or other existing or probably future sources of
stress.”
With only one chapter devoted to the issue, it became
soon obvious to the IPCC community that more
research needed to be done on this relationship.
IPCC is however sponsored by governments, and the
United States Government vetoed the idea of a Special
Report on sustainable development and climate
change. As a compromise, it suggested instead a short
technical report on sustainable development. The
developing countries responded by vetoing this idea,
since they felt that such a technical report was hardly
likely to go into the relevant political and social challenges.
Thus, although there is some work in different
contexts to, inter alia, develop sustainability indicators,
sustainability science is still in its infancy in the
North and in the South. What is increasingly becom-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 155
ing clear is that ‘normal’ scientific approaches do not
have the wherewithal to deal with such a complex
problem. Public interest (Shiva and Bandyopadhyay
1986), post-normal science (Functovicz et al 1996)
and participatory integrated assessment is just about
beginning to acquire some credibility in the research
world. Thus, what is clear is that there are no easy
prescriptive answers on the question what is sustainable
development.
2.2 THE TREATIES AND THE LAW OF SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
Let us now look at the way the climate change
agreements deal with the issue of sustainable development.
The FCCC states that parties have a right to
and should promote sustainable development. By
assigning this idea the status of a principle, the treaty
recognises that sustainable development is the solution
to the problem of climate change. In fact one
can go so far as to argue that the climate change
regime is a Prototype Law of Sustainable Development.
This is because, as mentioned above, the problem
affects probably every sector of the economy
(including land-use), and, hence, the way we develop.
This is also because most of the elements of the
emerging law of sustainable development are also
included in the climate change regime. The Law of
Sustainable Development is currently in its infancy,
but international jurists believe that the key ingredients
of such a law as it unfolds will include several
principles (ILA 2002).
Most of these principles are to be found in the Climate
Change Agreements. For example, the Climate
Change Agreements include the right to and responsibility
for achieving sustainable development (Article
3.4, FCCC 1992), the principle of equity and the
common but differentiated responsibilities of countries
(see Article 3.1, FCCC 1992), the precautionary
principle (see Article 3.3, FCCC 1992), and responsibilities
in relation to public participation and awareness
building (see Article 6, FCCC 1992). (For a more
detailed explanation of this point see Arts and Gupta
2003). The principles of the Law of Sustainable Development,
see sustainable development also as a
means, rather than an end.
Although the above would suggest that the treaty
uses sustainable development in a consistent manner,
the treaty provides alternative options for interpreting
sustainability. In paragraph 22 of the Preamble, the
FCCC specifies that in order to achieve sustainable
social and economic development, energy use will
need to increase (and, hence, emissions). In Article 2,
it specifies that the problem needs to be solved in a
time-frame that allows economic development to

156
proceed sustainably. In Article 4.2a, it states that
countries need sustained economic growth in order to
deal with climate change. The confusion is that at
some places it is argued that sustained economic
growth is essential to help countries adopt measures
to deal with climate change and will eventually lead to
sustainable development, and in other places it is
suggested that that is not the case.
The Kyoto Protocol ‘appears’ to solve this last confusion,
because the term sustained economic growth
disappears completely and the focus is now only on
achieving sustainable development, and sustainable
development appears to become synonymous with
measures to deal with climate change. This is also
illustrated by the Marrakesh Ministerial Declaration
(2001) which points out that “addressing the many
challenges of climate change will make a contribution
to sustainable development” and that exploring the
synergies between the Convention and other global
environmental conventions can contribute to sustainable
development. 1 Sustainable development appears
to be an end goal.
The confusion in the way sustainable development is
dealt with in the treaty may reflect the difference in
the economic situation in developed and developing
countries. If one accepts the Environment Kuznets
curve theory (Opschoor 2002) that as countries become
richer it is easier for them to invest in environmental
protection, then one can argue that for developing
countries it is important to develop further
before they can adopt climate change measures and
achieve sustainable development; while the rich countries
can already switch tracks, and adopt sustainable
development measures which will include measures
to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gas emissions.
On the other hand, if we look at Article 4.2a of the
Climate Change Convention which was addressed at
the developed countries then we see that it is they
that ask for sustained economic growth as a precondition
for reducing their measures. This is in line with
much recent analysis that shows that the environment
Kuznets curve may hold for local pollutants but does
not do so for global pollutants (Bruyn 1999). This is
because as countries become richer they would like to
benefit from a better local and regional environment,
but global issues do not get quite as much support
from the domestic population.
At the same time, others argue that energy growth is
in fact outstripping GDP growth in most developing
countries (Bernstein 1993, Sengupta 1996, Gupta and
Hall 1996). If one looks at the speeches made by
1 Decision 1/CP.7: The Marrakesh Ministerial Declaration.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
representatives of the developed and developing
world, it becomes clear that both developing and
developed countries believe that sustained economic
growth is needed for taking climate change measures
and that this will eventually lead to the goal of sustainable
development. Alternatively, measures to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions might have a negative
impact on economic growth and, hence, sustainable
development (see, for example, the Byrd Hagel
Resolution 1997). This has led some rich countries to
call for an increase in their emissions – namely Australia,
Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal,
Spain and Sweden (see Annex B of the KPFCCC
1997 and EU 2002) and others to refuse to ratify the
Kyoto Protocol, namely the US and Australia.
This is in stark contrast to the idea that sustained
economic growth as it has been defined has led to the
environmental crises and we need to change course
(see 2.1). In other words, it does not matter if you are
rich or poor; neither is anywhere close to achieving
the path of sustainable development and structurally
reducing the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions.
This does not mean, however, that technological
improvements are not within grasp of the rich
(Sachs et al 1998 Fussler 1998; Weiszächer et al 1997;
Metz et al 2001) and the poor (Metz et al 2000). It
also does not imply that the richer countries do not
have a larger array of technological responses than
the South, or that the South cannot learn from the
North. This does not mean that there is no structural
imbalance in knowledge when it comes to the details
of individual gases and their emission sources and
sinks. What it does imply is that many of these technologies
are expensive and that technologies in themselves
may not be adequate for dealing with the climate
change problem. What it further implies is that
the South may have to also engage seriously in seeking
sustainable solutions that work within the context
of their own countries; and that possibly there are
lessons that the North can also learn from the South,
or that the South can learn from each other. The
point I am trying to make is that there is no evidence
that shows that only one group of countries has the
solutions in terms of sustainable development.
2.3 THE SIMPLIFICATION OF SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
Against the background of the difficulties of actually
identifying what precisely the role of sustainable
development is in the climate change regime, it was
inevitable that the negotiating parties would choose
to reduce the problem to manageable dimensions.
This is also recommended by regime analysts (Greene
1996, Benedick 1993, Sebenius 1993, Sand 1990).

Hence, the problem is defined as a practical technological
problem caused by the emissions of greenhouse
gases; and hence the solution is to reduce these
emissions (Gupta 1997). A large number of policies
and measures have been devised to deal with this (see
Article 3 of the Kyoto Protocol 1997). I would interpret
the climate change treaties as not calling for a
further elaboration of sustainability science per sé,
but for the further development of the technological
options to deal with climate change.
Another way of simplifying the issue of sustainable
development is to emphasise its contextual character
and so sustainable development has been nationalised.
In other words, the legal agreements in the regime
point out that each country can define for itself
what is sustainable in the domestic context and can
then accordingly develop its own priorities (Marrakesh
Accords 2001). Thus sustainable development
becomes a national issue.
3. Climate Change, Sustainable Development
and Developing Countries: The Challenge of
Capacity Building
3.1 THE SOUTH-CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM
From the perspective of the developed countries, the
problem of climate change could not be addressed
without involving the developing countries (e.g. Bodansky
1993). This was the key motivation for involving
the developing countries in an all-inclusive climate
regime. This is because any action by the developed
countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or
increase absorbtions by sinks will be rendered negligible
by the large increases in emissions by sources
and degraded sinks in the developing countries. In
other words, it only makes sense to reduce emissions
and deal with the climate change problem in the
North, if there is confidence that the South will also
be in a position to take measures to reduce the (rate
of) growth of their emissions. For other countries,
this is an added incentive to deal with the problem of
developing country emissions.
The increase in emissions in developing countries will
be caused by their lack of knowledge, capacity, technology
and financial resources compounded by incompetence
and corruption. According to scientists,
the solution to this problem is financing the transfer
of ‘leap-frog’ technologies to the developing countries
(SWCC Scientific Declaration 1990). This idea
was jointly accepted by all countries (see, for ex.,
Noordwijk Declaration on Climate Change 1990;
Second World Climate Conference 1990). This led to
the adoption of text on scientific and technological
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 157
cooperation (Article 5 of the FCCC 1992), technology
transfer (Article 4.5 of the FCCC 1992; Article 10
of the KPFCCC 1997) and financial mechanisms in
the climate change treaty (Article 11, 21 of the FCCC
1992; Article 11 of the KPFCCC 1997).
The technology transfer provisions are, however,
problematic. Modern technologies are mostly owned
by private companies who want payment for their
technologies. Even where the technologies are available
in the public domain, there is a reluctance to
identify and make available such technologies
(Anderson et al. 2001a, 19). Provisions on technology
transfer in treaties tend to go nowhere unless there is
also some provision in relation to the financial aspects
(Henikoff 1997). In the climate change regime,
the problem was partially solved by the development
of the financial mechanism, the Clean Development
Mechanism (Article 12 of the KPFCCC 1997) and
Joint Implementation (Article 6 of the KPFCCC
1997). The latter two would allow for technology
transfer in return for compensation in terms of certified
emission reductions or emission reduction units
respectively; in other words the compensation would
be in terms of the number of units of emission reduced.
The financial assistance issue has led to five
mechanisms – the Global Environment Facility for
transfers under the Climate Change Convention
(Article 11 and 21 of the FCCC 1992), the Least
Developing Country Fund, the Adaptation Fund and
the Climate Fund (Marrakesh Accords 2001). In
addition developed countries sponsor the participation
of developing country scientists in IPCC as part
of scientific and technological cooperation (Article
5.C of the FCCC 1992). The mere proliferation of
funds does not, however, imply that more financial
resources will eventually become available especially
in a time of aid fatigue. In the 1990s, official development
assistance has decreased substantially while
commercial foreign direct investment has increased.
However, ODA remains important for the least developed
countries. Foreign direct investment has
increased but is focused only on a few countries and
is ‘fickle’ in that if better opportunities show up elsewhere,
the investment dries up (Radka et al 2001, 69).
One could argue here, that the technology transfer
debate tended to ignore fifty years of experience in
technology transfer and the arguments in the literature
on the need for appropriate technology transfer
rather than leap-frog technology transfer. In concrete
terms, this would call for an analysis of when leapfrog
technologies work in the context of other countries
without creating additional environmental problems
(e.g. possibly the mobile telephone), and where
they would either become white elephants, or would

158
merely transfer old technologies to the South and
thus trap them in the same technological trajectory.
However, it is argued that the white elephant and the
inappropriate technology problem can be dealt with
through the development of capacity in the developing
countries so that they can adopt the modern
technologies and leap-frog their way to development.
In this concept, there is also some hope for the developing
countries in that they are then not doomed
to be always lagging behind the North. Social scientists
argue that it is far more difficult for the developed
countries to change course than for the developing
countries. This is because history shows that
one dominant techno-economic paradigm is followed
by other paradigms (Mansley et al 2000). However,
each paradigm is characterised by an interlocking
social and industrial infrastructure which resists
change for as long as possible. This means that it is
far more likely that change is possible in ‘greenfield’
societies that are not so technologically and industrially
interlocked, and where societies are eager for
development and change. The question is how does
one induce the right sort of societal and technological
change in these so-called Greenfield societies, when
one does not quite know what such change actually
implies?
3.2 CAPACITY BUILDING UNDER THE CLIMATE
CHANGE AGREEMENTS
In the meanwhile, the increasing recognition that
developing countries need capacity building, born in
the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development has finally matured within the climate
regime. Capacity building is special because ostensibly
there is no direct quid pro quo; i.e. it costs the developed
countries and there are no immediate visible
and direct benefits for the developed countries. The
benefits if at all are long-term and indirect.
Hence, the FCCC is minimal on capacity building
(Article 9.2d). By 1997, the need for capacity building
was acquiring credibility and Article 10e of the Kyoto
Protocol calls on Parties to strengthen capacity building.
Decisions of the Conference of the Parties 2
finally paved the way for the Marrakesh Accords to
adopt a framework for Capacity Building and requested
the Global Environment Facility (and other
bilateral and multilateral agencies, intergovernmental
organisations) to finance this process. The implementation
is to be monitored by the Subsidiary Body for
Implementation, and to be reviewed in 2003 and
2 Decisions 11/CP.1, 10/CP.2, 11/CP.2, 9/CP.3, 2/CP.4, 4/CP.4,
5/CP.4, 6/CP.4, 7/CP.4, 12/CP.4 and 14/CP.4.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
every five years after that. 3
The purpose of capacity building is to “assist them
[developing countries] in promoting sustainable development
while meeting the objective of the Convention.”
4 The capacity building provisions run into
33 paragraphs and point out that there is no “one
size-fits all” formula for capacity building. 5
It is further indicated that capacity building is a continuous,
progressive and iterative process, should be
effective, efficient, integrated and programmatic,
should maximise synergies with other conventions,
and should build on existing knowledge and practices.
It should focus on institutional capacity building,
enhancement and/or creation of an enabling environment,
national communications, national climate
change programmes, greenhouse gas inventories and
database management, vulnerability and adaptation
assessment and measures, assessment for implementation
of mitigation options, research and systematic
observation, development and transfer of technology,
improved decision-making and assistance for the
effective participation in international negotiations,
the CDM, education and training. 6 A similar decision
was taken for capacity building in relation to countries
with Economies in Transition. 7
The process of capacity building is represented in the
Figure below.
3 Decision 2/CP.7.
4 Para 1 of the Annex to Decision 2/CP.7.
5 Para 4 of the Annex to Decision 2/CP.7.
6 Para 15, 16 and 17 of the Annex to Decision 2/CP.7.
7 Decision 3/CP.7.

Capacity
building
framework
2/CP.7 GEF
New
Decisions
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 159
Recommendation Other
agencies
Guidance
Reports
Figure 1. Capacity Building Under the Marrakesh Accords
As such, the text on capacity building is well crafted
and the key concern at this level of analysis is that the
limited resources of the GEF will limit the amount of
effective capacity building under the Convention.
4. The question and solution revisited:
Capacity Building for What?
Let us return to the question: Is the problem correctly
defined and the solution self-serving? Are the capacity
building instruments developed under the Climate
Change Agreements able to address the structural
imbalance in sustainability knowledge between North
and South? This section re-examines the problem
definition.
Section 3.1 argued that the perceived problem was
that developing countries lacked the ability to reduce
their greenhouse gas emissions because they did not
have the science, institutions, technology and finance,
and in particular the capacity to deal with the problem.
Hence, the North was to invest in capacity building
in the South.
This is an attractive problem definition from the
perspective of the North. It casts the South in the
role of the problem maker, albeit pathetic problem
maker. It casts the North in the role of problem
solver – leader (see also Gupta 1998). It does not
question the availability of knowledge and capacity in
the North, it frames the problem in such a manner
that only the North (and occasionally – the South)
can provide the solutions to the problem. The solu-
Secretariat
COP
Review
Implementation
Monitor
SBI
tion thus calls for Northern investment to developing
countries, the export of Northern expertise and technology
in developing countries and the need to boost
the economies in the North. Since technology transfer
is not possible without capacity building, IPCC
defines capacity building as follows:
Capacity building is required at all stages in the process
of technology transfer. Social structures and personal
values evolve with a society’s physical infrastructure, institutions
and the technologies embodied within them.
New technological trajectories for an economy therefore
imply new social challenges. This requires a capacity
of people and organisations to continuously adapt to
new circumstances and to acquire new skills. (Anderson
et al. 2000b: 4-5).
This is also attractive to the developing countries,
who always want the solutions to be developed in
other countries and spoon-fed to them. This fits in
line with their repeated request to the developed
countries to provide them with modern technologies.
But IPCC itself points out that capacity building
efforts have more often failed than succeeded. I
would like to try and present an explanation why such
efforts are likely to fail in the short-term, but particularly
in the long-term. I would like to argue that the
problem that we have to address is not quite as simple
as the one presented above. The South has two
types of capacity problems; pre-negotiation ‘old’ capacity
problems and post-negotiation ‘new’ capacity problems.
The pre-negotiation ‘old’ capacity problems include
the basic development problems faced by these countries
in the domestic context and their problems in
the global arena including debt, structural adjustment
programmes, agricultural tariffs in the developed
countries, etc. Their specific pre-negotiation problems
include ideological vacillation and sustainability

160
dilemmas (i.e. confusion regarding what ideological
approach to adopt and how to define sustainable
development); structural imbalance in knowledge, the
inability to assess adequately the domestic interests
and stakes involved in the climate change negotiations
and to make appropriate issue-linkages. This
leads on the one hand to a hollow negotiating mandate,
on the other hand a mandate to discuss other
issues such as poverty abatement.
The post-negotiation capacity problems are problems
that result from the identification of complex solutions
at the international level. The lack of knowledge
in developing countries ranges from the specific (e.g.
the establishment of emission inventories, the development
of specific technologies) to the ideological
(what ideologies would serve the global good; how
should one define sustainable development?). This
leads even Southern think tanks (e.g. the South
Commission) to mimic and parrot the dominant
ideological vision while in the same breadth questioning
its impact on the South (Amin 1993; Kothari,
1993, Pietilä 1993, Pisani 1993, Galtung 1993). But
the post negotiation capacity problems tend to focus
on the specific and can lead to situations where recommendations
are made to provide insulated housing,
when the basic problem of providing shelter has
not yet been dealt with! Or that countries should
adopt expensive renewable energy, when they don’t
even have the resources to provide cheap energy to
their people.
The complex solutions are accepted by the developing
countries because of their handicapped negotiating
power which means that although intuitively they
call for principles and question the ideological
framework, when it comes down to the nitty gritty of
negotiations, they succumb to the technocratism of
the negotiating process and agree on the incremental
decisions (Gupta 1997, 2000, 2002). 8 Another reason
why this happens, is because of the process of regulatory
competition where countries compete to ‘upload’
their own solutions onto the international arena
(Gupta 2003).
Why do the developed countries propose such solutions?
This is because the science is immature and
complex and in the process of accepting such science,
the developed country policymakers selectively use
information that is consistent with the world-views of
the policymaker and confirm their own intuitive
expectations and are consistent with the interests and
policies of their organisations and politically feasible
8 Of course, these issues have finally reached the global agenda via
the Millennium Declaration and the World Summit on Sustainable
Development.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
(Caplan 1979, Rich 1981, 1991; Lindblom et al 1979).
In this paper, I want to argue that the focus of capacity
building efforts on ‘new’ capacity problems is
obviously seen as having many benefits; otherwise
such a process would not have been promoted by the
global community. But, the flaw is the assumption
that the North has the sustainable solutions which the
South lacks and can transfer these sustainable solutions
to the South.
However, literature indicates that climate change is a
‘western’ problem in that it has been caused by the
industrialisation processes in the North. Northern
local and national environmental problems may be
picked up by politicians and internalised in the political
economy in an effort to appease the electorate.
Continental environmental problems may be internalised
in closely integrated regions where there is also
export and import of problems. But international and
global environmental problems unless cute (the
panda bear), appealing (the whale) and elsewhere
(tropical deforestation) are unlikely to be easily integrated
in the economic system. This means that the
motivation to search for sustainable solutions within
the Western society will possibly be less.
Some would even argue that the problem is rooted in
growth-oriented capitalism where environmental
resources are continuously marginalised and externalised
in the process of producing and selling more and
more (Gorz 1994). This capitalism is currently being
aggressively marketed globally as part of the processes
of globalisation and trade regimes (Khor 2001,
de Rivero 2001), and thus, the motivation to question
the impacts of this ideology on production and consumption
patterns will also be less.
Some would add that it is also a distribution problem
– a problem about who has the right to how much
environmental space. Examined from this perspective,
although there can be doubts about how to share
or divide the space (Phylipsen et al. 1998; Agarwal
2000; Berk et al. 2003, Meyer 2001), there can be no
doubts that the space is limited and that the North
has used far in excess of its own space and therefore
needs to reduce its emissions (Krause et al. 1989,
Houghton et al. 1990). But the distribution aspect of
sustasinability science also makes it less attractive in
the North.
Many may be tempted to counteract with a practical
point: what about renewable energy? The technology
for renewable energy can provide the world a respite
from the problem of climate change and its ideological
and political implications. Some NGOs also argue
that the renewable energy issue can address the sensitive
problem of how environmental space is to be

shared between countries (Agarwal et al 1999). While
this is so, the problem is that such technologies are
new and by definition expensive. Further, although in
theory they are more affordable for the developed
countries than the developing countries, developed
countries argue that they already have an extensive
electric power system and that shutting down the
existing system will lead to stranded resources. This
leads to the development of a curious situation. Developing
countries need energy but cannot afford
expensive renewable energy. The question is: Who is
going to pay for the transfer of these very expensive
technologies and will the credits generated be able to
make renewable energy competitive with afforestation
projects or projects to transfer thermal or other
older technology? In other words how feasible is this
as a long-term solution?
These kinds of questions are the driving force behind
the civil society movement to question the current
global order (e.g. Jubilee 2000; Global Peoples Forum
2002; Yamin 2001, Khan 2001).
Does this mean that the solutions in relation to capacity
building are the wrong solution? This is a difficult
question. From the perspective of the way the
problem is defined, there can be no real complaint
about the capacity building initiative developed in the
climate change regime. No treaty can survive without
a good monitoring mechanism and for this one needs
to develop good inventories of emissions from
sources and removals from sinks and one needs to
take incremental policies to deal with the problem.
But while these efforts will help countries identify
their emissions and possibly develop policies and
report on these policies, it will not touch the key
issue: the lack of real knowledge on how to deal with
the problem of climate change. Instead there is a real
risk that such incremental capacity building and technology
transfer approaches conducted mostly within
the framework of market mechanisms will reinforce
the message of globalisation and may trap the developing
countries in an ideological trap and a technological
trajectory that will be devastating for the environment.
At the same time, it might divert the few
available resources from dealing with priority issues in
developing countries to undertaking mundane and
esoteric tasks such as national inventories and communications.
Instead I would argue that the solution needs to be
designed by the developed world since it is in the
driver’s seat of globalisation. The solution needs to be
based on an honest understanding of the problem
and the incentive structure in the developed world.
The solution also needs to be crafted on the basis of
an understanding of the real capacity problems in the
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 161
developing world and the solutions that possibly exist
in those societies. In other words, there needs to be
also capacity building in the North to realise that the
forces of globalisation need to be reconciled with
sustainable development.
Does this mean that I would argue against any kind
of support to the developing countries in the context
of an unequal world. Probably not, but I would urge
others to recognise the dimensions of the problem.
This is possible probably within the context of postnormal
science and public interest science. In the
meanwhile capacity building efforts need to focus on
also stimulating and developing the critical assessment
of policies and the national environment, in
which modern technologies (Sagar 2000).
5. Conclusions
This paper has stated that the climate change problem
is intricately linked to the issue of sustainable
development and this is recognized in the climate
change treaties. In this context, developing countries
are seen as lacking the scientific, technological, institutional
and financial ability to deal with environmental
problems and sustainable development. The
solution to this problem is to transfer knowledge and
build institutions through technology transfer financed
by financial mechanisms. Over time, it became
recognised that to facilitate technology transfer,
capacity building was a key requisite. .
The above is based on the assumption that the developed
countries have the scientific, technological,
institutional and financial ability themselves to constructively
and substantively deal with the problem,
and hence are in a position to transfer such wherewithal
to the South. This paper questions this assumption.
It argues that, first, the solution to the climate change
problem has been cast in terms of the idea of sustainable
development. Having said that there is a major
lack of clarity regarding the relationship between
sustained economic growth, sustainable development
and the emissions of greenhouse gases in the scientific
literature and the legal agreements.
Second, this lack of clarity is closely linked to the idea
that sustainable development possibly questions the
ideological basis of modern society. In other words,
sustainability science is politically charged and any
effort to at an integrative, critical and exhaustive
scientific study at the highest scientific levels may be
nipped in the bud by the most powerful countries.
This reflects the fact that the apparent contradiction
in the way reductions of emissions and sustainable

162
development are used in the climate treaties, reflects a
very real conflict of interest between the vested interests
(who have much to lose if there is a change in
the international order and who argue that reducing
emissions leads to reduced development) and the
‘green’ or ‘civil society’ interests (who argue that
reducing emissions leads to increased opportunities
for development). Policymakers in the West and
South have only half-heartedly adopted the concept
of sustainable development, arguing that the more
complex and abstract ramifications of the sustainability
enterprise cannot be easily translated into policies
because of the lack of policy tools or public support.
In the meanwhile, the efforts of the ILA in promoting
sustainable development norms in the international
arena may provide some temporary relief.
Third, as a corollary to the above two points, this
paper does not dispute that developing countries
possibly lack the knowledge and technologies to
adopt the path of sustainable development. It merely
questions if the developed countries have such
knowledge and technologies to make the switch.
Fourth, this paper although appreciative of the capacity
building text in the Marrakesh Accords, expresses
the worry that since the problem is inadequately
defined, the solution is at best an improvement at the
margin and at worst structural reinforcement of the
problem by pushing countries into the wrong technological
trajectory. The problem is thus not so much
the lack of capacity and knowledge in the South, but
that it might follow in the footsteps of the North,
even if it leap-frogs part of the way. We seem to have
reached the end of history and become too brainwashed
to be able to think beyond the paradigm in
which we are caged. The only way out is to collectively
unlearn the development paradigm.
Fifth, the implication of this paper is that developing
countries needs to themselves establish national systems
of innovation, and develop a social infrastructure
and participatory approaches to maximise the
collective human and institutional capacities, available
to understand how they can live within their resources
and develop nuanced policies to be able to
cope on the one hand, the forces of globalisation, and
on the other hand, to sustain their own development
processes.
Acknowledgements
The research for this paper has been undertaken in
the context of a Vrije Universiteit project on the Law
of Sustainable Development.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
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2, pp 149 – 162.
Young, O. R. and K. von Moltke. 1994. The Consequences of
International Environmental Regimes, Report from the Barcelona
Workshop. International Environmental Affairs. 6: 348-370.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 165-174.
Civic Science for Sustainability: Reframing the Role of Scientific Experts,
Policy-makers and Citizens in Environmental Governance
Karin Bäckstrand *
At the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable
Development, the science and technology communities,
along with other non-state actors, were singled
out as a major partner in the quest for sustainability.
This is in line with calls for refashioning scientific
expertise into a more transparent, accountable and
democratic manner. Participatory, civil, citizen, civic,
stakeholder and democratic science are catchwords
that signify the ascendancy of participatory paradigm
in science policy. The participatory turn to scientific
expert advice can be interpreted as a resistance to the
perceived scientization of politics, which implies that
political and social issues are better resolved by technical
expert system than democratic deliberation. In
this paper, I will employ the term civic science consistently.
The notion of civic science serves as an umbrella
for various attempts to increase public participation
in the production and use of scientific knowledge.
Civic science alludes to a changing relationship
between science, expert knowledge and citizens in
democratic societies. In this perspective citizens and
the public have a stake in the science-politics interface,
which can no longer be viewed as an exclusive
domain for scientific experts and policymakers only.
However, what is the scope for restructuring scientific
expertise in a more democratic fashion? Is it
possible, or even desirable, to include citizen participation
in the production, validation and application
of scientific knowledge? While there is lip service paid
to the need for civic science, the question of how it
can be realized is largely unresolved. The rhetoric of
civic science can be conceived as a response to the
heightened public concern about environment risks
and hazards epitomized by the BSE problem, the
proliferation of genetically modified food, the application
of biotechnology and reproductive technology
and the storing of toxic waste.
*
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Contact:
karinb@mit.edu.
Conceptualizing Civic Science
The aim of this paper is to examine the prospect for
civic science in global environmental governance. A
central proposition is that the promotion of civic
science needs to be coupled with a theoretical understanding
of the institutional, normative and epistemological
divisions characterizing the term. This paper is
a step in this direction of mapping the rationales,
justifications and limitations of civic science. The calls
for civic science put the citizens and the public
squarely at the center of the so-called science-politics
interface.
Climate change, management of natural resources
and bio-safety represent areas where participatory
expert knowledge is called for. Science remains a
central pillar of western liberal democracy due to its
instrumental role in the pursuit of human welfare and
technological progress as well as in the regulation of
environmental protection (Ezrahi 1991). The rise of
global environmental regimes has meant that models
for scientific advice on the domestic level now are
extended to multilateral scientific assessment (Miller
2001: 253). This prompts the question on how to find
a balance between specialized expert knowledge and
public participation in science.
In international relations the science-politics interface
has been framed primarily as a matter for scientists
and decision makers. I suggest that the sciencepolitics
interface needs to be reframed to include the
triangular interaction between scientific experts, policy-makers
and citizens. The citizen is not just the
recipient of policy but is an actor in its own right who
increasingly intervenes in the science-policy nexus.
This is in line with the argument that “[a]ny model
of the relationship between scientific expertise and
public policy-making should include the public
sphere, that is those common spaces in which citizens
meet to discuss public matters” (Edwards 1999: 169).

166
The first section reviews how the discipline of international
relations has grappled with scientific advice
and how the question of civic science is featured in
this scholarship. The second section conceptualizes
the elusive concept of civic science. Civic science
hosts many ambitions, such as enhancing public
understanding of science, increasing citizen participation,
diversifying representation in, and promoting
democratization of science. In the third section I spell
out three rationales for civic science mirrored in the
literatures of risk society, science studies and normative
democratic theory. The fourth section examines
the notion of civic science that underpins the evolving
field of sustainability science. The concluding
section summarizes the institutional, epistemological
and normative challenges connected to civic science.
International Relations and Civic Science
Civic science is a nascent issue in the discipline of
international relations (IR) that primarily has addressed
the institutional aspects of advisory science in
global environmental politics. The internationalization
of environmental policy makes the role of science
in environmental governance even more challenging.
As of today, international and scientific and
technical advisory bodies are central in providing
input for international environmental negotiations.
The rise of “negotiated science” is a prominent feature
in ongoing diplomatic endeavor in climate
change, air pollution, ozone depletion, biodiversity
and desertification. Scientific assessment is increasingly
organized on a multi-national and multidisciplinary
basis (Bäckstrand 2001).
There is a lacuna in IR with respect to the relationship
between expertise and democratic governance in
environmental politics. The normative aspects of
scientific expert advice, including the issues of representation,
transparency, participation, accountability
and legitimacy are largely absent (Bäckstrand 2003).
The legacy of isolating IR from social theory at large
precludes a notion of “political” that includes the
public. The dichotomy between the orderly and democratic
inside of domestic politics and the disorderly
anarchic outside of international affairs pervades
the discipline (Walker 1993). Consequently, in
this perspective, democratic participation in science is
confined to the context of domestic policy-making
and cannot be realized in international diplomacy and
scientific assessment.
In IR, research has revolved around the links between
scientific expert knowledge and processes of global
environmental governance. Two research agendas
have predominated. First, liberal-institutionalism has
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
been preoccupied with the conditions for effective
uptake of scientific expert knowledge in international
regimes. In contrast, the locus of the constructivist IR
scholarship has been on the contingent, uncertain and
normative context for scientific expertise. The first
agenda concerns the optimal conditions for making
scientific experts influential in the decision-making
process and international institutions. Regimetheoretical
studies primarily focus on how science
effectively can assist in mitigating global environmental
risks through diplomacy, regime-building and
multilateral negotiations (Young 1999; Andresen,
Skodvin et al. 2000). Knowledge-based explanations
to regime formation, such as the epistemic community,
signify this approach (Haas 1989; Haas 1992).
The central argument is that the mobilization of
consensus among transnational networks of scientific
experts is instrumental in facilitating international
policy coordination and agreement. Another issue is
how the organization of the scientific expertise can
promote utilization of scientific knowledge in international
environmental regimes and preventing the
politicization of scientific expertise and the exploitation
of scientific uncertainties by recalcitrant actors. A
precondition for the effective use of scientific knowledge
is that there is a shared understanding of the
nature of the problem among the authorized experts
and that this consensus, in turn, is transmitted to
international institutions as well as incorporated into
policy. Recent studies move beyond the assumption
of shared norms aim to explain why some global
norms – such as the normative compromise of liberal
environmentalism – become selected and institutionalized
(Bernstein 2001).
The constructivist research agenda revolves around
how scientific knowledge and practices are embedded
in various cultural and political contexts as well as in
societal discourses. Research in this direction adopts
insights from multiplicity of perspectives such as
discourse analysis, science and technology studies and
constructivism. Studies of the role of scientific discourses
in propelling policy action in stratospheric
ozone regime (Litfin 1995), the nature and role of
scientific assessments in global environmental policymaking
and the co-production of science and politics
in climate change and governance (Miller and Edwards
2001) signify this approach. The plethora of
literature on global environmental assessment underlines
the importance of enhancing saliency, credibility
and legitimacy of scientific assessment (Cash and
Clark 2001: 9). However, the question of how, and by
what means, to institutionalize credibility and legitimacy
of scientific assessment is unanswered. This
issue looms large partly because there is a lack of

theoretical foundation for coupling democratic citizen
participation with scientific assessment.
In the wider post-positivist scholarship there is an
ongoing critical inquiry of the status of expert knowledge
in modern society. What are the boundaries
between scientific and non-scientific, expert and lay
knowledge, global and local knowledge, risk assessment
and risk management? On what basis can these
boundaries be maintained? Recent work marrying
international relations and science studies start from
an analysis of the co-production of the political order
and scientific knowledge production (Miller and
Edwards 2001). The production of scientific knowledge
is not viewed as external to environmental politics
as in the epistemic community approach. The
boundaries between institutions of scientific expert
advice and policy-making are blurred (Miller 2001).
An underlying premise is that scientific knowledge
and practices operate inside, rather than outside of
politics. A key question is what counts as credible,
authoritative and legitimate expert knowledge. Instead
of taking shared understanding and scientific
consensus at face value, the purpose is to unravel the
process how actors came to share a common worldview.
Science and politics are in this vein no distinct
realms but the boundaries are fluid and subject to
negotiation. Research on boundary work (Gieryn
1995) and boundary organizations (Guston 2001)
highlight how legitimacy, credibility and authority of
scientific expert knowledge are maintained by establishing
borders between the scientific and the political
sphere. The implication of this analysis is that scientific
advisory processes are deeply intertwined with
political processes. Without denying the critical importance
of scientific knowledge to environmental
policy, this perspective highlights the normative and
value-laden context for scientific inquiry. Recent
studies of climate science and governance illustrate
the conflict between a top-down and a bottom-up
scientific assessment process (Miller 2001). This
opens up a space for a third research agenda, namely
the tensions between democratic and technocratic
governance in environmental affairs and normative
dimension of scientific advice. Research in risk society,
environmental sociology, science studies and
democratic theory has addressed the prospect for
democratic participation and deliberation in scientific
and technological decision making. The next section
proceeds to discuss the contested concept of civic
science.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 167
Civic Science: Participation, Representation or
Democratization?
Civic science has many meanings and aspirations. It is
used interchangeably with civil, participatory, citizen,
stakeholder, democratic science and lay knowledge.
Civic science has been defined as the efforts by scientists
to reach out to the public, communicate scientific
results and contribute to scientific literacy. Citizen
science, on the other hand, denotes a science that
is developed and enacted by the citizens, who are not
trained as conventional scientists (Irwin 1995). There
is wide disagreement with respect to the question if
citizens can, or should be able to deliberate on scientific
matters. Should the citizenry be invited to deliberations
regarding the application of science or technology
or should they be engaged in scientific problem
formulation? In other words, should lay knowledge
be limited to the process of risk management or
should it also be integrated in risk assessment processes
(Kleinmann 2000)?
Civic science hosts many ambitions, such as increasing
public participation in science and technology
decisions, securing a more adequate representation in
science, vitalizing citizen and public deliberation in
science or even installing a democratic governance of
science. Representation, participation and democratization
can be conceived as three different but interconnected
dimensions. First, civic science as participation
underlines the importance of increasing public
participation by bringing citizens and civil society to
the heart of the scientific endeavor, and by embarking
on participatory practices in the conduct of science.
Consensus conferences, participatory technology
assessment, citizen juries and public hearings in science
and technology affairs are examples of institutionalized
practices that attempt to incorporate citizens
in environmental risk management (Weale
2001). Secondly, civic science defined in terms of
representation aims at reversing the skewed representation
in production of science. The lack of representation
of women, indigenous people, scientists from
developing countries former and Eastern European
countries in the production of science is recognized
as highly problematic both for the quality and legitimacy
of scientific knowledge. (VanDeveer 1998;
Biermann 2002). Which knowledge, and whose
knowledge are represented as true, legitimate and
authoritative? These insights are supported by critical
feminist epistemology questioning the universal aspiration
of modern science, and calling for an inclusion
of local, subjugated knowledge in societal and technological
decision-making (Haraway 1996; Harding
1998). The representative paradox of science is that a
very small group who holds the title of scientist can

168
speak on behalf of a universal concerns (Fuller
2000:8).
Thirdly, the democratic version of civic science challenges
the conduct of scientific problem solving by
aspiring to transform the institutions of science to
incorporate democratic principles. Proposals to increase
representation and participation in science do
not necessarily entail a transformation of scientific
norms, methods and practices. However, the aim to
democratize science is a more challenging issue that
goes beyond the issue of stakeholder representation
and participation. Can the rules of modern democracy
be readily transferred to the heart of scientific
inquiry without compromising scientific quality and
politicizing scientific expertise?
The embracement of civic science can be conceived
as a response to two developments; the emergence of
“big” planetary science and the “legitimacy crisis” for
modern science. First, civic science can be conceived
as a reaction to the expansion of “mega-science”
enabled by innovations in global environmental modelling.
The international co-ordination, standardization
and harmonization of scientific assessment signify
the emerging Earth Systems Science (Jasanoff
and Wynne 1998: 58). This is epitomized by the expansion
of global models of atmospheric, hydrological
and terrestrial systems in international negotiations,
research programs and international organizations.
The emerging global environmental change
science has been represented as global and universal
knowledge even if the modelling activities are concentrated
in a few laboratories in the Northern hemisphere.
The top-down model of environmental problem-solving
grants power to networks of scientific
experts, specialists, and bureaucrats in environmental
science. Critics point to a failure to couple global
western scientific knowledge with local and indigenous
knowledge, agendas, needs and concerns. A
remedy for this is to increase public participation in
scientific assessment processes, recognizing the “glocal”
level of knowledge production.
Secondly, the call for civic science is a response to the
legitimacy crisis of science. There is a ubiquitous
demand for scientific expertise in environmental
policy. The increased reliance of expert advice, negotiated
and regulatory science defines issue areas from
global warming, toxic waste and GMOs. However,
inflationary use of expert advice has paradoxically not
produced more certainty. Science has been called on
to provide a firm basis for justifying and making
political decisions credible. Scientific knowledge is in
many areas provisional, uncertain and incomplete.
Thus, competing expert knowledge has in many in-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
stances given rise to a battle between experts and
counter-experts. Corporate science has contested
environmental advocacy science and vice versa
(Jasanoff 1990; Fischer 2000). This has produced a
legitimacy crisis for both the scientists who provide
expertise and for the policy-makers who request it.
This politicization of scientific knowledge has paved
the way for the erosion of the authority and legitimacy
of science. The erosion of the legitimating
function of science in modern societies has spurred
the calls for making science more accountable and
democratic. In the next section I explore three rationales
for civic science and highlight the normative and
epistemological divides surrounding the term.
Three Rationales for Civic Science
What are the reasons for enhancing public participation
in science and making science democratically
accountable? First, civic science, if geared toward
enhancing public understanding, can potentially mitigate
the growing public disenchantment with scientific
expertise. Secondly, the sheer complexity of
global environmental problems necessitates a reflexive
scientific expertise that incorporates a wide array
of lay and local knowledge. Thirdly, the primary purpose
of civic science is to extend the principles of
democracy to the production of science knowledge.
CIVIC SCIENCE AS RESTORING PUBLIC TRUST IN
SCIENCE
The first rationale for civic science is to enhance
public understanding of science by improved communication,
scientific literacy and outreach. This
emerged in the backdrop of the rhetoric of openness
that marked the European policy debate on science
and technology issues in the 1990s. The rationale was
to enhance transparency, civil participation, dialogue
and accountability in science policy (Levidow and
Marris 2001: 345). An overarching effort was to
bridge the increasing gulf that existed between science
and society, which was epitomized by the vehement
public reaction to the BSE disease and GM
food in Europe. The culprit for the legitimacy crisis
was not the opposition to GM food and biotechnology
but the BSE disease, which has nothing to with
genetic engineering. (Finneran 2001). The food crisis
reflects a fundamental lack of confidence among
citizens toward the scientific and regulatory management
of these issues. As a corollary, the public has
become more skeptical to both governmental and
corporate science while investing more trust in “independent”
NGO science.
Better communication from the scientists to the

public, deeper public understanding of science and
improved scientific literacy has been seen as remedies
to the legitimacy crisis. In this perspective, the basic
root of the declining confidence in expert knowledge
is the public misunderstanding of science. The socalled
“deficit” model emerged as a dominant framework
for governments’ science policy in response to
the reactions among the citizens. A central assumption
in this model is that the strong reaction of the
public is based on irrationality, fear, ignorance and
lack of knowledge. In this vein, the mismatch between
scientific and popular risk assessment stems
from insufficient and inadequate knowledge among
the public. The remedial strategy is information dissemination
and “getting the scientific facts right”. If
the citizens would be more scientifically literate they
would do the same risk assessment as scientific professionals.
The deficit model has been criticized on many accounts
and is increasingly rejected for its problematic
assumptions (Durant 1999). While dressed in the
language of transparency, dialogue and participation
the traditional mode of top-down scientific expert
knowledge is still retained. A hierarchy is established
between scientists and non-scientists and between the
enlightened scientific experts and the ignorant laymen.
Communication is one-way and on unequal
terms, from the scientists to the public. The nature of
scientific knowledge is not problematized in spite of
the growing recognition that scientific knowledge is
provisional and uncertain in many regulatory domains.
This rationale for civic science assumes that
scientific knowledge is superior compared to other
forms of knowledge. The stewards for sustainability
should be scientists and engineers who need to reach
out to the public and rationally communicate scientific
results. Needless to say, this model of civic science
falls short from a more democratic model of
public understanding that seeks to establish dialogue,
collaboration and deliberation between experts and
citizens.
CIVIC SCIENCE AND THE COMPLEXITY OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
The second rationale for civic science is a response to
what has been perceived as the accelerating complexity
of global environmental problems. In this sense,
the condition of indeterminacy prompts the need for
a new kind of science: “In terms of nature, the central
paradox is that while the scale of control afforded by
science and technology continues to increase, so does
the domain of uncertainty and risk”(Sarewitz 2000:
91). This version of civic science is ultimately justified
by an epistemological argument. Collective decision-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 169
making in the global environmental arena is fraught
with uncertainty since scientific knowledge of global
environmental risks is inherently limited, provisional
and value-laden. Many of today’s environmental and
health risks are invisible and immaterial, thus beyond
the capacity of humans to perceive. This condition of
uncertainty, contingency and indeterminacy, prompts
a need for a more pragmatic and open-ended decision
process. Politics is in this respect a substitute for
certainty (Saward 1993:77). In the light the nonremedial
scientific uncertainties, ecological vulnerability
and irreversibility, the policy process should be
open, transparent and institutionalize self-reflection.
The gist of the argument is that we witness a transition
from normal to post-normal science. The concept
of post-normal science captures issues defined
by high decision stakes, large system uncertainties and
intense value disputes (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992:
267). Problems such as climate change, GMOs or
biodiversity cannot be adequately resolved by resorting
to the puzzle–solving exercises of Kuhnian normal
science. Established scientific practices for problem
solving cannot provide the final answers to postnormal
problems that are characterized by policy
urgency, conflicting scientific, economic and ethical
perspectives, and many co-existing scientific paradigms.
In a situation involving large complexity, radical
uncertainty and high stakes, new scientific practices
to ensure quality control have to be established.
Peer review should include “extended peer communities”
in order to enhance dialogue between stakeholders
such as the NGOs, industry, public, and the
media. This is in line with call for a “democratization
of science”, i.e. widen participation in scientific assessment
beyond a narrow group of scientific elites.
However, the proponents for increasing citizenry and
public accountability in the scientific endeavor do not
propose democracy as a goal in itself. The increased
participation is not driven by a general desire for
democratization but to make science more effective
(Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992: 273). The incorporation
of lay knowledge in scientific assessment does not
rest on the assumption that lay or public knowledge is
necessarily truer, better or greener (Wynne 1994).
However, due to the uncertainty of future environmental
outcomes, possible surprises and ecological
catastrophes, a multiplicity of perspectives can prevent
narrowing down alternatives.
The implications of this paradox of incalculability,
uncertainty and even undecidability of environmental
risks have also been addressed in theories of risk
society and reflexive modernization (Beck 1992). The
transition from industrial society (with its calculable
risks) to risk society (with its incalculable mega-

170
hazards) requires a redefinition of the rules, principles
and institutions of decision-making. The reality of the
new environmental risk will force the redesign of the
basic norms and institutions of societies. This includes
the discourses and practices of science, which
are at the heart of theories of risk society and reflexive
modernization. The de-monopolization and democratization
of science imply that authoritative
decisions should not be made by narrow group of
experts, but have to include a wider spectrum of
stakeholder (Beck 1992: 163). NGOs, the public and
business should become active co-producers in the
social process of constructing knowledge, revitalizing
“sub-politics” as conceived in the risk society thesis.
The whole argument rests on the assumption that we
face new types of global ecological threats and
techno-hazards. Beck’s notion of reflexive scientization
captures the idea that scientific decision-making
on environmental risks should open up for social
rationality. A modernization of modernity and science
is needed. Hence, the traditional objectivist account
of science has to be replaced by a more inclusive
science that institutionalizes self-doubt, selfinterrogation
and self-reflexivity.
However, the above-mentioned proposals to democratize
scientific expertise by means of reflexive scientization
and extended peer community do not provide
guidance on how these ideas can be put into
practice. There is no specification of what kind of
institutions that need to be put into place in order to
make science democratically responsive.
CIVIC SCIENCE AS THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF
SCIENCE
The most far-reaching notion of civic science is
found in normative democratic theory and postpositivist
policy studies. Citizen participation and
deliberation on issues that have bearing on people’s
everyday life are regarded as the normative core of
democracy (Cunningham 2002). The realm of science
and technology constitute such an arena. What are
the reasons for bringing citizen participation and
knowledge(s) to the scientific sphere? The first justification
for a broader citizen involvement in science
and technology is made by those who favor of
“strong” democracy (Barber 1984), which encompass
participatory, not only representative democracy. A
second reason for enrolling citizens in the governance
in science follows the first reason. People should be
able to deliberate and participate in issues that affect
their lives. Basically, those who bear the consequences
of decisions should be able to have a say
(Harding 2000: 127). Science and technology decisions
have in many instances ramifications on the
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
everyday life of citizens. The release of GM food,
storing of toxic and nuclear waste and reproductive
technologies constitute such a domain. Thirdly, citizen
participation can in many cases contribute significantly
to scientific inquiry. Local knowledge has in
many cases positively complemented professional
scientific expertise. Diversity in expert knowledge is
a desirable goal in itself (Harding 1998).
There seems to be an incompatibility between the
quest in democracy for open-ended deliberation and
the aim of prediction and control in science. “The
fact that indeterminacy is not only inevitable, but
essential, to democracy – something to be embraced
rather than overcome – does not comport well with a
scientific worldview whose most legitimating measures
of success are predictive certainty and control of
nature.”(Sarewitz 2000: 92). However, the conflict
between these two realms eases if science is viewed as
bounded rationality (Miller and Edwards 2001: 19).
This perspective recognizes the contingency of scientific
claims and that scientific practices are deeply
ingrained in cultural and political processes. The
democratization of scientific expertise prompts us to
rethink our understanding of scientific knowledge
itself. This entails questioning the borders between
science and non-science, expert and lay knowledge,
universal and local knowledge. A constructivist, discursive
and post-positivist conception of knowledge
paves the way for a more citizen-oriented deliberative
approach to risk analysis, where local knowledge can
be incorporated into risk assessment (Fischer 2000:
246). The democratic version of civic science argues
that the citizen is capable of more participation than
is generally recognized. This echoes discursive or
deliberative democracy that has dealt with the scope
of citizen participation beyond traditional electoral
politics. A basic tenet in this model is to promote
public use of reason, argument and deliberation. Free
deliberation has the potential to transform preferences,
enable a new collective will and render public
decisions more legitimacy. The model of deliberative
democracy can bridge the gap between the expert and
citizen. Participatory risk assessment and inquiry can
be conceived as an extension of deliberative democracy.
However, can insights from the participatory,
deliberative and communicative model of democracy
be applied to the institutions of scientific knowledge
production? Most experiments with consulting citizens’
for technological decisions, such as citizen
juries, consensus conferences, technology assessments,
are more situated in public policy while risk
assessment still is regarded as the exclusive domain
for scientific experts One exception is the method of
integrated assessment focus group that aims to incor-

porate citizen knowledge in scientific problem formulation
(Durrenburger, Kastenholz et al. 1999: 342).
Four questions have been raised against a democratic
version of civic science. First, is it possibly to extend
principles of democracy to the heart of science, which
has its own internal procedures and mechanisms for
the production, verification, and control of authoritative
knowledge? An unsettled issue is whether the
rules for production of scientific knowledge will have
to change in order enact civic science. Is it possible or
even desirable to reform the basic operation of science
in order to effectively incorporate citizens and
other stakeholders? Civic science can be conceived as
an instrument to dethrone science or to deprive scientific
knowledge from its authority and legitimacy
conferred by society. Little guidance is provided on
how the practices tied to scientific knowledge production,
such as peer review, should be redesigned,
complemented or replaced.
Secondly, skeptical voices argue that citizen deliberation
in science will be cumbersome, time-consuming,
ineffective and slow. Even an educated citizenry
would have problems to grasp the complexity of the
highly specialized knowledge of environmental science.
Elite models of democracy are highly skeptical
of lay citizen participation. The ordinary citizen does
not only lack time and capacity to understand the
complexity of issues, but the public can be outright
ignorant and irrational. Citizens do not have the
knowledge to rationally calculate the risk of new
technologies. They should trust specialized experts, as
they trust their political representatives.
Thirdly, the advent of global environmental problem
solving may limit the scope for civic science. Scientific
assessments are increasingly global in scope
relying on multi-disciplinary and multi-national collaborative
research networks. The ongoing experiments
with citizen and participatory expertise have
primarily taken place at the domestic level. Is the
strong version of civic science compatible with the
effort to manage global environmental risks relying
on global modelling and “big science”? How can local
expertise be coordinated to provide alternative
knowledges in global risk management?
Fourthly, deliberative democracy may be insufficient
in promoting the democratization of scientific expertise.
The application of science and technology may
be subject of public deliberation, but not necessarily
the production of science (Gaffaney 2001: 17). Deliberation
does not necessarily change the ground rules
for debate and may ignore the way power enters
speech itself. The power largely resides in setting the
agenda and establishing norms and rules for decision-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 171
making. For example, if “sound science” and risk
assessment is the dominant framework for public
deliberation on environmental risks, this will ultimately
exclude alternative discourses and actors.
Protest and resistance could change the decisionmaking
framework from the risk assessment paradigm
to a precautionary approach. Hence, participatory
democracy has been advanced as an alternative
model as it represents a more manifest critique of
power and makes the exercise of power transparent.
Civic science should not be seen as a magical recipe
for all cases and circumstances. The above-mentioned
authors advocating the democratic governance of
science stress strongly that subjugated, local and
indigenous knowledge should not necessarily be
regarded as better or truer than modern scientific
knowledge. In the end, to find the appropriate balance
between technical and communicative rationality
is a pragmatic and context-dependent judgment. Both
technical expert knowledge and ethical judgments are
needed in science-based decision making (Barry 1999:
215). In certain cases technocratic strategies may
prove to be more adequate in resolving environmental
problems and attaining sustainability goals.
Vice versa, in post-normal environmental risk areas
surrounded by large scientific uncertainties and even
ignorance, a model of civic science that includes
societal stakeholders, may be more effective. Public
questioning of science may constitute a healthy feature
of democracy and calls for transparency in science
do not automatically represent an anti-scientific
position. A democratic model of civic science will
enhance active citizenry, public engagement and
scrutiny (Durant 1999: 317). The next section takes
stock of theory and practice of sustainability science
in order to examine how this field has grappled with
civic science.
Civic Science in Sustainability Science
How do the current proposals to restructure science
toward the goals of sustainable development fare with
civic science? Gearing science toward sustainable
development “means, in particular, that sustainability
science must be created through the processes of coproduction
in which scholars and stakeholders interact
to define important questions, relevant evidence,
and convincing forms of argument”(Kates 2000: 2).
Hence, in the evolving field of sustainability science a
more participatory account of scientific expertise is
articulated.
The concept of sustainability science articulates a
proactive, an inter-disciplinary, transparent science
that works in tandem with the needs of society (Kates

172
2002). A key focus is the dynamic interaction and
interdependence between nature and society. The
past decade national science academies have worked
in collaboration with international scientific associations
to redefine the functions, mandate, and scope
for scientific inquiry. The ensuing self-reflection
within the scientific community itself has consolidated
a new vision for a science that is harnessed for
the goals of sustainable development. An overarching
idea is that science needs to turn toward society,
and even establish a “new contract” with society. The
new model for sustainability science was consolidated
in the preparation for the World Summit for Sustainable
Development. Inter-disciplinarity, policyrelevancy
and holistic perspectives are cornerstones
of this new model of science. The overarching goal is
to uncover the resilience levels for natural and human
systems. Collaboration across disciplinary divides is a
crucial component, both within and between natural
science, engineering, social science and humanities.
Stakeholder participation, transparency, partnership,
dialogue are code words for enacting a more inclusive
science-policy relationship. This entails participatory
procedures involving scientists, stakeholders, advocates,
active citizens, and users of knowledge (Kates
2002). Sustainability science has to be accountable
beyond peer review and include a variety of actors in
assessment processes (International Council for Science
2002b: 7). Scientists have to engage more in
communication with the public with regard to scientific
results. This also means bridging the knowledge
gap and digital divide between North and South and
providing developing countries with opportunities to
participate in scientific assessment on more equal
terms (International Council for Science 2002b: 8).
Moreover, the local-global connectivity is a central
aspect of sustainability science. Global knowledge
about environmental degradation has to be coupled
with local knowledge in order to produce sustainable
solutions. In the quest for sustainability, “universal”
knowledge must be connected to “place-based”
knowledge (International Council for Science 2002b:
19). As a corollary, indigenous or traditional knowledge
is recognized as a cumulative body of knowledge
that can contribute with local and alternative perspectives.
Science and traditional knowledge should be
coupled in order to realize a more equitable partnership
(International Council for Science 2002a: 16).
However, the focus is more on participation than
changing the rules and practices of scientific knowledge
production, utilization and communication.
Sustainability science envisions an increased transparency
and participation in science and technology in
order to foster the legitimacy of the scientific en-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
deavor. Science also needs to enhance its
communicative skill and outreach to initiate broader
public involvement in science and technology. These
proposals can be conceived as a step toward reflexive
scientization that Beck calls for. However, an increased
participation in scientific assessment does not
necessarily have bearing on the practices, norms and
institutions of scientific knowledge production.
Sustainability science does not address how the practices
of science have to change in order to accommodate
democratic participation. The implications for
scientific knowledge production and practice are left
unanswered, namely how norms, institutions and
procedures in science has to change to enable broader
participation (Gallopin, Funtowicz et al. 2001:2). In
this sense, there is a lack of a coherent social science
perspective. While raising critical issues on how to
make science more transparent and responsive to the
needs of society, the field of sustainability science is
still an expert -driven inter-disciplinary endeavor.
Conclusion
The notion of civic science prompts us to rethink the
relationship between science, knowledge, democracy
and environmentalism. The implications for the field
of international relations is that we need to move
beyond managerial conception of science and bring
the normative issues tied to the employment of scientific
expert advice to the forefront. Representation,
democracy, participation and legitimacy are crucial
issues in facilitating a constructive science-policy
dialogue. This means paying attention to the intermediary
role of the public and citizenry in science and
technological decisions needs.
Civic science is essentially a contested term, hosting
conflicting institutional, normative and epistemological
dimensions. In the wake of the legitimacy crisis
for scientific expertise, civic science has been advanced
as a solution to reverse the growing public
distrust in science. A “thin” conception of civic science
starts from the premise that public trust in science
and technology can be restored by better science
communication, increased scientific literacy and public
understanding of science. A stronger account of
civic science advocates re-orienting science towards
greater institutional reflexivity and responsiveness to
citizens. Finally, the version of civic science as democratization
suggests that scientific norms, institutions
and procedures need to reformed in accordance
with democratic principles.
Civic science has been put into practice through
various institutional innovations such as public hear-

ings, consensus conferences, deliberative polls and
participatory technology assessment. However, these
experiments with participatory inquiry have taken
place primarily in the domestic setting. There are
limited experiences of citizen participation in multilateral
scientific assessment. Another unsettled issue
with regard to civic science is if citizens and the public
should be invited to the heart of scientific endeavor,
i.e. to participate in scientific problem formulation
and assessment, or if the citizenry should be
confined to deliberations about the use of science?
The fault-line between the different proposals for
institutionalizing civic science revolves around the
epistemological dimension. What is the nature of
scientific knowledge? Is it defensible to privilege
scientific knowledge over other knowledge forms?
Feminist philosopher Sandra Harding’s questions in
the title of her book Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?
signify the contested discourses of modern science.
Civic science represents very different project for the
post-positivist view of science compared to the objectivist
perspective. The former questions the boundary
between scientific expert knowledge and lay knowledge,
between global western knowledge and local
indigenous knowledge. In this perspective, all expert
knowledge is situated in a specific local, political and
cultural context, inherently value-laden and imbued
with worldviews. As a corollary, scientific and
technological decision-making should rest on
collaboration between, and participation by scientists,
citizens and civil society. In contrast, an objectivist
epistemology emphasizes the uniqueness of scientific
knowledge epitomized by its systematic features, its
transformative effects and its global impacts. The
systematic features of science, in terms of the capacity
to observe, explain, describe and represent the world,
reflect an unprecedented accumulation and progress
of knowledge. Without denigrating the important
contributions of local, traditional, indigenous, lay and
everyday knowledge, these knowledge forms do not
display the systematic and universal features of modern
science. In this vein, the uniqueness of science
grants natural scientists and engineers a continued
privileged status in the quest for uncovering the scientific
aspects for sustainability.
Hence, an unresolved issue is if the stewards of scientific
knowledge production should be scientists and
engineers or if the conduct of science should be
geared towards a participatory, reflexive and collaborative
effort involving societal stakeholders. However,
no universal solution can be offered with respect of
the scope for democratic governance of science. The
success of civic science is largely dependent on the
context, i.e. the nature of the environmental risk and
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 173
problem at hand. Finding a balance between traditional
scientific inquiry and participatory expertise,
between technical and deliberative approach will be
an ongoing endeavor.
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Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 175-183.
Knowledge or Participation for Sustainability? Science and Justice in
Adaptation to Climate Change
By Jouni Paavola ∗ and W. Neil Adger +
1. Introduction
Imperfect knowledge and uncertainties characterise
and challenge environmental decision-making and
governance at all of their levels. Environmental managers
in Fennoscandia struggle to recover the population
of endangered arctic fox and are puzzled how to
proceed (Swedish-Finnish Arctic Fox Project 2002).
Similarly, the non-linearities of global climate system
are not understood well. How does increasing global
mean temperature influence thermohaline circulation
and Antarctic ice sheets, and how changes in them
translate into regional climate change impacts
(Schellnhuber and Held 2002)? Improved understanding
of these matters would have important implications
for collective environmental decisions.
This line of reasoning suggests that science is important
in getting environmental decisions right. However,
without questioning the importance of good
science, we argue that it is not sufficient alone for the
making of good environmental decisions. Good
environmental decisions deliver sought-after outcomes
effectively and legitimately (Adger et al. 2003).
Even perfect knowledge would not resolve all thorny
environmental decisions, although it could admittedly
resolve some of them. On the other hand, a comprehensive
understanding of all involved issues would
probably make some decisions more, not less difficult.
Science has only a limited role in environmental decisions-making
and governance because they are characterised
by conflicts of values and interests. The
discontent with genetically modified organisms is not
only a disagreement concerning the effects of these
organisms on humans, other species, and ecosystems.
It is also about the distribution of beneficial and
adverse consequences of such new technologies and
∗ Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment
(CSERGE), University of East Anglia, United Kingdom.
Contact: j.paavola@uea.ac.uk.
+ Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment
(CSERGE) and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research, University of East Anglia, UK. Contact:
n.adger@uea.ac.uk
about the way in which decisions concerning their
adoption and use are made (Reed 2002; Wynne 2001).
Is it part of the freedom of private enterprise to introduce
new technologies which may have adverse
effects on humans and non-humans and which conflict
with the values and beliefs of large segments of
society? Does the consent or non-consent of potentially
affected parties matter? Can the affected parties
voice their concerns only through markets by not
buying GMO products? Or are the decisions over
such technologies a matter of democratic decisionmaking?
Leaving the decisions concerning GMOs to
markets and addressing them in the democratic decision-making
bodies recognise different sets of stakeholders,
afford different kind of participation, and
also imply different distribution of power. These are
all matters of justice.
Science is in fact often at odds with perceived notions
of justice. This is illustrated by the public’s lack of
trust in the UK in scientific advice on food and the
environment (Jasanoff 2002; Wynne 2001). The messenger
is also as important as the message. There is
greater trust in the independent scientists working for
universities and NGOs than in government–funded
scientists and agency spokespeople (Poortinga and
Pidgeon 2003).
While we suggest that science and justice make complementary
contributions to environmental decisionmaking
and governance, we are not proposing a
fundamental distinction between them. As Demeritt
(2001a; 2001b) has argued, science is based on selective
constructions of reality and thus always political
and taking implicit or explicit standpoints with regard
to issues of justice. The political nature of science is
not a problem as long as it is recognised and dealt
with in a legitimate and constructive way, for example
by being explicit about it and by institutionalising
measures that cultivate scientific diversity. Yet justice
must also be understood as distinct from science
because it relates to the relationships between the
stakeholders in an environmental decision. As was
with science, justice is hardly autarkic: it must be
informed by warranted knowledge about the decision
at hand.
In essence, we understand science as a social activity
that generates claims about the reality and seeks to
establish the credibility of these claims through cer-

176
tain practices. We also refer with the term “science”
to the body of claims produced by this social activity.
Similarly, justice is a social activity that generates
resolutions to inter-personal dilemmas and seeks to
establish the legitimacy of these resolutions through
certain practices. We also use the term “justice” to
refer to the body of resolutions generated by this
social activity.
In what follows, we will discuss rational choice theories
to make tentative arguments about the complementary
contributions of science and justice to environmental
decision-making. We do not discuss rational
choice reasoning believing it offers a strong
basis for acknowledging the role of justice. Quite the
contrary: we use it to show that even rational choice
reasoning can provide a minimum justification for
recognising the role of justice. In the second section
we discuss how a rational choice model which admits
imperfect knowledge and limited cognitive capacity
gives a role for science in environmental decisionmaking.
In the third section we inject motivational
pluralism into the rational choice reasoning, indicating
how distributive and procedural justice are both
needed in order to guarantee the legitimacy of environmental
decisions. We exemplify these arguments
in the fourth section by applying them to collective
decisions on adaptation to climate change.
2. Rational Environmental Decision-Making and
Science
A useful starting point for our argumentation is the
conventional model of rational choice, which has it
that individuals make substantially rational choices
(see Elster 1986; Hargreaves Heap et al. 1992). That
is, individuals are thought to pursue their own utility,
to prefer alternatives that maximise it, and to choose
those alternatives in order to actually maximise their
utility. From this viewpoint, individual environmental
decisions are no different from other decisions: they
are exhausted by the maximisation of personal utility.
By extension, collective environmental decisions
bring together self-centred agents only if and when
they improve some account of their personal utilities.
To be more specific, the model of rational choice is
based on three core assumptions regarding individual
choice behaviour. First, and as already indicated
above, agents are thought to be motivated exclusively
by the improvement of their own utility. Secondly,
agents are thought to possess perfect knowledge, so
that they can identify what best enhances their utility.
Thirdly, agents are thought to have unlimited cognitive
capacity – it is needed to obtain and to make use
of perfect knowledge. We recognise that individuals
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
may be motivated by several goals that cannot be
subsumed under any notion of utility. We will explain
our position and examine the implications of plural
motivations in greater detail in the next section. Before
we do so, we will take a closer look at the two
other assumptions.
The assumptions of unlimited cognitive capacity and
perfect knowledge are related but do not amount to
the same thing. Perfect knowledge requires unlimited
cognitive capacity, but unlimited cognitive capacity
does not guarantee perfect knowledge: perfect
knowledge also requires that the reality is knowable
and in fact known. The standard informational and
cognitive assumptions are mainly useful as starting
points with which more realistic assumptions can be
compared in order to clarify their implications. In
fact, strict adherence to standard assumptions would
result in absurd consequences. For example, one
aspect of perfect knowledge – perfect foresight –
means that agents are aware of and would anticipate
all utility enhancing opportunities that appear in the
future. Therefore, they would complete all beneficial
transactions at once when the markets are established.
By implication the status quo is optimal and
does not allow any beneficial transactions (Samuels
1992).
Collective environmental decisions would be unproblematic
in the world constituted by the above discussed
standard assumptions because there would be
no other criteria for judging the goodness of environmental
decisions than the utilities of individual
agents. Under the ideal conditions of collective decision-making
that resemble those of perfect markets,
agents would approve all Pareto-better decisions that
harm nobody but are beneficial at least to somebody.
All environmental decisions where winners can and
actually do compensate the losers would also be
made. Even when the majority rule is established,
reciprocity would be likely to introduce a test that
ensures the improvement of welfare over a sequence
of collective decisions (Paavola 2002). There would
be no need to support these decisions with any scientific
efforts, cost-benefit analyses, or environmental
impact assessments. The involved agents would know
from the outset what best enhances their personal
welfare and they would reach all beneficial decisions
by negotiation. The only difficulty is to explain why
beneficial choices remain available and have not been
made already earlier.
The only way to make space for science in collective
environmental decision-making is to relax the informational
and cognitive assumptions. We will first
discuss the admission of imperfect knowledge, which

is not necessarily tied to the admission of limited
cognitive capacity. We can imagine agents with unlimited
cognitive capacity confronting a world that simply
cannot be perfectly known. These agents would
develop optimal behavioural routines that would take
the inherent uncertainty regarding the reality into
account. Imperfect knowledge can have several
sources (Paavola and Adger 2002a):
1. Limited cognitive capacity prevents the attainment
of perfect knowledge.
2. Self-interested agents do not have incentives
to disclose information.
3. Objects have multiple attributes which can
be learned only over long period of time.
4. Adjustments require learning, time and resources
in real world.
5. Institutions can make information gathering
costly instead of economising on it.
These five reasons for imperfect knowledge establish
a role for science in environmental decision-making.
Our knowledge of the physical world is limited because
of our limited cognitive capacity: scientific
efforts are a way to improve our understanding of the
world we live in. Self-interest may in turn result in the
withholding of information from the public domain
as the controversies surrounding the evidence on the
adverse effects of smoking illustrate: science may
protect public interests by providing credible information.
The complexity of real world and the existence
of time lags are the most often referred need
for science: it can shed light on phenomena which
elude casual observations. The final reason for imperfect
knowledge provides a somewhat different role
for science: that of integrating scattered pieces of
information. That is, in addition to conventional
models of scientific effort which emphasise specialisation
and depth, we need complementary approaches
that emphasise connections and breath.
We now move on to assumptions regarding human
cognitive capacity. The admission of unlimited cognitive
capacity means that agents could not use perfect
knowledge even if it would be within their reach.
Moreover, agents have to develop ways to cope with
imperfect knowledge with their limited cognitive
capacity. Unsurprisingly, research in psychology has
discovered several deviations from the traditional
assumptions in actual choice behaviour. These include
the use of rules of thumbs, preference reversals,
the influence of frames of reference and irrelevant
alternatives, and asymmetric valuation of gains and
losses (Bell et al. 1989; van den Bergh et al. 2000;
Simon 1986; Tversky and Kahneman 1986).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 177
Simon (1955; 1978; 1983) argues that procedural
rationality and satisficing are the central implications
of limited cognitive capacity for choice behaviour. He
also argues that agents have multiple goals, use these
goals to eliminate alternatives in order to make choice
more manageable, and satisfy their goals rather than
maximise their utility (Simon 1955). Tversky (1972)
has argued in parallel that individuals use aspects of
choice alternatives to reduce the size of choice set.
Similarly, Heiner (1983) argues that a gap between
our cognitive capacity and the challenges posed by
the choice problems forces us to use a relatively narrow
set of behavioural and decision rules. Finally,
Simon has also argued that when agents sequence
their choices in order to structure and economise on
their decision-making, they learn sequentially about
the alternatives and may revise their ambitions
(Simon 1955).
Research on limited cognitive capacity underlines that
agents need time and learning to clarify their goals,
alternatives and preferences. Science can assist especially
in learning about the alternatives. Moreover,
because research on limited cognitive capacity suggests
that goals, alternatives and preferences are interdependent,
science can also indirectly contribute to
clarification of goals and preferences. On the other
hand, the same research underlines the importance of
rules and processes for decision-making and there is
no guarantee that they grant a significant role for
science. Namely, decision-making processes and rules
may facilitate the making of decisions precisely by
reducing the complexity decision problems. This is
not misguided: perfection of choice may be detrimental
if it delays or prevents needed action as the saying
‘the best is the worst enemy of good’ indicates.
Our tentative conclusion is that science plays a positive
role in environmental decision-making and governance.
It improves information on alternatives and
helps to deliver the sought-after outcomes with
greater certainty. Science also indirectly helps to clarify
goals and preferences by improving our understanding
of alternatives and the likely consequences
of choosing them. Science contributes to the legitimacy
of environmental decisions as well by resolving
disputes over the facts and by improving public understanding
when private information provision fails
or cannot be trusted. However, the legitimacy of
environmental decisions is not only a matter of undisputed
facts. In what follows, we will discuss the
role of justice in environmental decision making in
greater detail.

178
3. Pluralism, Justice and Environmental
Decision-Making
The assumptions regarding behavioural motivations
have been defined in several ways. Early neoclassical
economists thought that psychological pleasure or
material usefulness motivate agents to behave and
choose as they do. The pleasure (ordinal) and usefulness
(cardinal) notions of utility had different implications:
it is difficult to compare levels of psychological
satisfaction but the same does not apply to levels of
usefulness (see Cooter and Rappoport 1984). However,
despite disagreeing on the comparability of and
what constitutes personal welfare, both viewpoints
assumed that it is the acting and choosing individuals'
personal welfare that motivates them. In part for this
reason, we will use the term ‘welfarism’ to refer to
these older behavioural assumptions. Hicks and Allen
(1934) moved beyond welfarist assumptions when
they redefined ‘utility’ as the degree of preference
satisfaction. This definition recognises that preferences
may be informed by a variety of notions of
goods. However, preference utilitarianism holds that
changes in the relative satisfaction of preferences
based on different notions of good can be aggregated
to changes in utility, a supreme notion of goodness
(Georgescu-Roegen 1968).
All of these behavioural assumptions are problematic.
Welfarism does not reflect the diversity of motivations
in the real world. Preference utilitarianism is, in
principle, able to accommodate a wide variety of
motivations but it holds that a common denominator
(utility) exists for commensurating them. Yet their
commensurability is far from self-evident. Preference
utilitarianism is also frequently interpreted in a welfarist
manner. The maximisation of utility is thought to
imply the maximisation of welfare, although there
actually is no relationship between the two (Sen 1973;
1977). Finally, the notion of utility as the degree of
preference satisfaction hinders our understanding of
the implications of motivations for choice behaviour
(Paavola 2002).
We accept the broad range of values that preference
utilitarianism in principle acknowledges, but we reject
their commensurability. This translates into admission
of intra- and interpersonal pluralism. Intrapersonal
pluralism means that an agent may hold multiple values
simultaneously and has to decide which values are
to inform her preferences in a choice situation. Kavka
(1991) argues that the impossibility theorems of social
choice theory (Arrow 1951, Sen 1970) apply to individual
choice when intra-personal pluralism is admitted.
Interpersonal pluralism in turn means that agents
may be informed by different values in the same
choice situation, and arrive at either same or different
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
choices.
The traditional reasoning does not have a difficulty
with interpersonal pluralism as long as values are selfand
welfare-centred. Differences in attitudes concerning,
for example, the importance of environmental
amenities for personal welfare are just one source of
benefits from trade. However, there is a more consequential
form of pluralism which relates to the nature
of value premises. As economics suggests, we are
indeed concerned about our own welfare in many
choices. However, there are also choices such as
those regarding family and friends which are often
governed by concerns for the welfare of others. Still
other choices may be informed by concerns for what
we consider as intrinsically valuable outcomes, such
as the preservation of an endangered species (or
avoiding intrinsic bads such as extinction), without
regard to the welfare implications of doing so. Finally,
agents may consider certain choices right or virtuous
without regard to any of their consequences.
To summarise, motivations can be based on utilitarian,
non-utilitarian consequentialist, and deontological
premises. Their existence introduces a more radical
form of pluralism than divergence regarding the
perceived welfare implications of environmental
amenities. Agents favour same environmental choices
for fundamentally different reasons. One agent may
favour vegetarianism because of its implications for
her personal welfare, another because of her concerns
for the welfare of other humans or non-humans, a
third because she considers the life of living creatures
a valuable thing, and still others because they consider
it the virtuous or right thing to do. Choices do not
reveal preferences that underlie them and reasons for
choices are often incommensurable (Bromley and
Paavola 2002). Welfare-centred agents would object
to, say, preserving a species if it would result in a
welfare loss. Others – who consider that the species
in question has a right to exist or that its existence has
intrinsic value – could favour preservation even if it
resulted in a welfare loss. The logic of welfarist agents
suggests that they could compensate the losers if they
can have their way. However, this would hardly satisfy
the preservationists: they accepted welfare losses
from the start in order to attain another important
goal. Yet the loss which they were willing to incur is
not a measure of the intensity of their values. For
them, the other goal is not commensurable with any
change in welfare, and no amount of compensation
could ‘make them whole.’
This is not to say that devoted environmentalists
ought to have their way in social choice over environmental
matters in every instance: the point is that

environmental decisions are often characterised by
conflicts of values and interests. Radical pluralism
makes it impossible to commensurate conflicting
goals and to make optimising trade-offs. This does
not, however, mean that decisions cannot be made. It
means that it is first necessary to choose which goals
are to inform decisions: the choice between alternatives
can then follow (Bromley and Paavola 2002).
The accuracy of information does not provide a sufficient
basis for choosing particular goals and the
alternatives suggested by them. For example, it is
unlikely that the certainty of positive welfare consequences
of an international emission trading scheme
for greenhouse gases would persuade its non-welfarist
opponents as a sufficient justification for actually
adopting it. That justification must lie elsewhere and
substantiate why, under the prevailing circumstances,
it is better to adopt a trading scheme rather than
some other solution to allocate emission reductions.
That is, the choice of focusing on welfare consequences
and omitting other relevant concerns such as
those related to international equity, historical responsibility
and self-determination needs justification:
the demonstration of such positive welfare consequences
is not enough.
The justifications of environmental decisions relate to
both distributive and procedural justice. The beneficial
and adverse consequences of environmental
decisions must be distributed justly. This does not
require equality or progressive redistribution but it
requires conformance with some norms of distributive
justice. The way in which environmental decisions
are made must also satisfy norms of procedural
justice. This means that the interests and values of
involved agents have to be recognised and heard to
the satisfaction of expectations; participation in the
making of environmental decisions is considered just;
and the distribution of decision-making power is
considered legitimate (Lind and Tyler 1988).
Radical pluralism makes distributive consensus elusive
because it is difficult to satisfy conflicting and
incommensurable goals simultaneously. A rule such
as Walzer’s (1983) complex equality –which requires
the absence of domination across ‘the spheres of
justice’ – may legitimise environmental decisions
under radical pluralism (Arler 2001). Another alternative
is to rest legitimacy on procedural justice which
reassure those whose interests are frustrated by an
environmental decision that their interests will count
in future decisions. It also enables agents to express
their dissent or consent with regard to an environmental
decision and to maintain their dignity when
they cannot realise their interests.
Elements of procedural justice such as recognition,
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 179
hearing, participation and distribution of power are
thus intertwined with environmental decisions in an
intimate and complex way. Distributive justice also
remains important although it cannot alone guarantee
the legitimacy of all environmental decisions. Resolutions
of both distributive and procedural justice are
inscribed into the design and formulation of governance
institutions. That is, rules of governance institutions
are the carriers of both distributive and procedural
justice.
To conclude, the legitimacy of environmental decisions
often depends on their distributive outcomes
and how the affected parties are recognised and heard
in the decision-making process. However, justice also
makes other contributions to the making of environmental
decisions. Legitimacy contributes to effectiveness
of environmental governance because it forms
the basis for voluntary compliance with collective
environmental decisions. Elements of procedural
justice such as recognition, hearing and participation
also impose a harsh discipline on environmental
decisions and contribute to their goodness. However,
they do not alone guarantee good decisions as the
parable about the camel as a horse designed by a
committee indicates. Yet they complement and give
direction to science so as to ensure its social relevance.
In what follows, we seek to exemplify and
elaborate these and other arguments presented above
by mobilising them in the context of adaptation to
climate change.
4. Science and Justice in Adaptation to Climate
Change
Adaptation to climate change is necessary because
mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions will not be
able to prevent climate change within the life spans of
the next several generations. Pressure to adapt is
created by climate change impacts, which include
changes in the level and variation of temperature,
rainfall, and runoff of water, and changes in the availability
and safety of water. They also include changes
in the location, size and quality of habitats of animal
and plant life, agricultural productivity, and food
security. Moreover, changing climate will influence
the spread and incidence of many diseases. Finally,
sea level rise and changes in the occurrence and severity
of extreme weather events require adaptation as
well (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change
2001).
Adaptation to climate change consists of uncoordinated
choices and actions of individuals, firms and
organisations and coordinated collective choices and
actions at the local, national, international as well as

180
intermediate and multiple levels (Paavola and Adger
2002b; see also Pielke 1998; Smit et al. 2000; Smit and
Skinner 2002; Smith 1997; Smithers and Smit 1997).
Adaptive responses include changes in institutional
arrangements or public policies, public and private
spending as well as investments in the infrastructure
and in other durable goods, generation and dissemination
of new information, and behavioural changes
(see Paavola and Adger 2002b; Downing 2002).
We emphasise the existence of multiple levels of
adaptation (see Table 1) to remind that adaptation
does not take place exclusively in the international
political arenas: it involves national and local governments
and individuals, firms and organisations in
the developed and developing countries. There may
not be an optimal level for adaptive responses. Climate
change impacts do influence what are technically
feasible adaptive responses but justice concerns
may suggest a change in the level of response. Moreover,
responses at multiple levels rather than at one
level may be needed to adapt adequately and justly to
climate change impacts. We also stress that adaptation
by individuals and firms is not autonomous
(Adger et al. 2003). The alternatives available for
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
individuals, firms and organisations are always shaped
by antecedent collective action. Therefore, all choices
regarding the level, timing and type of adaptive
strategies and responses have important justice implications
(Adger 2001; Paavola and Adger 2002b).
There are three ways to time adaptive responses (see
Table 1 and Paavola and Adger 2002b). Proactive
responses involve anticipation and planning so as to
best deal with climate change impacts. Reactive responses
are taken after the climate change impacts are
realised, often to redistribute their burden. Inaction is
the third possible response to climate change impacts.
Adaptive strategies thus consist of proactive and
reactive responses and inaction. Proactive responses,
such as the expansion of water storage capacity, often
complement and facilitate reactive responses, such as
rationing of water. Yet proactive and reactive measures
are unlikely to fully adapt people to climate
change impacts. Together with inaction, they determine
which residual impacts are realised and how
they are distributed.
Table 1. A typology of adaptive responses with examples of measures related to guaranteeing food security (see also Downing 2002).
Response Proactive Reactive Inaction
International Guidelines for national
adaptation strategies; support
for development of
new crop varieties
National Grain storage; policies to
alter the crop mix and
agricultural practices
Local Investments in ground
water recharge; irrigation
and flood protection; local
seed banks; coordination
Individual Diversification of livelihoods;
investments in
human and physical capital;
new practices
Adaptation will take place in the context of United
Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change
(UNFCCC) and the subsequent decisions of its conferences
of the parties and subsidiary bodies (Verheyen
2002). In what follows, we will focus on central
dilemmas of adaptation which include 1) the relationship
between mitigation and adaptation; 2) the level
and distribution of assistance to developing countries
Food aid measures; emergency
relief
Tariff and fiscal policies to
augment food imports;
disaster relief and food aid
Collective action and reciprocity
in mitigating food
and water shortages
No responses to instigate
behavioural responses
No infrastructure investments
that confer local
adaptive benefits
Migration ignored as an
adaptive response
Migration Acceptance of increased
vulnerability or/and reduced
welfare
for adaptation, and; 3) planning and decisions concerning
adaptive responses. We examine whether and
how international environmental law resolves these
dilemmas and what roles science and justice play in
doing so. We focus on international environmental
law as the first step because it influences and informs
national and local responses. Our ultimate aim is to
extend our analysis to include national and local adap-

tive responses as well.
Article 2 of the UNFCCC establishes a relationship
between mitigation and adaptation by stating that the
stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations should
take place within the time-frame that does not
threaten food production and sustainable economic
growth. This recognises that there are limits to the
amount of resources that can be allocated for mitigation
and that adaptation will be required. However,
the statement can also be interpreted to mean that
mitigation has to maintain climate change impacts
within adaptive capacity regarding food production
and economic growth. Science can clearly play a role
in determining the level of mitigation efforts needed
in order not to surpass the adaptive capacity. However,
adaptive capacity is not an objective measure: its
determination involves judgements concerning what
is fair to expect from those who have to adapt. Who
is to define adaptive capacity, and how? Those who
adapt themselves, political decision-makers or “outsiders”
such as scholars? Important issues of distributive
and procedural justice are also involved in decisions
concerning mitigation efforts. Who mitigates
and how much?
The UNFCCC commits developed countries to assist
developing countries to adapt. Paragraph 2 of Article
3 directs developed countries to consider the specific
needs and circumstances of particularly vulnerable
developing countries. Paragraphs 3-4 of Article 4 in
turn commit developed countries to cover the costs
of developing countries in meeting their obligations
under the convention and to assist particularly vulnerable
developing countries in meeting the costs of
adaptation. Paragraph 7 of this Article underlines that
the level of financial assistance provided by the developed
countries will determine how developing
countries can fulfil their obligations, recognising that
the eradication of poverty and social and economic
development are their primary concerns. Paragraphs
8-9 of Article 4 in turn identify the least developed
countries, small island states, countries with low-lying
coasts, arid countries and countries dependent on
fossil fuels as requiring special attention when deciding
on financial assistance, insurance and the transfer
of technology.
The Kyoto Protocol’s Article 12 indicates that the
proceeds of CDM projects should be used to assist
adaptation in particularly vulnerable developing countries.
Parties to the convention specified later in Marrakesh
that 2 percent of the CDM proceeds shall be
paid to an adaptation fund, which is to receive also
additional funding from the Annex I countries (see
Dessai and Schipper 2003). The special climate
change fund and the least developed countries fund
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 181
have also been established to support adaptation
activities and capacity building, and the work programme
of the least developed countries, respectively
(see Dessai 2002). These two funds are to be financed
by funding invited from the Annex I countries.
Science can shed light on many objective aspects of
vulnerability. However, decisions concerning the level
and distribution of assistance to developing countries
involve important issues of distributive and procedural
justice. What is the basis for deciding the level
of assistance and distributing the burden of raising
the funds? Extent of damage to developing countries,
historical responsibility, or voluntary assumption of a
particular share of funding? Who can participate in
the making of these decisions? What is the basis for
distributing funds among developing countries and
types of adaptive responses, who decides it and how?
Should those countries that are most vulnerable be
favoured, or those that are best able to adapt? Should
funds be used to maintain conditions for economic
growth or to protect the health and life of the most
vulnerable people? Science cannot alone answer these
questions.
We now move on to planning and decisions regarding
adaptation. Paragraphs 2-3 of the Convention’s
Article 3 require all parties to take precautionary
measures that anticipate, prevent and minimise the
causes and adverse effects of climate change. Article
4, Paragraph 1(e)-(f) in turn commits the parties to
cooperate in planning for adaptation and requires
them to take climate change into account in their
economic, social and environmental policies so as to
minimise adverse effects on public health, environmental
quality and mitigation and adaptation measures.
Kyoto Protocol’s Article 10, Paragraph 1 directed
developing countries to prepare national programmes
for adaptation to climate change. Parties to
the convention have later issued guidelines on how to
prepare National Adaptation Programmes of Action
or NAPAs (Verheyen 2002). The guidelines require a
multidisciplinary approach and extensive public participation
and consultation in the preparation of
NAPAs.
Science will play a role in planning for adaptation, for
example by clarifying the magnitude of climate impacts
and the ability of adaptive responses to buffer
their adverse consequences. Science can also assist in
designing proactive and reactive responses. However,
there are many dilemmas which cannot be resolved
by science alone. What is the basis for prioritising
some areas of adaptation such as food production
over others, say flood protection? How are the priorities
to be justified? What is the proper balance between
proactive and reactive responses? How should

182
burdens and benefits of adaptive responses be distributed?
Are those facing inundation by rising sea
levels to be left to their own devices, or are land
reforms initiated in advance to resettle the dislocated
orderly and with collective burden-sharing?
Science and justice are intimately intertwined in these
core dilemmas of adaptation. Science will make important
contributions but we cannot ignore the role
of justice. It will be difficult and, perhaps, impossible
to resolve dilemmas of climate justice such as the
overall level of assistance to developing countries to
the satisfaction of all involved parties. However, the
difficulty of finding a resolution is not a reason for
not trying. Distributive and procedural justice offer
some cues on how to proceed. Reciprocity will help
to overcome some dilemmas where not everybody
can win. The other possibility is to try and rest the
legitimacy of resolutions on procedural foundations.
International environmental law has already taken its
first steps to that direction with regard to planning
for adaptation. Further and bigger steps need to be
taken (Gupta 2002). However, procedural justice is
not independent of distributive justice and thus cannot
alone guarantee legitimacy.
5. Conclusions
We demonstrated that environmental decisionmaking
could be based on science alone only if unrealistic
assumptions are made regarding human motivations,
capabilities and behaviour. The unrealistic
model of environmental decision-making has demonstrated
its problems such as wanting legitimacy. More
realistic acknowledgement of plural values and motivations
inevitably brings distributive and procedural
justice into environmental decision-making.
We also demonstrated that science and justice are
intertwined in the core dilemmas of adaptation,
which include the relationship between mitigation
and adaptation, the level and distribution of assistance,
and planning and decision-making regarding
adaptive responses. Omission of science when resolving
these dilemmas would leave decision-makers to
grope in the dark – the achievement of justice would
not guarantee the goodness of decisions. Then again,
omission of justice would also be detrimental. Many
instrumentally necessary decisions such allocation of
burdens of adaptation cannot be resolved without
justice considerations. If these decisions are made
without adequate sensitivity to involved justice issues,
they may be illegitimate. The lack of legitimacy may
prevent the making of these decisions in the first
place, and impair the effective implementation of
those decisions that can be made.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
The complementarity of science and justice questions
the old models of scholarship that emphasised detachment
and objectivity of scientific efforts and
exempted scholarship from other than epistemic
responsibility. The nature of environmental decisionmaking
demands a broader responsibility for the
social consequences of scientific efforts, and an ability
to converse with other epistemic communities.
The complementarity of science and justice also presents
challenges for governance practice, which
should be able to harness both science and justice so
as to reach effective and legitimate environmental
decisions.
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Dissent about Scientific Uncertainties: Implications in Policy Arenas
Frank Schiller ∗ and Dennis Tänzler +
1. Background: Uncertainties and the sciences
Historically, the transformation from uncertainty to
risk facilitated the demystification and secularization
of pre-modern traditions which were neither accessible
in the social nor in the factual dimension before.
The modernization of society was realized by processes
of social differentiation (science, market etc.)
enabling societies to produce a rising number of
human artifacts (Fischer-Kowalski/Weisz 1999). This
in turn led to an increase of contingency in the nonhuman
environment. Risk sociology claims to access
the development of technology, the search for safety,
and the control of nature (Bechmann 1993). Accordingly,
positive and negative feedback from nature are
said to enable society to learn (Wildavsky 1991).
Learning mechanisms, however, may collapse in the
face of irreversible environmental changes or catastrophes.
The concept of sustainability must take this
limitation into account.
Considering the uncertainties of rising socio-technical
material levels and the resulting environmental contingencies,
the social science focus on risk and security
has been questioned lately (Bonß 1996). It has
been argued to concentrate research on uncertainty
and the factual dimension within risk areas (Grundmann
1999, pp. 53 ). Uncertainty touches on the
authority of the natural sciences. While experiments
were dispensed from consequences in natural and
social terms throughout modernity, today experiments
are often carried out directly in the real world
(Krohn/Weyer 1989). Through the secondary scientific
monitoring of natural effects of the primary
research, it is hoped, natural sciences could be turned
into a reflexive undertaking (Lau/Böschen 2001).
Primary and secondary research could be part of the
same discipline, their difference is not one between
the social and natural sciences. However, natural
scientific practices may become contested when the
boundaries of the laboratory are left behind. According
to Krohn and Weyer, the methodological founda-
∗ University of Göttingen. Germany. Contact: fschill1@gwdg.de.
+
Adelphi Research, Germany. Contact: taenzler@adelphiresearch.de.
tions of sciences do not guarantee security in regard
to (side) effects. Irreversibilities may occur. This has
prompted the politization of the natural sciences
because the natural scientific production of knowledge
is always located within (social) contexts (Bonß
et al. 1994). In turn public discourses on sciences
have to accommodate scientific knowledge (Lau
1993, 32) causing the scientific rationalization of
society (Weingart 1983; Daele 1996).
In order to cope with uncertainty in the sciences,
Funtowicz and Ravetz developed the concept of
post-normal-science referring to Kuhn's theory of
science (Funtowicz/Ravetz 1993; Ravetz 1999). As
Kuhn (1996, 19) has pointed out normal science
usually develops apart from social needs. To overcome
this lack of social integration through paradigmatic
sciences Funtowicz/Ravetz emphasize the
problem-solving character of sciences for certain
environmental challenges. They set up a frame based
on the decision stakes and the uncertainties involved.
Problem-solving science runs from the core of pure
science over applied science, and professional consultancy
to post-normal science which is complementary
to applied science and professional consultancy.
As many risk theories, this concept does not discuss
truth and objectivity claims of science. Funtowicz/Ravetz
claim an interaction between epistemic
(knowledge) and axiological (values) aspects of
scientific problems. Thereby the fact/value distinction
is abandoned though the sociological problem of
integration is not solved: ethical values are claimed to
be socially uncertain. Still, post-normal-science pursues
the participation of the public in the peer process
(extended peer communities) assuming rightly
that the experts/laymen distinction is not appropriate
any longer (Tesh 1999). With the post-normal-science
approach the generation of social knowledge which
has been the task of the sociology of knowledge
moves to the center of research. Here the social constellation
of actors and the underlying epistemic conditions
set the frame for research. Uncertainty should
thus become an area of research for the sociology of
knowledge (Wehling 2001) taking into account our
changed understanding of nature. There are links to
Beck's risk theory of reflexive modernization and
subpolicies (Healy 1999).
1. 1 UNCERTAINTY IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
The problem of uncertainty has gained recognition in

sociology inter alia through the works of Beck and
Luhmann. Beck (1996) has called ignorance a medium
of reflexive modernization because it refers to
side effects of modernization. Empirically, side effects
and ignorance are closely related and action
against the side effects must not necessarily be based
on cognitive elements. In opposition to this,
Luhmann (1992) links ignorance to his theory of
observation, which points to a scientific system. Only
this functional system specifies ignorance relevant for
societies whereas the rest is murmur noise. Still,
Luhmanns approach cannot deal with the fact, that
scientific research itself may produce uncertainty for
society. Japp, following Luhmann's theory, accuses
social actors of negating the possibility of observation
through a semantic of catastrophe and, as a consequence,
of rejecting the scientific system in general
(Japp 1997, 306). However, instead of society dedifferentiating
sciences we may indeed witness a process
of social dedifferentiation promoted by the natural
sciences themselves.
In the wake of Wynne (1992) Functowicz and Ravetz
(1993) distinguished between risk, uncertainty, ignorance,
and indeterminacy assuming a continuum from
risk to indeterminacy. Their distinction is driven by
system theoretical and ontological assumptions
whereas, following Wehling and the sociology of
knowledge, we suggest to speak of risk, uncertainty,
specified ignorance and unspecified ignorance. Here
specified and unspecified ignorance point to epistemological
aspects of uncertainty while uncertainty
itself is defined through the lack of prognostic power
in open systems and probabilistic values allow to
speak of risk. Thereby the contingency of human
development (in the environment) as well as scientific
progress (theories of knowledge) can both be taken
into account. However, while both kinds of ignorance
alter the reflexivity of a sociology of knowledge, they
do not necessarily alter the insight into the relational
problems between natural and social processes. Material
and energy flows may carry great dangers (e.g.
CFC) even under assumptions of certainty (cf.
Schiller 2002). Indeed, as Beck stressed, knowledge
(about uncertainty or ignorance) may be quite independent
from the causation of potential dangers.
1.2 PROGNOSTIC VS. EPISTEMIC SCIENTIFIC
UNCERTAINTIES
Kuhn's revolutionary theory of science examined the
(historical) context of scientific discovery. Hypotheses
were not developed in a trial-and-error process
but according to scientific rules of social interaction
or practices. Facts are not mere discoveries but scientific
constructions against a theoretical background.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 185
Following Stengers (1993) practices, scientific or nonscientific
alike, can be seen as bridging any dichotomy
between normal and post-normal sciences. Stengers
suggests to treat experimental and non-experimental
sciences on equal terms in non-hierarchical controversies.
According to Schomberg (1995) such controversies
can be analyzed by arguments instead of practices.
He proceeds from Kuhn's and Toulmin's theories
of science.
Schomberg claims that the shift of scientific paradigms
(Kuhn) does not raise the question of incommensurability
but can be explained through changes
in the conceptual background. The permanent modification
of scientific terms brings about these shifts
which in turn affect the object area of research.
Schomberg distinguishes two types of discourses in
the argumentative scientific praxis. Epistemic discourses
are characterized by a process where plausible hypothesis
are derived through abductive reasoning, a
rational selection of special thesis and their integration
into a paradigm. The plausibility of hypothetical
statements in this type of scientific discourse depends
on the presuppositions of the scientific discipline in
question and the way of abductive reasoning. The
plausible argumentation in epistemic discourses can
neither claim truth nor probability. The types of
arguments used in the scientific discourse thus indicate
scientific uncertainty (Schomberg 1995, 171).
Epistemic dissent may arise leading to divergent
scientific programs or even disciplines. Contrary to
this, the argumentation of empirical-theoretical discourses
raises truth claims. The justification of controversial
statements as interpretations of accepted, (experimentally
produced) facts results in truth and probability
claims (Schomberg 1995, 167). They offer—in principle—the
possibility of consensus on which future
action may be based. Different from this, controversial
statements in epistemic discourses cannot directly
be taken as justifications for action because they defy
consensual truth claims by principle. The statements
in epistemic discourses strive instead for a prospective
coherence that has to prove itself pragmatically in
the future.
Schomberg analytically reconstructs three forms of
argumentative reasoning in epistemic discourses: 1)
hypothesis based on analogies, 2) hypothesis based
on "attest arguments", and 3) hypothesis based on
hypothetical assumptions. All these forms of argumentative
reasoning can be analyzed in regard to the
abductive derivation of plausible hypotheses, the
rational selection of a special hypothesis and, finally,
its rational integration into a paradigm.
Ad 1) According to Schomberg abductive reasoning
can only be plausible; it does not contain propositions

186
that could be called true or false. Plausibility refers to
principles, premises, and general assumptions about
models of the scientific discipline in question (Kuhn’s
metaphysical elements of a paradigm). Analogies are
used as warrants for propositions not as a ground for
the acceptability of claims. However, in some sense
analogies can be considered as warrant-using
concerning the known scientific field and as warrantestablishing
concerning new scientific fields.
Ad 2) Attest arguments are established by referring to
the reliability or authority of a historical source/quote
with a wide meaning of ‘source’. Plausibility is established
by the reliability of a principle. This is made
explicit in the backing (or in a rule of argumentation).
They remain mostly implicit in argumentations for
knowledge claims.
Ad 3) Hypothetical assumptions either support or
reject the plausibility of knowledge claims. This form
of argumentation uses presuppositions. Since the
premises of an argumentation with hypothetical assumptions
do not take the form of claims or propositions
it does not entail truth claims. Counterfactual
hypothesis can be plausible if they can explain
anomalies as normal occurrences.
The arguments put forward by the scientists are part
of a discourse in which scientist want to overcome
the state of unspecified ignorance in the life world.
Hypothetical thinking extends the understanding of
objects and the horizon of a discourse. In the course
of this extension scientific controversies arise but
plausible argumentation lack qualifiers as they depict
the conditional character of truth claims: "We cannot
say that something is presumably plausible. We can
neither say that something is generally nor that something
is obviously plausible. These remarks reinforce
our intuition that 'plausible' unlike true is not a special
predicate of statements but rather of knowledgeclaims."
(Schomberg 1993, 14) Through the use of
attest arguments and analogies scientists appeal to
basic principles of their discipline which are not
themselves contested. This argumentative practice
reduces the complexity of a scientific problem: analogies
and attest arguments only enable science to explore
new fields. They anticipate the relevance of
potentially generated future data. Thus, these forms
of arguments do not touch principles of other disciplines
but allow to articulate the plausibility of other
scientific principles based on counterfactual arguments.
Whereas prognostic uncertainty emanates from the
reality of the natural world, epistemic ignorance is a
result of natural scientific, argumentative (and noninstrumental)
practice standing somewhere between
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
specified and unspecified ignorance. In short,
Schomberg’s knowledge theory of argumentation
overcomes shortcomings of a system theoretical
approach to ignorance while extending our understanding
of ignorance. Moreover, the theory offers a
point of departure for discourse analysis because it
allows to develop a non-strategic differentiation between
the natural and the social sciences.
2. Environmental Discourses in the Policy Arena
The public sphere is strongly influenced by complex
webs of actors and their power relations, cultural
contexts as well as the overall institutional design of
society. While the use of arguments within the political
sphere has been analyzed fruitfully (cf. Dunn
1993; Prittwitz 1996) an empirical gap between decision
and discourse still remains (Daele/Neidhardt
1996). However, knowledge theory raises the issue of
justification and not of observation (Holzinger 2001,
256). We locate Schomberg's theory within the first
context.
In order to capture the public sphere analytically we
assume that it equals a policy arena. Discourse analysis
offers a valuable contribution to the reconstruction of
ecological communication (Keller 2001). Within a
policy arena only certain actors are able to gain access
to specific discourses where central decisions are
made and where a number of actors are likely to be
excluded due to a lack of symbolic power (Bourdieu
1991) and mere rhetoric of dominant actors. As a
result, scientific uncertainties are accompanied by
social, economic, political and cultural biased arguments
summing up to a dominant societal problem
definition (Lau 1989). This reflects the societal risk or
uncertainty perception at a specific point of time
indicated, for example, by a policy or law. Discourse
analysis can show how different forms of scientific
uncertainty impact in policy arenas and in the concerned
discourse coalitions.
A promising discourse analytical approach was developed
by Hajer (1995) in order to analyze the British
clean air policy. This empirical theory understands
discourses as a specific ensemble of ideas, concepts
and categorizations which are produced, transformed,
and reproduced in a set of social practices defining
the meaning of the social and the objective world
(1995, 44). Central to Hajer's application of discourse
theory is the concept of story lines. Story lines are "a
generative sort of narrative that allows actors to draw
upon various discursive categories to give meaning to
specific physical or social phenomena.”(Hajer 1995,
56) Accordingly, story lines are produced by discourse
coalitions to gain discourse hegemony. Ac-

cording to Hajer, the persuasiveness of argumentations
depends less on consistent arguments but on
their multi-interpretability. In this way, the complexity
of problem characters could be reduced leading to a
better public understanding, save a constant occurrence
on the political agenda. It offers the resonance
for other social actors or discourse coalitions (Hajer
1995, pp. 62). Gaining the discourse hegemony in a
specific policy area means to enter the stage of policy
formulation within the policy cycle and thereby at
least a temporarily closure of the underlying problem
(cf. also Mayntz, 1999). Accordingly, discourses are
changing the environments of policies which can
induce the ecological modernization of society. At the
same time the analysis of discourses gains insights
about the way societies generate and apply knowledge
or non-knowledge using specific social practices,
different modes of knowledge communication.
3. Uncertainties connected to climate change and
to the deliberate release of GMOs
3.1 CLIMATE CHANGE: A THEORETICAL-EMPIRICAL
DISCOURSE
a) The scientific discourse on climate change theory
Today, the lion's share of the scientific community is
approving the underlying hypotheses that the increasing
atmospheric concentration of so called greenhouse
gases, caused mainly by the burning of fossil
fuels, will lead to a warming of the Earth's atmosphere.
The basic principle behind the general greenhouse
gas theory was already developed at the end of
the 19th century by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius:
According to this theory, the sun's radiation
is reflected from the Earth's surface back to the
space. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the outgoing
radiation which leads to an alteration of the
Earth's energy balance and causes the planet to warm.
It's noteworthy that a natural greenhouse effect is
essential to most life on earth since it increases the
global mean temperature to about 15 degrees Celsius.
While observed changes of the global mean temperature
first had been accounted for as a natural phenomenon
due to normal climate variability it was only
in 1985 that, based on the first results of the World
Climate Program, the young history of climate change
science started to focus on the additional anthropogenic
greenhouse effect. The central question was if
human activities contributes to an increasing concentration
of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important
greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. (cf. Loske 1997,
35-39). This in turn could result inter alia in a rise in
sea levels, in far reaching modification of weather
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 187
patterns and in nearly unpredictable feedbacks with
other climate parameters (IPCC 2001).
To extent and assess these predicted consequences,
computer models were developed and simulations
became the state of the art in climate change research.
These simulations, based on simplified climate models,
match the observed climate change very well. The
models picked up knowledge from other disciplines
solving puzzles of modeling, especially the problem of
uncertainty (Mahlmann, 1997; Stott, Kettleborough,
2002). However, uncertainties of a prognostic kind
remain: they are caused by the relation between various
variables of the models and reflect open systems.
Although the modeling scenarios can hardly qualify
any decision stakes in terms of specified probabilities
(Giles, 2002) the models can be validated (among
others by observation) (Schär et al., 2000, 10). Thus,
the experienced- and observation-based models in
climate research support the paradigm of an anthropogenic
climate change.
To facilitate the scientific discourse on climate
change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 comprising 2,500
scientists from all over the world. The IPCC produces
the most authoritative international scientific
assessments that are regularly fed into the international
climate change negotiations. To come up with
a balanced assessment the IPCC bases it works
mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific and
technical literature (Alfsen/Skodvin 1998). Passing
several stages of review the IPCC scientists also take
up arguments by so called "climate skeptics" like
Richard Lindzen (MIT) or Patrick Michaels (University
of Virginia) who challenge different aspects of
the climate change theory. Objections like a potential
cooling influence of water vapor or the deviation
between the results of GCMs and satellite observations
were disproved by IPCC scientists (cf. Gelbspan
1997, 197-217). Moreover, the work of the climate
skeptics has either not been passed in for a peerreview
process or has been rejected by the reviewers.
However, the impact of the few skeptics in the policy
arena of the United States could not be ignored in the
next stage since their argumentation has not only
been of a scientific nature but politicized scientific
uncertainties.
b) The political discourse on international and national climate
change policies
As argued above, the international climate change
process is based on the results provided by the IPCC.
Despite the integration of the all available knowledge
worldwide the assessment reports are not able to

188
remove uncertainty. This lack of full certainty is reflected
in Article 3.3 of the Framework Convention
on Climate Change (FCCC) indicating that this situation
"..should not be used as a reason for postponing
such measures." Instead "parties should take precautionary
measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize
the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse
effects." Accordingly, appropriate measures have
been discussed during the international negotiation
process leading to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol
in December 1997 (cf. Oberthür/Ott 1999,
Grubb 1999).
Analyzing the climate change discourse in the United
States shows that basic principles of the international
climate regime are highly contested. The US debate
on the question whether the adoption of a legally
binding treaty including reduction targets should be
supported could offer valuable insights into a very
specific discourse constellation. Collecting an inventory
of storylines on the topic of climate change and
the respective international process indicates three
main types of argument against a commitment to any
action regarding climate change (see for a more detailed
analysis Tänzler 2002). First, it is argued that in
the light of remaining scientific uncertainties significant
policy formulation and implementation are not
yet justified. Instead, any action to be taken should
rely on "sound science". Second, it is criticized that
the economic costs connected to the reduction of
greenhouse gases are too high compared to a future
that is not clear yet. Third and obviously influenced
by the first two arguments, there are claims that the
international approach is unfair for the US since it
does not include binding reduction commitments for
developing countries. This exclusion of developing
countries during the first commitment period is based
on the 'principle of common but differentiated responsibility'
(Art. 3.1 FCCC). Consequently, industrialized
countries are to take the lead in implementing
climate change policies due to their historical contribution
to the basic problem.
The first argument of scientific uncertainties was
strongly used by a coalition of climate skeptics, vested
industry interests organized in the "Global Climate
Coalition" and a number of conservative think tanks
like the Cato Institute. Two specific examples might
illustrate the decisive role of science within the US
climate change discourse: First, personal attacks of
IPCC scientist by some of the climate skeptics occurred
during the adoption process of the second
IPCC assessment report. The main reason for this
politicization of the assessment process was the translation
of the extended second assessment report into
the "summary for policy makers" in 1995 by which
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
the scientific results should be summarized in order
to become more accessible for policy makers. Claims
by the skeptics that this summarizing process is
guided by political will intended to undermine the
functional authority of the panel. Second, it is worth
noting that for example the climate skeptic Patrick
Michaels regularly testifies in congressional hearings
on behalf of the Cato Institute, a think tank that aims
to provide policy solutions to policy makers. Accordingly,
the scientist does not limit his argumentation to
scientific theories and facts on climate change but
moreover he changes the discipline to advice policy
makers.
The impact in the policy arena could be illustrated by
the adoption of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution in 1997, a
key document of the position of the US political elite
on climate change. Adopted unanimously by US
Senate this resolution reproduces two of the three
above mentioned story lines: the harmful economic
impacts of an international agreement and the unfairness
of a legally binding reduction commitment not
including developing countries. Although the third
storyline of scientific uncertainties is not mentioned
in this central political document, this argument was
nearly ubiquitous during the discussion at that time,
especially during congressional hearings. Additionally,
the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol of the new president
George W. Bush mirrors the perception that
scientific knowledge is still too contested to take
serious steps against global warming. Hence, the
argument of scientific uncertainties together with
other aspects results in an ongoing hegemonic problem
closure of 'doing nothing' in the US context
whereas the lion's share of countries have already
started to bring up climate protection policies.
3.2 THE DELIBERATE RELEASE OF GMOS: AN
EPISTEMOLOGICAL DISCOURSE
a) The epistemological discourse on genetically modified organisms
(GMOs)
As Bonß et al. (1992) have argued the decontextualisation
from the real world in the laboratory has
pragmatic and semantic aspects. On the pragmatic
level the scientific programs of biology pursue specific
scientific aims which rely on a methodological
reductionism and experiments. On the semantic level
'why-questions' always point to an interpretative
frame which constitutes 'sense' to these questions.
Bonß et al. describe the release of GMOs from the
laboratory into nature as a situation of uncertain
uncertainties lying beyond a reductionist risk research.
Whereas they focus on the pragmatic aspects of this
decontexualization Schomberg's argumentative ap-

proach allows to accessing the semantic context of
the discourse on GMOs.
According to Schomberg (1993) the scientific debate
between biotechnologists and ecologists concerning
GMOs is an epistemic discourse. Both natural sciences
make use of analogies, and attest arguments, that
appeal to scientific principles of their discipline. By
drawing an analogy to experiences with exotic plants
ecologists claim to have a basis for the evaluation of
risks with GMOs. Molecular biologist counter with
the appeal to the scientific principle (attest) according
to which genetic engineering rather changes the organism
than the environment. The analogy of molecular
biology points to the experience with breeding
where no serious problems have ever occurred. Ecology
in turn refers to its scientific principle that without
knowledge of the biological properties of an
organism no prediction about the reproduction and
the survival can be made.
b) The establishment of political arenas under epistemic ignorance
The issue of genetic engineering has risen a political
debate before negative experience caught the awareness
of the general public (Gill et al. 1998, 18). In this
discourse, the opportunities and the risks of biotechnology
were stressed by the supporters and the opponents
of this technology. The discourse entailed
several aspects: the safety of research, the risk communication
between experts and laypersons and ethical
considerations.
For some time the international scientific debate
about bio safety supported the precautionary principle
and even considered hypothetical dangers. A
substantial overlap between public and scientific
concerns about risks and ignorance in biotechnology
occurred. Still, this approach did not prevail in practice
and was given up in the late 70ties and the 80ties
when laws established national rules for bio safety
(Barben 1997). Right from the beginning political
actors and institutions (e.g. OECD) expressed distress
that the scientific disagreements could be amplified
and misunderstood in the public. Therefore,
safety regulation implicitly attained the role of managing
public debate.
The advancement of genetic engineering influenced
the political system. On the polity level different
constitutional institutions could collide with regard to
GMOs: namely subjective rights (freedom of science,
freedom to choose and carry out one's carrier, freedom
of trade, property rights etc.), and the basic right
of the intergenerational protection of nature. With
the last having the weakest standing subjective rights
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 189
rather seem to give way to the development of
(bio)technology. Biotechnology caused direct changes
of social structure and policies and respectively sub
politics: the release of GMOs evoked the setting of
actors who in part built discourse coalitions (industry
promoting genetic engineering, farmers standing in
the line of agricultural production, activists elevating
critique and protest etc.).
As one reaction within society, a shift towards normative
sciences (moral philosophy and theology)
could be noticed leading to the constitution of a
number of ethical commissions next to the established
parliamentarian institutions. Furthermore new
forms of political decision-making have been tested
due to the involved uncertainties and anticipated
ethical conflicts. Consensus oriented mediations and
public forums have been set up to increase the legitimacy
of political decisions (Daele 1996). However,
such procedures, although aiming for consensus, may
lead to compromises instead. Opposing ethical values
may not be recognized profoundly. Bargaining may
supersede epistemic arguing and thus a gap between
communication and understanding, to use Habermas'
distinction, would remain. Accordingly, the social
sciences are confronted with objections concerning
their proper role in this socio-technological process
(Keller/Poferl, 1994; Saretzki 1996, 1997).
Although uncertainties were recognized by the discourse
coalitions different national and supranational
laws established the legal framework for the development
of biotechnology. These technology laws
function, according to Kloepfer (1998), as 'releasing
law' in opposition to 'containing law'. They govern
the mentioned safety aspects, ethical considerations
and property rights in relation to genetic research.
The EC regulation of biotechnological research took
place with the two directives 219/90 and 220/90.
After two earlier attempts had failed the EC enacted
the Deliberate Release Directive (90/220) based on a
concept of qualitative uncertainty about cause-effect
models of harm. It was meant to support the European
internal market and to prevent environmental
harm. The codified 'step-by-step' approach based on
the agreement within the OECD (1986) that GMO
releases should be accompanied by the collection of
safety and performance data. However, it is far from
clear how 'safety' could be tested. As Levidow et al.
(1997) pointed out the EU member states each emphasized
different sources of environmental uncertainty.
In Germany the rules for research in genetics were
established in 1990 by the GenTG (Winter 1991).
The GenTG followed German law's dogmatic con-

190
ception of averting dangers, risk prevention and unavoidable
residual risks (Wahl/Appel 1995, pp. 84).
These three legal forms try to find orientation in the
expected extent of a damage and its probability.
Within this context environmental law refers to science
as an external, cognitive resource for juridical
adjudication (e.g. 'state of the science'). Law's perspective
is on risk and not on uncertainty or ignorance
and it is ex-post. The precautionary principle
highlights the prognostic problem involved here.
Analytically, one can distinguish between an experienced
based precautionary principle and a hypothesis
based precautionary principle the later amounting to
the principle of prevention (Gill 1997). This principle,
however, has not become the ground for the GenTG,
although hypothetical arguments characterize the
scientific discourse on GMOs. Instead, the law made
way for the procedural step-by-step approach.
Under the administrative procedures and institutions
set out by the law different discourse arenas were
established lastingly while the controversy between
economic and scientific discourse coalitions on the
one hand and ecological and consumption-oriented
discourse coalitions on the other continues. Since
ethical arguments have only no influence in the GMO
debate opponents must provide compelling, diagnosis
of biotechnology to gain public attention. In difference
to experienced risks, hypothetic risks hamper
the mobilization process except if progressive alternatives
can be shown (Hoffmann, 1997). Therefore the
framing of ecological and consumption-oriented
discourse coalition is most successful where narrow
risk or technology assessments (TA) of GMOs have
their biggest shortcomings: in the food production
(Albrecht 1997, 183). In the face of a large agricultural
overproduction in the EU the use of GMOs in
agriculture lacks public acceptance. And though
product regulation does not spare process regulation:
a rigid informational policy (product labeling etc.)
could support mobilization processes and may obstruct
the economic advances of GMOs. However,
this regulation, as part of an EU product regulation, is
lagging behind.
So is product regulation in comparison to the decentralized,
releasing process legislation of the EUmember-states.
The step-by-step procedure as laid
down in the EC directive 90/220 can in part be
found again in § 14 sec. 4 of the German GenTG.
Here, the purpose of the step-by-step procedure has
shifted from a safety regulation to a simplification of
permission. Still, several standards—such as the recording
and monitoring of a release—have to be met,
even though hypothetical risks must not be considered
by the applicant of a release-site. It is thus
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
avoided to extend the experienced base precautionary
principle to a prevention principle although action
takes place under epistemic ignorance. In fact, the
legal permission process does not even guarantee the
systematic participation of the public: the GenTG
distinguishes between public and private research and
only private research projects face public hearings
where hypothetical arguments may enter the administrative
permission process. However, it has been
questioned whether participation is altering the cognition
of the administrative procedure at all (Bora
1994). And even if participation can be seen as anticipated
protection of basic rights it still reflects epistemic
ignorance in the case of GMO releases. This
fact seems to restrict both, the constitutionaldemocratic
claims for participation and the empirically
motivated critique of participation. Normatively,
neither product nor process regulation seem to secure
the separation of science and society under conditions
of epistemic ignorance. Process regulation does
not establish legal security of expectations which
guarantees the rationality claims of law (Gill et al
1998, pp. 101).
4. Conclusions
Our two cases show an important difference between
the political action taken under prognostic uncertainty
and that under epistemic ignorance. In the case
of prognostic uncertainty political action does not
question the status of science but endorses the differentiation
from science and societies through the
international coordination and institutionalization of
research. Only based on the scientific consensus
about the anthropogenic climate change the prognostic
modeling becomes politicized within the IPCC
due to its potential re-distributional consequences.
However, the natural sciences withdraw legitimacy
from discourse coalitions opposing policy measures
against climate change. Hence, despite the US situation,
scientific knowledge on Earth's climate is growing
and easing in return measures against climate
change and is thus problem solving.
In opposition to this, science under epistemic ignorance
is potentially problem generating. Genetic experiments
can start irreversible processes if carried
out in nature. Although early attempts of scientific
self-regulation of research failed experiments were
still carried out. Later on, safety regulations implicitly
attained the role of managing public debate. The
opportunities of genetic engineering were emphasized
and the promotion of the social acceptance for 'risks'
gained primacy. Risk communication seemed to be
able to overcome the expert-lay-distinction. However,

isk communication cannot provide epistemological
grounds for its program.
The two observed cases suggest that risk discourses
will not be able to accommodate the discourse on
sustainability within a program of contexualization
disregarding the distinction between prognostic uncertainty
and epistemic ignorance since any recontextualization
may fail in the face of irreversible, natural
processes. Already prognostic uncertainty relaxes
implicit premises of risk discourse, e.g. the action
based rationality of decisions, control of (side-)effects
etc. Further lowering these premises, e.g. through a
functional appeal to scientific authority, would raise
theoretical problems of social integration. Authoritative
arguments themselves establish uncertainty within
science. In fact, under epistemic ignorance scientific
practices are already carried over to the legal system:
according to Gill et al. (1998, 266) safety assumptions
can only be falsified but never be proven! Although
Popperian notions of falsification would be misleading
here, and even though a (risky) growth of knowledge
can be recognized (e.g. the knowledge about the
spread of genes to other plants was gained from
release experiments) growing knowledge does not
refute hypothetical arguments. Risk assessments,
TAs, and mediations may raise the acceptance for
uncertain scientific practices among the diverging discourse
coalitions although they do not alter the future
safety of release experiments. Seen in this light claims
for more safety through participation seem insufficient.
In conclusion, Schomberg's theory of argumentation
proofed useful for the social scientific analysis of
uncertainty in discourse arenas. It allows to differentiate
social and natural scientific practices further
while keeping track of theories of knowledge. Thus, it
could possibly integrate sociology of knowledge and
science on the one hand and theory of science and
knowledge on the other. Still, further research on the
theory of argumentation as well as empirical research
on the formation of scientific discourse coalition is
needed.
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 193-201.
Power, Knowledge and Sustainability
Stephen Healy ∗
“I would be tempted to say that we might be shifting
slowly from an ideal of calculability to a new ideal of
descriptibility. Calculations allowed [us] to shortcut
politics by ignoring all of the externalities that were
shed outside of the realm of what is to be calculated.
Capitalism itself, in this view, is one among many of the
powerful ways of distributing what is to be calculated
—internalities— and what is not to be calculated —
externalities. The limits of capitalism as a mode of calculation
—not as a mode of production— is that it
renders itself voluntarily very inefficient at calculating
what it has left aside: unintended consequences, entanglement,
due process, externalities.”
1. Introduction
– Latour 1998
It is notable that while the unique nature of the challenges
presented by issues of global environmental
change are widely acknowledged this is not generally
reflected in our responses to these matters. These
remain dominated by traditional analytical frameworks
that have been criticised both for their inherent
limitations in meeting these challenges and because
they have been identified with the sources of
these problems themselves (for two very different,
but important, entries into these debates see: Beck
1992 and Latour 1993). While many alternatives to
these traditional analytical frameworks are informed
by critical analyses of science and of the role of scientific
rationality in society, culture and politics, they are
for the most part framed by traditional epistemological
notions (eg the work of Weber and Habermas).
As a result the prescriptions they offer (ie Habermasian
'discourse ethics'), while widely regarded as offering
the potential to 'democratise' scientific knowledge
1 , work within the confines of accepted notions
of knowledge and the relationships between knowl-
∗
University of New South Wales, Australia. Contact:
s.healy@unsw.edu.au.
1 This idea is increasingly promoted as a central element in managing
the challenges of both global environmental change and
other, broader techno-scientific challenges. The rationale for
this is essentially the idea that access to community knowledge
and values will aid the management of both the complexity,
via access to an increased knowledge base, and uncertainty, via
access to public preferences and priorities, of these matters.
See: Volume 26, number 5, October 1999 and Volume 28,
number 6, December 2001 of Science and Public Policy for recent
relevant work in this area.
edge, politics and culture these notions determine.
Frameworks as diverse as post-normal science (Funtowicz
and Ravetz 1993a&b) and the risk society (Beck
1992) emphasise this necessity for a democratic approach
to the generation and application of knowledge.
However they do this by uncritically reproducing
enlightenment inspired notions of knowledge that
implicitly constrain and inhibit pluralism. Among the
most significant of these notions is the idea that
knowledge is representational in character. This notion
gives rise to two key problematical features of
these frameworks. First, it reinforces the idea that
‘democratic knowledge’ involves little more than the
addition of democratic oversight and input to current
practices, and secondly it supports the view that the
application of the resultant knowledge is primarily an
instrumental matter. The challenge then becomes to
optimally ensure desired outcomes within democratic
constraints. To this end we have, for example, ‘extended
peer communities’ (Funtowicz and Ravetz
1993a&b) and ‘reflexive scientisation’ (Beck 1992).
Missing from these formulations, however, is an
appreciation of how knowledge doesn’t so much
reflect a state of the world but acts to shape it in ways
that both facilitate and constrain action. Yes, “science
is indeed politics pursued by other means” (Latour
1993, 111) but not so much, or only, because of
how it may embody particular, narrow social interests
but because of how it facilitates the exercise of
power. Power, in this Foucauldian view, is not simply
something imposed from above by the powerful – to
be readily dispersed by sharing it among societal
interests – but an effect of relations, which under
contemporary conditions are critically shaped by
knowledge. The contemporary relations of significance
are rarely, however, narrowly inter-human but
they also crucially, and in addition, embrace the nonhuman
world. Our most pressing matters of concern
centre on complexes of people, politics, technologies
and other ‘things’. Whether these are CFCs, greenhouse
gases, the IPCC or the WTO, our world is
shaped, and rapidly being shaped, by the decisions
and actions we take involving them. Crucial among
the choices to be made about knowledge then – if
only we can bring ourselves to engage with them –
are those about which of these constellations of people
and things, reflecting which relations of power,
should we bring into being.
While representational conceptions of knowledge are

194
a constant of western intellectual history, it is with the
development of modern science that they attained
dominance. From this time scientific knowledge was
understood to reflect, and it’s content to represent, an
enduring, external material world with other knowledge
since this time similarly interpreted so that, for
example, the social sciences and humanities are
widely conceived to reflect a social or cognitive reality.
There is now, however, a significant body of
theory arguing that this segregation of material and
social domains (and other analogous binary divisions
including those between: nature/culture, fact/value,
subject/object, content/context etc) does not reflect
things in themselves but rather the way we conceive
them to be. From this perspective 'realism' and 'constructivism'
are simply two sides of the same coin.
Joseph Rouse (1996) labels this the ‘legitimation
project’ because of their shared commitment to the
idea that science requires legitimation (either by
correlating its content to an ahistorical external
material reality in the case of 'realism', or to internal
social ‘interests’ in the case of 'constructivism').
If we grant that our knowledge doesn’t so much
reflect our world but acts to make it the way we take
it to be its production and deployment becomes far
more complex and challenging. Facilitating pluralism
then becomes not only a matter of involving all with
a legitimate interest, but also crucially of facilitating
processes in which all relevant perspectives and insights,
whether conceived representationally or not,
are accounted for. Before exploring the ‘knowledge
politics’ this might involve a critical account of the
traditional representational view of scientific knowledge
and a non-representational alternative are briefly
outlined below.
2. 'Representationalism' and its Failings
Epistemological thinking is dominated by the assumption
that knowledge is representational in character
2 . That is the idea that knowledge is a representation
of 'something'. In the case of natural science
this 'something' is assumed to be a material world
'external' to us while in the case of the social sciences
it is analogously assumed to be elements of an 'internal'
human world (variously conceived as 'culture',
'interests', 'discursive constructs' etc). So 'realists',
'constructivists' and others of a more discursive orientation,
whatever their differences over the production
and content of knowledge, widely share the view
2 See Ch.1 "Varieties of Epistemology" in Tanesini (1999) for a
good overview and discussion of an epistemological approach
analogous to that discussed here.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
that the character of knowledge is representational.
Some of the specific consequences of this are
broached below but, in brief, these reduce to how
this emphasis acts to accentuate a limited subset of
the practices, processes and contexts in which knowledge
is generated and deployed and, as a result, inform
the deployment of science and its embodiment
by policy and institutions in less than optimal, and
sometimes counter-productive, ways.
Representational epistemologies tend to be focused
by the justification of representations in knowledge
bearing subjects by consideration of the conditions
under which representations can be considered valid.
Knowledge is therefore conceived as representations
understood as a cognitive feature of autonomous
individuals. It is further generally assumed that
knowledge, so understood, is strait-forwardly communicable
by symbolic means. The primary alternative
to this representational approach concentrates on
knowledge producing practices rather than on the
cognitive representations to which these practices
may give rise. Pioneered by Martin Heidegger early in
the 20th century current proponents of such an approach
include feminist epistemologists (see Tanesini,
1999) and some philosophers of science (most notably
Joseph Rouse, 1987, 1996) 3 . This epistemology
concentrates upon the practical engagement between
people, and between people and things, involved in
the production of knowledge. In this approach practices
are not conceived in terms of rule governed
behaviour but as socially constituted actions in sociomaterial
domains whose efficacy is determined by
both socially constituted criteria, of for example appropriateness,
and by socio-material considerations
including, perhaps most notably, utility.
This non-representational approach thus elides the
common distinction between practical, or 'tacit',
knowledge and the more sophisticated, often theoretical
knowledge of concern in scientific and policy
contexts, by arguing that the contexts and practices
involved in the generation and deployment of knowledge
are always pivotal considerations. While it is
straightforward to conceive of applying these nonrepresentational
ideas to say the laboratory - where
the interactions and interdependencies between researchers,
their equipment, co-workers, the material
world and their peers - are evidently of significance it
is not so clear how theoretical knowledge might be
conceived in these terms. Tanesini (1999, 14) argues
3 Also articulated in the work of various science studies scholars
including Actor Network Theorists such as Bruno Latour (see
eg 1992, 1999) and in the work of Donna Haraway (see eg
1992).

that the practices of concern in the case of theory are
linguistic practices, particularly practices of 'linguistic
assertion'. This is particular salient to policy relevant
knowledge, whether generated internal or external to
policy domains, where practices of 'linguistic assertion'
involving the 'giving and asking for reasons' are
key features of the deployment and/or generation of
such knowledge. However such an emphasis may
detract from consideration of other practices of fundamental
import to policy 4
Before applying this non-representational epistemology
to specific examples a few general observations.
First, there is the widely acknowledged issue of how
representational epistemologies privilege the ontology
to which they subscribe. So while 'realists' in their
emphasis on the validity of their representations of
'external' reality, tend to downplay contextual considerations,
similarly 'constructivists' in their emphasis
on the validity of their representations of 'internal'
reality tend downplay material considerations. While
more 'constrained' approaches are commonly encountered,
in which 'realists' acknowledge a role for
contextual factors and 'constructivists', analogously, a
role for material factors, these still tend to share
common assumptions with the former 'unconstrained'
perspectives particularly consequential for
the deployment of science and its broader role in
policy and politics.
Primary among these assumptions is the idea that
knowledge is a cognitive representation held by
autonomous individuals directly communicable by
symbolic means, which gives rise to certain very explicit
ideas about the nature, generation and transmission
of knowledge. These are: firstly, that the representations
of which knowledge consists can be readily
categorised; secondly, that these may be mapped into
collectives of individuals and/or contexts (thenceforth
commonly regarded as repositories of these
categories); thirdly, that the transmission of knowledge
centres upon processes of information flow and
exchange; and fourthly it legitimises the Cartesian
view that our world involves a divide between a human
and a material world, rather than this division
reflecting how we conceive the world to be. Taking
these in turn, the categorisation, and related allocation,
of representations is witnessed by numerous
familiar distinctions such as between lay and expert
4 If Tanesini is right that 'linguistic assertion' is a key to the development
of theoretical knowledge then the discursive turn in
policy analysis may be a wrong turn, in that while helping underline
the importance of 'making sense together' (Hoppe,
1999) it might also be implicitly privileging theoretical over
other relevant, more practical, forms of knowledge (ie lay
knowledge or pragmatic considerations of institutional design).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 195
knowledge and, at a more profound level, of how
these are commonly mapped into further distinctions,
such as those between fact and value. The third idea
that the transmission of knowledge centres upon
information flow processes strongly conditions the
way in which knowledge related processes and procedures
are conceived and configured in numerous
problematical ways, illuminated below through a
discussion of public participation. The fourth point
has a number of quite profound implications. Conceiving
of knowledge in terms of engagement with
the world around us rather than as representations of
that world means that rather than the Cartesian view
of a human world detached from an 'external', nonhuman
world the world is rather conceived as something
we are integrally 'embedded' in. While this
raises many matters, such as new ways of conceiving
of environmental problems (Healy, 2003), for the
purposes of this discussion its importance resides in
the way it underlines how the relationship between
knowledge and power is far more intimate than representational
thinking can conceive of, a matter
examined in next section below.
While the issues these matters throw up are too numerous
to canvass comprehensively here they tend, in
brief, to downplay the potential for, and obscure the
means of achieving, constructive interaction between
different groups and impose unhelpful restrictions on
the contributions they might all make. This is clarified
by a brief examination of their implications for
public participation.
2.1. Public Participation and its Constraints
The observations above tend to suggest that knowledge
related processes and procedures should concentrate
on the retrieval of the representations held
by the requisite 'repositories' of interest (ie those
labelled 'lay', 'expert' etc), processes/procedures intended
to meld these together (with this - that is the
perceived tensions lay/expert, fact/value etc - an
enduring focus of concern), and on the transmission
of what eventuates from all this to those responsible
for policy by symbolic means. The resultant tendency
to regard public participation as largely a matter of
facilitating the transfer or flow of representational
information systematically constrains the resultant
procedures and mechanisms in a number of ways.
Firstly, lay understandings are commonly highly contextualised
and involve an engagement with the world
- both human and non-human - difficult for representational
understandings to grasp (see particularly
Irwin, 2001; ch. 4), and as a result tend to be systematically
marginalised. Secondly, representational understandings
obscure how engagement with lay peo-

196
ple might, rather than simply distilling their 'preferences'
or 'values', connect with everyday practices and
behaviours. So we might then be in a position to
effect sustainable development or improvements in
demand side energy efficiency, for example, by directly
engaging with matters of lifestyles, practices
and behaviours, rather than, as dominant 'discourses'
tend to more narrowly conceive of it, by way of
changes to technology and economic incentive structures.
This, however, requires far more careful attention to
institutional practices, such as matters of institutional
design, than witnessed by the current representationalist
propensity to emphasise 'bolt on' participatory
procedures and mechanisms designed to promote
public 'input' to conventional decision-making processes.
While processes of this nature can facilitate a
public contribution to decision-making (eg see Renn
et al, 1997 and Renn, 1998) far more substantial public
involvement is possible, but highly demanding.
Optimising public involvement requires a creative
interchange between the typically highly contexualised
insights of lay people and the decontextualised
insights of expertise 5 rather than simply facilitating
the 'input' of a distillation of lay views into existing
policy processes. Here I'll briefly indicate two ways in
which the non-representational emphasis on practices
suggests this might be facilitated, firstly by innovations
in the form of deliberative practices and secondly
by innovations in the contexts, that is where in
the political landscape, such practices occur.
Currently the most significant influence on thinking
about the form of public deliberation is the 'discourse
ethics' of Jürgen Habermas. However in practice (eg
see discussion of Renn et al, 1997 and Renn, 1998 in
Healy, 2003, 2004) this commonly reproduces the
problems discussed above . However both practice
(eg see Innes and Booher, 1999) and theory (eg see
Torgeson, 1999) suggest that a different form of
'performative' deliberation can more successful. Deliberation
of this form does not deny representational
rationality, but rather enables it to be held in creative
tension with other insights and ways of understanding
facilitating the production of collective insights transcending
conventional strictures. However this requires
that participants not only clarify the understandings
that they bring with them, but also the
assumptions and preconceptions these embody, for
all to understand or potentially contest and reshape,
facilitating the creation of new collective strategies,
options and ideas (Innes and Booher, 1999; Healy,
5
This is an established insight of relevant 'constructivist' studies
(see eg Irwin, 2001, 1995).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
2003).
Discussion of public participation commonly centres
on a fairly well established range of mechanisms and
processes designed to augment current decisionmaking
arrangements. However a wide range of
opinion (see eg Torgeson, 1999; Dryzek, 2000; Weale,
2001) points to the significance of deliberation across
the public sphere 6 . In all these cases improvements
in the deliberative capacity of the public sphere are
seen as an essential complement to more conventional
institutional innovations. While this begs the
question of how this might be achieved it again reinforces
the argument that representational notions act
to constrain the range of options entertained in policy
contexts.
3. Knowledge and Power
While representational thinking might conceive of the
representation of specific 'interests' in ways influencing
the exercise of power, power is here conceived in
Foucauldian terms as an effect spread across a broad
network of relations, rather than as something the
powerful exercise narrowly over others. In this view
knowledge and power are intimately related because
of how knowledge generating and deploying practices
configure and reconfigure networks of relations in
ways that enable and constrain both human actions
and interactions and human/non-human interactions.
The representational insistence upon a particular
ontology denies not only the particulars and dynamics
of content or context, excluded by that ontology, but
also the broader dynamics of knowledge famously
elaborated by Michel Foucault (Foucault 2002).
Rouse (1987, ch.7), elaborating Foucault, argues that
the practical success and apparent universal validity of
science result, not from the privileged access of science
to an enduring external material reality, but
rather from our success in extending to our macroworld
the local constraints of the laboratory. Rouse
conceives scientific knowledge in neither realist nor
constructivist terms but as rather a complex integration
of people, materials, technologies, theories and
skills. These, and all the other many attributes of
people and the material situations in which knowledge
is produced, are brought together in practices
(see particularly Rouse 1996a, ch.5). However, practices
are not understood as simply regularised pat-
6 It's important to point out however that little of this is inspired
by a non-representational epistemology of the form advocated
here. This epistemology by emphasising practices would, for
example, elide the rigid distinction between preference formation
as discussed by Dryzek (2000) and those practices concerned
with knowledge generation.

terns of human activity - but rather as situated, embodied,
dynamic, spatially and temporally extended
alignments of people, things and their many attributes
(such as skills, theories, interests, physical, chemical
and biological properties and so on). So practices
viewed in this way are implicitly socio-material, simultaneously
combining human agency and meaningful
configurations of the material world. These practices
matter because there is always something at stake in
them and conflicts exist over them – if this isn’t the
case then such knowledge tends to fade into the
background – and may even be forgotten.
Rouse (1987, 1996) argues powerfully that the efficacy
of scientific knowledge is underpinned not by
the authenticity of its representations but rather by
how we transform the world in ways that mimic the
conditions under which it was originally generated.
This imposition of scientific discipline upon our
macro-world structures and constrains the practical
choices available to us and thus implicitly encompasses
considerations of power. From the disciplining
of time and space, by way of universal quantification,
through to the ways we populate our world with
myriad novel substances, processes and organisms
our macro-world, as Beck (1992) has pessimistically
observed, comes increasingly to resemble the microworld
of the laboratory. Rouse, illuminating Beck's
concern, explains how this results in increasingly
complex technical constructions (eg industrial agriculture
or the nuclear fuel cycle) transplanted into simplified
and controlled external environments with a
constraint of 'natural buffering and self-regulation' as
a key consequence. The maintenance of both these
technical constructions and the simplified external
environments that result from them necessitate human
actions tied closely to their demands with these
'complex organised actions' having to be sustained
within narrow bounds. Error or non-compliance
with these demands can have catastrophic consequences
with nuclear power an exemplary example of
this constraint.
While the systemic effects Rouse describes remain
largely opaque to representative understandings, and
the institutions that rely upon them, they help to
explain many of the problems that arise from the
contemporary application of science and technology.
Rouse's analysis illuminates, for example, Beck’s
(1992) paradox that ever more stringent scientific
efforts at risk management act to compound and
proliferate risk rather than to lessen it. Risk is enhanced
by: the increased instability of simplified
environments and the technical constructions they
contain; from non-compliance with their need for
'complex organised actions'; and in the necessity for
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 197
'tight coupling' (Perrow 1984) between them. However,
while the status quo continues to deny the systemic
nature of these problems they not only persist
but with ever-greater consequence (helping explain
not only matters of global environmental change but
also ongoing, more localised problems such as BSE).
4. Knowledge, Power and Politics
While Rouse offers an illuminating Foucauldian
analysis of scientific knowledge he has far less to say
about the institutional and broader political ramifications
of his analysis. It is, however, notable that the
way contemporary institutions embody, reflect, condition,
and are conditioned by, scientific practices has
been a staple of social theory since at least the beginning
of the twentieth century. From Weber, through
Habermas to, most recently, Beck the coercive effects
of science and scientific rationality on culture and
politics have figured strongly in the sociological
imagination, which has, however, been less forthcoming
in providing an explanation of this state of affairs.
Beck, for example, describes how the "rules of causality,
guilt and liability" (Beck 1995a, 2) prevailing at the
institutional level result in “unaccountable nonliability”
(Beck 1995b, 62), because of an emphasis on
individual causation inappropriate for the complex,
multi-causal nature of modern problems. These rules
result from “relations of definition” (Beck 1995b)
reflecting the way technical norms are embedded in
policy, and thence into legislation and institutions. So
that for example many current regulatory systems
embody principles of liability and attribution applicable
to causally identifiable risks emanating from unitary
sources, inappropriate for contemporary conditions
in which hazards are more characteristically
diffuse, pervasive and of indeterminate origin.
However, while Beck enjoins us to be circumspect in
the use of science his explanations as to why this
should be so lack depth because of the way he is
beholden to representational notions of knowledge.
While the risk society revolves around the tension
between social and natural domains, and Beck clearly
discerns the necessity to reconcile them, his explanations
as to how this might be achieved lack substance
(for a recent attempt to clarify these matters see: Beck
1999, 134). Wynne (1996), for example, discusses
how this leads to confusion and asymmetry in his
treatment of lay and expert knowledge.
These dynamics are however illuminated if we extend
the implications of the non-representational epistemology
examined here into the institutional and
broader sphere. By doing this we can then interpret

198
matters such as the "relations of definition", described
by Beck, in terms of the reflection of scientific
practices, understood as implicitly socio-material
and embodying relations of power, in institutional
and/or political practices (note this essentially eliminates
the idea of science and policy/politics as
autonomous domains replacing it with the notion that
they are rather intimately interdependent). Foucault
delivers a framework better able to explain the embedded,
systemic nature of these dynamics. Foucault’s
notion of 'Governmentality' (Foucault 2002)
describes the ensemble of institutions, procedures,
tactics, knowledges, technologies and calculations
deployed by modern states in order to regulate their
populations and territories. Foucault describes this as
being concerned with the "right disposition of things"
(Foucault 2002, 208) resonating with the sociomaterial
emphasis of Rouse's analysis.
'Governmentality', thus embodies scientific knowledge
and rationality as key elements of politics, interpreted
as an arena centring around complex, dynamic
relations of power, that engage people and their material
surroundings. This analysis illuminates the
long-term concern of social theory with science and
scientific rationality in ways representational understandings
cannot. It helps explain how scientific
rationality pervades the very structures and processes
of government and decision-making, in addition to
being regarded as the exemplary source of objective
knowledge (see figure 1). And it is these insights that
can help explain the concerns raised by Weber,
Habermas and Beck among others. Science is both
deeply embroiled in policy and politics and a practice
that brings humans and the material and non-human
world together in many intimate and complex ways.
Current approaches to sustainability that maintain a
rigid distinction between science and politics risk
both compounding current problems and emasculating
the solutions they propose.
5. So what of Sustainability ?
The litmus test, of course, is whether the analysis
offered here generates insights of practical utility.
This analysis suggests a number of things. It indicates
that knowledge making and using practices are
sites at which the dynamics of science and its instantiation
in institutions and broader politics may be
engaged and, further, that constructive engagement
will likely entail dynamic, situated interaction with
practices and matters of process. The example below
illuminates what this means for practical contexts and
the potential benefits of adopting a nonrepresentational
epistemology of the form outlined
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
here.
5.1. The Preparation of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
was established in 1988 as a review body to assess the
available information on potential climate change
impacts and mitigation and adaptation options. From
the beginning, bearing out the special nature of the
climate change challenge, the IPCC was marked by
the way it explicitly combines scientific and political
review. While the individual chapters of IPCC assessment
reports are expert written, government
nominees decide on the structure and scope of the
reports, review drafts, approve final reports and, in
particular, negotiate the Summary for Policy Makers.
The IPCC assessment reports are regarded as an
essential element of the intergovernmental response
to climate change providing the basis of the scientific
input into the Framework Convention on Climate
Change negotiations. The IPCC's processes and
practices are thus a significant example of a sophisticated
approach to the generation of policy-relevant
knowledge that might readily be regarded as “dynamic,
situated interaction with practices and matters
of process” and whose evolution should provide
salutatory lessons for the development of such processes
more generally. This section briefly examines
some of the changes and innovations wrought in
these processes during the preparation of the IPCC's
Third Assessment Report (TAR) through the lens of
the epistemological arguments presented here.
Depledge (2002, 2) reports that for the TAR
"[l]earning from experience, the IPCC made several
changes to the procedures followed in the Second
Assessment Report". These included: a revision of
the mandates of the Working Groups 7 (reverting
back to ones similar to those used for the First Assessment
Report); "the appointment of review editors
to supervise the incorporation of expert/government
comments into chapter drafts"; a "decision to structure
the synthesis report around policy relevant questions",
and "to focus more on regional dimensions of
climate change", so reinforcing its policy relevance
(Depledge 2002, 2). The TAR also used new emission
scenarios which diverged from past practice by
specifying that all should be deemed equally valid,
thereby challenging the notion that there might be an
optimum development path. Depledge (2) notes that
this was "irritating to 'users' in both governments and
7 Working Group (WG) 1 addresses climate science; WG II the
potential impacts of climate change, vulnerability and adaptation;
while WG III examines mitigation options and their implications.

the scientific community who wanted a 'best guess'
on which to base climate forecasts and economic
analysis".
However while these matters very much witness a
very "situated interaction with practices and matters
of process" it is perhaps the four “guidance papers”
that attempted to integrate four ‘cross-cutting issues’:
“development, sustainability and equity”; "uncertainty";
"costing methodologies" and "decision analysis
frameworks", into the work of all three WG’s
(Depledge 2002, 2) which best illustrate the dynamic
nature of these interventions. Depledge reports (2)
that the results of this attempt at integration were
mixed with the paper on “development, sustainability
and equity” in particular reported to have “..triggered
considerable controversy, with some authors objecting
that the analysis of such concepts lacked scientific
precision and involved value judgments”. Now this is
what we would expect from those focused by a representational
epistemology and the 'objectivist' conceptions
to which it gives rise and because, as noted
above, the significance of knowledge practices rests in
the stakes they are perceived to hold and in the conflicts
that surround them. What is particularly telling
about this matter is that Depledge (8) discusses "how
the fourth assessment report will deal with crosscutting
issues such as uncertainty, sustainable development
and equity concerns" by way of either a further
report or the establishment of a ‘process’ to deal
with these matters.
The IPCC's emphasis on managing the knowledge it
produces by way of the processes and practices involved
in it’s production implicitly reflects the nonrepresentational
epistemology advanced in this paper,
which might thus usefully inform further IPCC endeavors
in this regard. This argument is underscored
by an examination of the potential consequences of
the better integration of "uncertainty, sustainable
development and equity concerns" into the IPCC's
processes. Many, particularly European, political
leaders have acknowledged convergence to an equal
global per capita emissions entitlement as a viable
long term trajectory for the climate change regime.
However this 'contraction and convergence' argument
is unlikely to become feasible politically while
the policy-relevant knowledge upon which its implementation
would rest is incapable of envisaging the
possibility for it. In this regard then representational
epistemology provides a significant impediment to
potentially constructive change, the consideration of
which would be facilitated by consideration of a nonrepresentational
epistemology of the form outlined
here.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 199
6. Concluding Discussion
While the pervasiveness of representational thinking
is sustained by both 'common sense' and the western
intellectual tradition it significantly impedes the
achievement of sustainability. The complexity of
achieving sustainability and, particularly, the necessity
to substantively engage with the world-shaping capacity
of our species, underlines an imperative to better
understand our engagement with the world and its
implications. In particular the production of effective
policy continues to be undermined by our poor grasp
of the way the understandings we generate have purchase
in the world. While representational thinking
suggests that this purchase is bought by way of a
simple instrumental interaction across a divide between
us and a world external to us the nonrepresentational
epistemology outlined here rather
suggests that this a matter of intimate interdependencies
between our understandings and the form the
world takes. Because these understandings are generated,
and mediated, by practices, this epistemology
proposes that these - that is their form, nature and
the contexts in which they operate - should be fundamental
to any analysis of knowledge and its role in
policy and broader politics.
This epistemology does not deny the importance of
representations but rather emphasises the practices
that give rise to them and that might arise from them.
Further the fundamentally social (and at the same
time material) character of these practices stresses
that these are 'collective' accomplishments, in contradistinction
to the 'individualist' orientation of representationalist
thinking with its emphasis on representations
in individual minds. In this view then the
primary criteria of interest become those attaching to
the processes, procedures and contexts in which
knowledge is produced and deployed - such as those
of the form, structure and quality of these processes,
procedures and contexts - rather than criteria attaching
to the sources and content of knowledge, conceived
as representations in individual minds, emphasised
by representational thinking.
The 'legitimation project' (see 'Introduction' above)
described by Rouse involves a description of the
hegemony of representative notions of knowledge in
terms of ‘epistemic sovereignty’ (Rouse 1996a, 30;
1996b). This notion secures the production and application
of knowledge and grants, notably scientific,
perspectives unique access to an enduring, underlying
reality and is taken, therefore, to confer universal
standing to scientific knowledge and to legitimate it as
a primary determinant of politics. Such a view, for
example, underpins the claim that the concept of
“development, sustainability and equity” (see account

200
of the IPCC TAR above) lacks scientific precision
and involves value judgments. Similarly it acts to
structure public participation in ways that diminish
community contributions and to delimit a creative
interchange of views, knowledge and understandings.
‘Epistemic sovereignty’ thus acts to constrain the
perspectives encountered in decision-making and
condition which knowledge and associated relations
of power are put into effect. However the access of
scientific knowledge to ‘reality’ is qualified and the
reality that endures is very much a matter of human
choice.
Informed choice and consent thus require processes
and procedures ensuring ‘epistemological pluralism’,
in which all relevant knowledge, perspectives and
viewpoints are employed. Whereas ‘epistemic sovereignty’
eliminates the considerations of due process
embodied by other human activities ‘epistemological
pluralism’ reinstates them by a focus on practices and
their manifestation in institutions and broader politics.
It is only under these conditions that the availability
of knowledge and the means of deploying it
will become more open-ended and plural than they
are now. A politics of knowledge along these lines
would also facilitate political pluralism more broadly -
by contesting sovereign perspectives, illuminating
their shortcomings and by offering alternatives.
Resolving the challenges presented by matters of
global environmental change requires as a necessary,
but not sufficient, condition 'epistemological pluralism'
of the form described here. The facilitation of a
climate change regime involving convergence to an
equal per capita emissions entitlement or similar
developments will require not only a pluralist politics
but also a pluralist knowledge politics to inform it.
Only under these conditions, in which the policy
relevant knowledge informing decision-making fully
integrates matters such as “development, sustainability
and equity”, will such decisions be contemplated.
While conventional representational epistemology
acts as a brake on such developments they are facilitated
by the non-representational epistemology outlined
here.
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INSTITUTIONAL POLITICS in which
Knowledge Conditions Institutional Practice
EG Beck's "Relations of Definition",
Foucault’s “Governmentality”
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 201
Figure 1: Knowledge and its Politics
DYNAMICS OF POWER: -
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE Grounded
by Socio-Material Practices.
Universality achieved via the Spatial and
Temporal extension of Scientific Norms
& Standards to the Broader World
Co-Dependencies Mediated and
Conditioned by Knowledge Relations
CONVENTIONAL POLITICS
IMPLICATIONS: Traditional unitary conceptions of knowledge condition unitary institutional and political responses.
However the complexity and range of potential responses to contemporary global environmental problems
requires pluralist political responses. A necessary, but not sufficient, pre-condition for these is a pluralist knowledge
politics (‘epistemological pluralism’ - see section 6)

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 202-213.
Potentials and Limits for Policy Change Through Governmental Self-
Regulation – The Case of Environmental Policy Integration
By Klaus Jacob and Axel Volkery ∗
1 Introduction
The establishment of modern environmental policy in
all western industrialised countries in the last thirty
years can be considered a remarkable success concerning
the speed and range of policy development.
However, the environmental situation is still deteriorating
in many areas (EEA, 2003; OECD, 2001).
Above all, this record is due to two reasons: The first
reason concerns the overall poor implementation of
environmental policy. The second reason is related to
the relatively unchanged continuity of environmental
harmful policies of other departments such as energy,
transport, agriculture or economic affairs.
In order to overcome this dilemma, the need to integrate
environmental concerns into all other areas of
public policy has been discussed since the 1970s.
Without doubt, some kind of progress has been
made. By the late 1990, the Principle of Environmental
Integration (EPI) has become very topical,
foremost in the European Union, where it is a core
political objective by now. But so far, the practical
application of EPI has not yielded the desired results.
The constitutional obligations and political commitments
have shown to be of less value in day-to-day
politics. An adequate consideration of EPI in all
stages of public decision-making and management is
rarely to be observed at the international and national
level.
The reasons for this lay in the routines and rules of
bureaucratic organisation and decision-making. The
organisation of Government follows mainly the
maxim of boosting efficiency by the demarcation of
competencies and bondage to rules. 1 Agencies serve
a narrow set of operational tasks and accumulate
specific knowledge to govern their particular policy
field. Many agencies have build up close networks
with their target groups and are highly path dependent
regarding their goals and instruments (regulative
∗ Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Contact: jacob@zedat.fuberlin.de,
volkery@zedat.fu-berlin.de.
1 This can be traced back to the works of Max Weber on the
rationales of efficient bureaucratic organisation (Weber,
1922/1985).
capture). Policy-makers are also not equally well informed
as their target groups about specific characteristics
of regulation effects and are thus dependent
on them (adverse selection). EPI contradicts this way
of sector-policy-making. Therefore, it faces strong
political and institutional barriers. The organisation of
government seems to allow easily for pursuing contradictory
policy goals, but seems not well suited to
carry out the necessary policy shifts that EPI implies
(OECD, 2002a).
What makes EPI worth for studying is that it allows
for an in-depth investigation of the overall potentials
and restrictions of reforming public administration in
a cross-departmental perspective. It also allows for an
analysis of the capability of new forms of governance
patterns that are currently widely discussed within
political science. Especially with regard to the aspects
of self-steering, organisational learning and sharing
responsibilities, these approaches depart from the
traditional bureaucratic model. Whereas the environmental
policy of the 1970s and 1980s mainly sought
to formulate strict and binding norms, that left not
much room for flexible manoeuvre by the target
groups (horizontal integration), a number of industrialised
countries witnessed the upcoming of new,
more decentralised approaches in the 1990s that try
to set binding goals, but leave more discretion for the
deployment of these objectives. Examples are national
Sustainability Strategies, sectoral Integration
Strategies, Green Budgeting or Impact Assessments.
The rationale behind that is to shift the burden of
responsibility and thus to stimulate learning processes
in the relevant departments.
This paper develops first a taxonomy of the different
instruments that have been developed to improve the
integration of environmental concerns in the routines
of decision making in other policy fields. We are
secondly particularly concerned with the question, in
how far these instruments are able to foster learning
in the targeted policy sectors and in how far learning
is a sufficient condition for the success in EPI. We
start with a rather narrow definition of EPI, focusing
upon institutions to shape the process rather than the
output of policy making. On this basis, we develop a
taxonomy of measures to improve decision making.
In the following, we briefly discuss the identified
measures, describing their main features and shortcomings,
their first introduction and if a diffusion to

other countries has happened or can be expected.
Based on evaluation studies in different countries and
sectors we identify a number of factors that influence
the success of EPI. Concluding, we analyse in how
far the described measures match the identified conditions.
2 Definitions of EPI
Most definitions of policy integration refer to a continuum
regarding either the degree of integration or
coherence of policy outcomes (objectives or practices)
between different domains of policy making or the
process of integrating policies. A general definition for
integrated policies focusing on policy outcomes is
given by Underdahl: “A policy is integrated when the
consequences for that policy are recognized as decision
premises, aggregated into an overall evaluation
and incorporated at all policy levels and into all government
agencies involved in its execution” (in:
Weale and Williams 1992, 46). That is, as Lafferty
(2001) has pointed out, an attribute of any good governmental
practice, not an specific feature of good
environmental governance. While this definition
focuses on the minimisation of contradictions between
different policies, another focus can be set on
the integration of different instruments to tackle a
specific problem (s.a. Liberatore 1997). This can be
understood as coherence of policies.
The OECD (1996) has developed a frequently quoted
scale for different levels of policy co-ordination with
“independent decision making” as one corner mark
and integrated policy as the other. For an empirical
investigation of the co-operation between R&D policy
and environmental policy, Conrad (2000) has
developed a similar continuum. These typologies mix
actors like departments or central bodies, institutions
like systems of arbitration or channels for communication
and preferences like hidden differences or
seeking for consensus. By this, the sequence of the
different levels is arguable, depending on which of
the elements are to be placed first. However, this
work provides insights on the wide range of possibilities
for governmental practices.
Focusing upon the environmental dimension, Jordan
and Lenschow define policies as environmentally
integrated “when policy makers in ‘non’environmental
sectors recognise the environmental
repercussions of their decisions and adjust them by
appropriate amounts when they undermine sustainable
development” (Jordan and Lenschow, 2000,
111). Another possibility is to analyse the process of
policy integration: The European Environmental
Agency (EEA) understands EPI as a process of ad-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 203
justing the focus of environmental policy away from
environmental problems themselves to their causes
and from ‘end-of-pipe’ ministries to ‘driving force’
sector ministries’ (EEA, quoted by Jordan and Lenschow,
2000, 111).
Both the scope and the instruments for policy integration
vary fundamentally according to the definition
that is applied. If policy integration is understood as
integrating environmental needs in policy outputs of
non-environmental sectors, any policy instrument can
be conceived to bring forward the case of EPI. Following
this focus, EPI is frequently understood as an
internalisation of the environmental effects of a sector
(e.g. Hey, 1998, 2002). To evaluate the progress of
this output oriented view, the main focus is on policy
outcomes and impacts. From this perspective, EPI
implies a substantial policy change in the different
domains of government.
The second perspective on the process of EPI focuses
on strategies and instruments to change government
routines. It is interested in the potentials and
limits of self-regulation of government to optimise the
process of decision making. The evaluation of the
process starts with the question which strategies and
instruments are adopted to modify the process of
policy formulation and implementation in sectors
other than the environment? Of course, changes in
the decision making process are meant to change
policies as well, but this perspective on the policy
process may reveal opportunities and barriers for a
“toolbox” of EPI.
In this paper we zoom into the process perspective of
EPI. We identify and categorise typical instruments–
then describe their potentials and limits, based on a
comprehensive survey of the evaluation literature on
EPI. By this we not only aim at identifying the merits
and shortcomings of the different measures, but
furthermore at estimating the possibilities for a crosscountry
adoption.
3 A Toolbox for EPI
A review of the efforts to establish and implement
EPI in the western industrialised countries reveals a
considerable number of strategies and instruments
(see e.g. OECD, 2002a, 2002b; Lenschow, 2002;
Hertin and Berkhout, 2002; Lafferty and Meadowcraft,
2000). In Germany, for example, administrative
measures were developed such as a green cabinet,
that was supported by a inter-departmental working
group of high ranking civil servants (established in
1971), or a obligation for each ministry to consult the
then responsible ministry of the interior in the case of

204
legislative proposals are likely to affect the environment
(introduced in 1975). Also, preparations were
undertaken to develop a systematic assessment of
bills and programmes regarding their environmental
effects. But this project was stopped due to lack of
personnel available for its realisation (Müller, 2002).
These attempts for an integrated policy design lost
their relevance when the momentum of the reform
period of the early environmental policy died away in
consequence of the oil price shocks and the worldwide
economic downturn. Similar observations can
be made for most of the other industrialised countries
(Jänicke et al., 2002). In the late 1980s and the beginning
of the 1990s, the integration approach was
rediscovered and recalled to life with several
i nnovations in several European countries, as well as
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Table 1: A Toolbox of Measures for Environmental Policy Integration
in several European countries, as well as on the level
of European policy-making (OECD, 2002a; Liefferink
and Andersen, 1997).
The following table gives an overview on typical
measures that have been adopted in the recent past.
We distinguish these measures with regard to their
scope (encompassing strategies vs. instruments) and
their domain of application (centralised vs. decentralised).
A strategy comprises ideally objectives, action
plans (including the allocation of resources), mechanisms
for monitoring and obligations for reporting.
Instruments are means or devices to implement policies.
Political Strategies Administrative Instruments
CENTRALISED MECHANISMS National Planning for Environment
/ Sustainability Strategies
DECENTRALISED
MECHANISMS
Source: own compilation
Constitutional Provisions for EPI
New institutional bodies for EPI
In the following a short description of each of the
different measures for EPI will be given, describing
their main features, their first time of application,
their target groups and related requirements, but also
the experiences that have been gathered in practice
Extension of the competencies of the Environmental
Ministry
• Consultations procedures
• Veto power
• Initiative rights
Independent institutions for advising and
evaluation
Amalgamation of departments
Green Budgeting
Consultative procedures
• Green Cabinet
• Interdepartmental working groups
Reporting obligations to new institutions
Strategic Environmental Assessment
Sectoral Strategies Environmental departments in the different
sectors / Environmental Correspondents
Sectoral Conferences
Appraisal of policy initiatives

4 Exploring the Toolbox
4.1. CENTRALISED MECHANISMS: POLITICAL
STRATEGIES
4.1.1 National Environmental Policy Plans /
Sustainability Strategies
National Environmental Planning comprises the
development of a comprehensive strategy concept,
that defines priorities and objectives of environmental
policy in a long-time perspective, names relevant
target groups and related measures and proposes
indictors for monitoring and evaluation. Such plans
are often drawn up with wide societal participation. 2
Furthermore, they are often integrated in an overall
reform of the public sector, are paralleled by an ecological
tax reform and accompanied by strong orientation
towards technology- and research funding as
also ecologically motivated investment programs
(SRU, 2000; Dalal-Clayton, 1996). The first plans
were introduced in the Netherlands, Canada, UK,
Denmark, Sweden and Norway towards the End of
the 1980s. In the 1990s, a fast diffusion of the instrument
could be observed (Tews et al., 2002). 3 At
present, about 80% of all industrialised countries
have adopted different plans or strategies, that however
vary considerably concerning their strategic
approaches. The requirement of the Agenda 21 to
develop such Plans or Strategies has proved as a
catalyst (Jänicke and Jörgens, 2000).
Environmental Planning furthers the case of EPI in
several ways. Usually, the role of the MoE is
strengthened in the process of the plan development.
The attention is shifted from contested instruments
to problems and their need for adequate solutions. In
the best case, the result is the internalisation of problem
responsibility within the relevant sector and its
target groups which might trigger learning processes
in a long-term perspective. But most of the adopted
plans are characterised by some serious shortcomings
so far: The objectives are often vaguely formulated
only and they frequently do not impose binding im-
2 As the German Advisory Council on the Environment has
pointed out, they are especially characterised by a consensus of
opinion on the objectives which are derived from the principle
of sustainability, by an integration and participation approach
and by the obligation to report on improvements and shortcoming
regarding the implementation of objectives (SRU,
2000).
3 The most prominent example is the National Environmental
Policy Plan of the Netherlands (NEPP). This plan not only
embodies the target-oriented policy approach best, containing
over 200 quantitative objectives, but also the strict orientation
of environmental policy towards its target groups.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 205
plementation requirements. The plans are often restricted
to conventional environmental objectives and
tend to ignore unsolved, persistent problems. Also
the institutionalisation of the whole planning process
is, with a few exceptions, weak and objectives are not
taken sufficiently into account by decision-makers in
other relevant departments (SRU, 2000; Jänicke and
Jörgens, 2000).
National Sustainable Development Strategies have to
be distinguished from Environmental Planning. They
usually have a much broader focus on economic,
social and environmental policy, but also education
and research policy or other policy areas. In this
respect they only contain few, highly aggregated environmental
objectives and indicators. EPI is not the
central aim, rather the deployment of a multidimensional
set of policy objectives. From the late
1990s, Sustainable Development Strategies were
adopted world-wide Jänicke and Jörgens, 2000). They
are either newly adopted as in the German case or
they replace or complement existing national environmental
policy plans such as in the Netherlands or
Austria. 4
4.1.2 Constitutional Provisions for EPI
Many countries adopted constitutional provisions to
protect the environment. One of the most clearest
formulated and strictest obligations is to be found in
the treaties of the European Union. While the environment
was not mentioned in the founding treaty of
Rome, in all of the more recent treaties requirements
of the environment were incorporated. For the first
time, the Single European Act (SEA) of 1987 established
in its article 130 r(2) the principle, that ‘environmental
protection requirements shall be a component
of the community’s other policies’. In 1993, the
Maastricht Treaty amended the article 2 of the Treaty
of Rome by replacing the objective of ‘continuous
expansion’ with the objective of sustainable and noninflationary
growth respecting the environment’.
Furthermore the integration principle was strengthened
by making it imperative (environmental requirements
must be integrated into definition and
implementation of other policies) (Wilkinson, 1998,
p. 114 f.). For the time being this process of
institutionalising the EPI principle was continued
with Article 6 of the Amsterdam Treaty, that makes
EPI a core principle of the Union.
4 The relationship between the more sectoral approach environmental
planning approach and the overall arching approach of
the Sustainable Development Strategies is however far from
being cleared yet: a complementary relationship as also a competitive
relationship is possible. Most countries by now have
both a plan and a strategy. How this dualism affects policymaking
in practice remains a challenge for further research.

206
core principle of the Union.
4.2 CENTRALISED MECHANISMS:
ADMINISTRATIVE INSTRUMENTS
4.2.1 Extension of the Competences of
the MoEs
Successful EPI is a question of power: The relative
strength of the involved actors has been identified as
a crucial variable to explain substantial policy change
in environmental relevant policy sectors. Therefore,
the expansion of the competences of MoEs has been
proposed as a veritable tool by scholars of Policy
Integration. It is, however, difficult to define precise
criteria for the strengths of MoEs in relation to other
departments. 5 So far, a wide range of tools has been
discussed to extent the competences of the MoEs.
The most extensive institution is probably the right
for the MoE to veto legislative proposals by other
departments. To our knowledge, such a formal vetopower-right
has not been institutionalised in any
country. This is no wonder given the frequent weak
status of the MoE in the hierarchy of the government.
But it is also questionable, whether such an instrument
would be of practicable advantage to the MoE.
A veto is a powerful instrument that can be used only
in cases of high importance. However, as many environmentally
contended policy proposals are often
backed fully by most of the other cabinet members,
the upholding of a veto might lead to political isolation
of the minister of environment or to similar
obstruction behaviour by other cabinet members. 6
Therefore it is not likely, that a veto, once institutionalised,
will be actually enforced. In Germany, a veto
power is given to the ministers of finance and justice,
but it has not been enforced yet. However, such a
power might unfold effects before it is actually deployed.
To sum up, is seems very unlikely, that such
an instrument will diffuse widely after adoption by a
pioneering country, because it implies too farreaching
changes in the distribution of power among
5 Liberatore (1997) stresses this point in her study on the DG
Environment of the European Commission: Its staff and
budget is neglectable compared to other DGs, but its regulatory
output has been and still is of considerable importance
for other DGs .
6 This obersavation mas made by Pehle in his comprehensive study
on the German Ministry for the Environment (Pehle, 198). He
conclueded, that at least in the political system of Germany,
the theoretical advantages of a veto right of the Ministry of
Environment are practically counteracted by the dominant
role of the chancellor. The chancellor is able to overrule a veto
in any case, and is able to dismiss a minister. Politically it
would not be wise to vote against the position of the chancellor.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
the different departments.
Another, however weaker, possibility to involve the
MoE in the legislation process of other departments
is to oblige the latter to consult the MoE in the case
of legislative proposals with likely environmental
impacts. One might rightfully argue, that this is a
standard procedure of all political decision-making
within cabinet. But evidence shows that consultation
starts at a late stage of decision making, when considerable
policy changes are out of reach (OECD,
2002a). In order to overcome the shortcomings of
the traditional consulting procedures, the right for the
MoE to start initiatives in other departmental areas of
responsibility has been brought forward to the debate
(Müller, 2002; Jänicke et al., 2002). Such a provision
might improve the power of the MoE in two ways.
First of all, the MoE gains greater influence on the
overall agenda of the government. But it also obtains
a more offensive role in relation to the other departments:
The responsible department has to prove the
possibility of the proposal and has to justify a withdrawal
with good reasons. The barrier for withdrawal
can be increased, if the MoE builds up winning coalitions
in the run-up of the decision-process.
The amalgamation of departments is another way to
enhance the relative power of the MoE. An example
for a useful merger in terms of policy integration has
been the Danish joint energy- and environmental
ministry. But this merger has been revoked by the
new middle-right government recently. In the UK,
the merging of the departments of transport and of
the environment by the Labour government and the
selection of the vice prime minister John Prescott as
head of this department has also been interpreted as
an improvement in EPI (Jordan, 2002).
Liberatore (1997) points out, that integration understood
as a two way relationship, in general could
imply a dilution as well, if the two departments are of
different size or power. That is particularly true for
the amalgamation of ministries. The German case
proves again ideal for illustration: Until 1986 the
departmental responsibilities for the environment
were distributed among 8 different ministries. The
responsibility for nature protection was located in the
ministry of agriculture, which was seen as the most
important barrier for a more ambitious nature protection.
Conflicts between the different departments had
to be carried out inside the ministry, and the possibility
to resolve conflicts on the cabinet level was missing
(Pehle, 1998). A diffusion of a special design of
ministries to other countries is not very likely, because
it would imply again a shift in the distribution
of power. The design of ministries is likely to be the

esult of a political bargaining on national level rather
than driven by a certain functionality.
4.2.2 Consultative procedures
Apart from formal procedures to include the MoE
into the decision making process, there have been
many efforts to institutionalise joint committees of
environmental departments and other policy sectors.
These committees have been introduced both on the
cabinet level (“green cabinets”) as well as on the
departmental level (“interdepartmental working
groups”).
In the 1980s, there has been a series of joint European
councils of the transport and environment
council. This instrument has been taken up again by
the British presidency in 1997 despite the rather disappointing
results of the earlier series. Hey (1998)
concludes, that these joint meetings generate considerable
organisational efforts, but despite of symbolic
declarations, substantial efforts for an improved EPI
could not be observed.
Several European countries introduced so called
“Green cabinets”, mainly on the level of secretary of
states. In Germany such a committee was introduced
as early as 1971 (Jänicke et al., 2002), but it was dissolved
soon. The red-green coalition tied on this
tradition. A Green Cabinet was constituted again in
2000, mainly to prepare the national sustainability
strategy. In the UK, such a committee was introduced
in 1990, being chaired by the deputy prime minister
(Jordan and Lenschow, 2000). Norway introduced a
State Secretary Committee for Environmental Issues
in 1989 (Sverdrup, 1998). Frequently, these cabinet
committees are supported by working groups of high
ranking civil servants. There is good reason to assume,
that such committees can be expected to be
standard governmental procedures. Apart from
agenda setting, it is however unlikely, that these consulting
mechanisms prove to be a vehicle for a sufficient
change of policy goals and objectives in other
departments. Consultation is likely to improve the
efficiency of implementation, but such a policy
change has to be decided upon on a higher level of
policy making.
4.2.3 Strategic Environmental Assessment
The basic idea for a strategic environmental impact
assessment (SEIA) on the European level was developed
back in the late 1970s by a small network of
experts (Hey, 1998). A SEIA is a procedural instrument
for the evaluation of all stages of the decisionmaking-cycle,
thereby starting from the formulation
of policies (definition of strategic guidelines and
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 207
objectives) via planning (assignment of resources) and
ending with the development of programmes (set of
projects). This is based on the assumption that the set
of alternatives predetermined on the respective higher
level of decision making, that are, however, not at
disposition. The practical execution ranges from
simple checklists to an elaborated modelling of the
impacts. From the mid 1980s there have been several
attempts of the Commission to implement a SEIA. In
1989 a consultation process with national EIA experts
was started which led to an official proposal for
a directive in 1996 which came into force in 1999.
The directive requests the competent authorities to
elaborate an environmental statement and to perform
consultations with the environmental authorities and
the general public.
An environmental Assessment (EA) of legislative
proposals has been introduced for the first time in
the USA in 1970, but it is seldom applied. Moreover,
the underlying act lacks even substantial and operational
goals (Andrews, 1997). Canada introduced an
environmental assessment review process (EARP)
back in 1973, that was aimed to assess legislative
proposals regarding their environmental impacts. But
this guideline was only applied to a few policies. In
1990 the procedure was reformed including a formal
provision of EA for the first time. That was laid
down in the so called Blue Book from 1993, which is
the official guide to the assessment process (Marsden,
1998, p. 246). Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland,
Norway and the European Union itself have enacted
requirements for legislative EA. An obligatory EA
can also be found in Hong-Kong. The current state
of institutionalisation varies considerably: provisions
for SEA are partially given by legislation (e.g. USA),
by administrative orders (e.g. CDN, DK) or advisory
guidelines (e.g. UK). Countries differ regarding the
form and scope of public participation in SEA: The
involvement of the general public is foreseen in DK
and NL, while in the UK and CDN the availability of
the assessment results is restricted to the cabinet. A
further spread of this policy innovation is likely because
of the adoption of the related European directive
in 1999, that requires the Member States to implement
a SEA.
Although there are considerable differences in the
implementation of SEIA, it is most often applied
across the boundaries of a department or ministry.
Therefore we assign it to the centralised instruments.
The counterpart are appraisal tools that are applied
inside the department only, without obligations for
publishing the results and without a need for consulting
other departments or the general public.

208
4.2.4 Green Budgeting
The governments budget reflects the governments
priorities beyond declarations regarding their policy
objectives. Therefore, an in-depth evaluation has the
potential of revealing government spending that is
contradictory to environmental objectives.
Norway pioneered this policy instrument and introduced
it for the first time in 1988 by adding an environmental
profile to the state budget proposal. This
form of Green budgeting was further elaborated in
1992 and 1996 by developing more detailed categories
for spending with environmental effects. Other
countries that implemented or consider such measures
are Canada and the Netherlands (OECD,
2002b). The dispute on budget was the core issue to
integrate environmental objectives into the European
Regional and Cohesion funds that can be considered
as cases of relatively successful EPI (Lenschow 1997,
2002; Wilkinson, 1998). Here, EPI was legitimised
and supported by the reformed constitutional law of
the EU which demands a consideration of the environment
within the spending procedures. It is, however,
not linked to the application of government
routines in favour of EPI.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
4.3. DECENTRALISED MECHANISMS: POLITICAL
STRATEGIES
The instruments described above have mostly failed
in greening governmental policies. In the 1990s several
countries witnessed a shift in the overall approach
to EPI, which can be described as a shift from
horizontal Integration measures towards vertical
Integration measures, that move the burden of activity
to the single departments (OECD, 2002a; Lafferty,
2001).
In the case of horizontal EPI it is mainly up to the
MoE to “green” the other departments. That requires
a sufficient capacity to interfere in the nonenvironmental
domains. The limits of this more traditional
approach towards EPI have been shown in the
analysis above. A vertical strategy requires a central
body as for example the parliament or the cabinet to
oblige the sectors to develop sectoral strategies and
action plans, but also to monitor and report the progress
to a competent authority. In case of vertical
EPI, the role of the MoE changes: Instead of imposing
measures to the other departments, its main task
is to facilitate the development of sectoral strategies,
e.g. by providing advice and indicators.
Figure 1: Mechanisms of Horizontal and Vertical Environmental Policy Integration
Source: Jänicke, 2000

4.3.1 Decentralized Sectoral Strategies
Sectoral Strategies prove to be the most far-reaching
and demanding decentralised mechanism. In the
1990s, several countries introduced this approach. In
Canada the “Guide to Green Government” was
published in 1995, that committed a large number of
ministries and agencies to develop a report on their
environmental policy, to develop sectoral strategies
until 1997 and to update this strategies in a three
years term. For a review of the strategies, the Commissioner
of the Environment and Sustainable Development
was established as a part of the General
Accounting Office (SRU, 2000). In Denmark several
ministries developed by own initiative or by request
strategies to implement a sustainable development in
their respective domain following the Brundtland
Report of 1987. That was pioneered by the ministry
of agriculture and soon followed by the energy ministry
and the transport ministry. Since then, Denmark
has developed many sectoral action plans rather than
an all-embracing National Plan as e.g. the Netherlands
(Andersen, 1997).
However, the greatest efforts to promote sectoral
strategies have been made at the European Level
(Jordan, 2002). Here, the disappointing results of the
5th Environmental Action Programme (5EAP), that
enclosed the integration principle as its fundamental
objective by defining priority sectors and major environmental
problems, served as a starting point for the
reconsideration of the existing EPI-mechanisms. An
evaluation of these measures concluded, that the
impact on the practical policy-making procedures of
other Directorate-Generals (DG) had been modest.
Any progress was ascribed to external factors (e.g.
environmentalists action) rather than the integration
measures (Wilkinson 1998, p. 122). Based on a Swedish
initiative, a reform of the integration project was
agreed upon at the 1997 Luxemburg summit. To
enter into a more binding process, the leadership was
shifted from the Commission DG Environment to
the European Council. The following UK presidency
put the EPI issue on the top of the agenda (Lenschow,
2002a, p.11). At the Cardiff Summit in June
1998, the Cardiff-Process of Environmental Policy
Integration was started. All relevant Council formations
were asked to develop sectoral strategies containing
objectives, timetables and task assignment, but
also to constantly monitor improvements and shortcomings.
The Councils for Agriculture, Energy and
Transport started the process in June 1998. They
were joined in a second round by the Councils for
Development, for Internal Market and for Industry in
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 209
December 1998. The setting was completed in a third
round by the Councils for General Affairs, for Economical
and Fiscal Affairs and for Fisheries (Fergusson
et al., 2001). This shift of responsibility for EPI
away from the DG Environment to the European
Council, together with the request for the development
of sectoral strategies by single Council formations
can be analysed as a shift from horizontal to
vertical integration.
The European Council of Helsinki in June 1999
undertook a first comprehensive evaluation of all
delivered reports and strategies and came to a rather
disappointing assessment concerning the content and
binding character of the proposals. All council formations
were asked to finalise their work with a view to
the forthcoming European Council in Gotenborg in
June 2001. The whole process should then be shifted
to the implementation phase (Fergusson et al., 2001).
But the European Council in Gotenborg revealed
serious shortcomings of the received strategies concerning
vague objectives, missing timetables and
indicators and unclear task responsibilities. The whole
process was postponed to the next Spring Summit in
Barcelona in 2002. But also in Barcelona an sufficient
progress could not be ascertained. At present, the
future course of the Cardiff-Process is nebulous (see
Kraemer et al., 2002).
Up to now, no council has published a strategy with
concrete objectives, timetables and indicators. The
political significance of the strategies remains unclear.
There is a lack of an overall co-ordination and steering
body and overall clear procedural and rules for
the development of the strategies as also with regard
to their content. Therefore, the single strategies differ
considerably concerning the understanding of EPI,
the needs for problem analysis but also the work on
objectives and indicators (SRU, 2002). But the Cardiff-Process
clearly is an important institutional innovation,
nonetheless because it proves rich ground for
learning about barriers to EPI and requests for effective
policy steering.
4.4. DECENTRALISED MECHANISMS:
ADMINISTRATIVE INSTRUMENTS
4.4.1 Appraisal of policy initiatives
In several industrialised countries, instruments have
been developed that gain at the assessment of possible
impacts of legislative proposals by the competent
authorities themselves. These mechanisms are closely
related to Strategic Environmental Assessments as
described above and there is a continuum between
appraisal methodology and the more formal SEA

210
procedures. The main difference is, that the general
public or other departments are not involved. An
appraisal system was developed in the UK in 1991 as
a guide for civil servants, called Policy Appraisal and the
Environment (Jordan and Lenschow, 2000). This appraisal
was rarely conducted, which was criticised
among others by environmental groups. Only when
the guide was reformulated in later years, the application
became more frequent.
In the Netherlands the need for an impact assessment
regarding the environment for new legislation was
recognised in the NEPP of 1989. From 1992 on
preparations were undertaken to establish such an
assessment. Additional momentum for the introduction
came in 1994 from the Quality of Legislation
initiative which aimed at an tighter evaluation of
proposed legislation. Here, the underlying goal was to
stimulate a more productive economy and an effective
administration. This deregulation initiative aimed
primarily at an evaluation of the economic costs and
benefits of regulation. However, it was realized that
environmental costs and benefits should be taken
into account, too. While the economic evaluation was
formalised in the so called Business Effects Test
(BET), the environmental test was developed by a
ministerial Commission chaired by the prime minister.
This so called E-test was finally introduced in
1995. It is applied to all types of legislative proposals
including drafts and amendments. As it was recommended
in NEPP 2, a ‘help desk’, namely the Joint
Support Centre for Draft Regulations, was established
by the Environmental and the Economic ministries
to give guidance for the procedures. By this,
the coordination between BET and E-Test is assured
also institutionally (Marsden, 1999). 7
In 1993, the DG Environment of the European
Commission developed an appraisal system (so called
‘green star’) to evaluate the effects of policy proposals
with significant effects to the environment in order to
implement the 5EAP. The Manual of Operational
Procedures lists a step-by-step procedure for the
undertaking of the appraisal. However, due to a lack
of an appropriate methodology, these appraisals were
7 The E-Test procedure encompasses mainly four different phases:
1) Screening/Scoping Phase: An interdepartmental working
group selects proposals for which an E-Test should be carried
out and lists environmental aspects that should be evaluated.
2) Adoption Phase: The list of proposal is adopted by the
Council of Ministers. 3) Documentation/Assessment Phase:
The selected aspects are addressed by the responsible ministry,
supported by the helpdesk; results are documented and added
to the draft legislation. 4) Reviewing Phase: Joint Support Centre
and the Ministry of Justice reviews the quality of information
and checks if the draft can be send to the Council of Ministers.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
never conducted (Wilkinson 1998, p.120). Other
appraisal tools have been developed for the DG
Industry (IAPlus, see http://www.jrc.es/ projects/iaplus/)
or are currently under development
(e.g. Rodmell 2002, DEFRA 2002, Jacob and Volkery,
2003). Recent developments focus on the different
dimensions of Sustainability, or aim to integrate
different appraisal methods.
4.4.2 Environmental Correspondents
The establishment of mirroring units in other departments
is another standard procedure in governments
practices. For example, environmental correspondents
have been established in Germany from
1986, when the Ministry of the Environment was
founded. The European Commission also introduced
this instrument in 1993, in order to implement the
overall integration philosophy of the 5EAP (Kraak et
al, 2001). Wilkinson (1998, p. 121) gives a range of
possible functions for the environmental correspondents:
• spy: informing DG XI of developments in
the respective DG,
• postman: passing information on environmental
legislation,
• policemen: vetoing policy proposals,
• technician: guidance for e.g. appraisal methods
• facilitator: negotiating between the respective
DG and DG XI
• ambassador: modifying DG XI policies to
fit with own DG
The practical results are slightly disappointing. The
environmental correspondents have not been willing
or able to influence the policies of their respective
departments. Again, the less discretion, that bureaucratic
routines and rules offer for alternative policy
options, can be considered to be one main reason of
failure. There are strong indications, that environmental
correspondents ran danger to jeopardise their
own status or career opportunities, when they tried to
lobby environmental proposals that clearly contradicted
the main policy objectives of their own department
(Kraack et al., 2001). Another reason is, that
DG Environment (XI) did not give an adminsitrative
guidance on the role of the environmental correspondents.
Therefore, the implementation and understanding
of their role varied considerably: In several
DGs that had already units or policies which are
concerned with the environment, this duty was given
to officials with pre-existing environmental responsibilities.
In particular in those DGs, where an attention

for environmental concerns had been already established,
the integration principle was regarded as a
two-way process, requiring the environmental department
to integrate also the objectives of the nonenvironmental
departments. Therefore, role-models
like ‘spy’ or policeman’ necessarily failed.
5 Opportunities and Impediments for EPI
Recent evaluation studies on the introduction of EPI
measures and on EPI in different policy sectors identified
a broad range of different factors that influence
success or failure of integration measures. In accordance
with many approaches of policy analysis, Lenschow
(2002a) expects three dimensions to be relevant
for an explanation of patterns of EPI:
• Actors: Their preferences, relative strength
and position in the political structure, variation
in the commitment to environmental
issues, pressure by top level political commitment
and/or by environmentalists or
other non-state actors. A sufficient regulatory
capacity and a balance of power with
environmental stakeholders is suggested as
prerequisites for EPI also by Hey (2002).
• Ideas: On the one hand, the framing paradigms
of environmental policy, i.e. the concept
of sustainable development, or the expectation
of win-win solutions are of decisive
importance . On the other hand the
implementation of EPI is determined by the
‘policy mission’ in the sectoral policy and its
compatibility with environmental concerns.
The focus on ‘win-win’ risks the failure of
EPI, if there are losers. In the long run, success
depends upon the ability to compensate
or to enable those actors for a restructuring
their activities.
• Policy traditions and institutions: In how far
the concept of EPI fits into the given structures
and practices is a determinant success
factor. A fragmented institutional setting is
difficult to reform. Usually, it requires a crisis
to open a window of opportunity for
institutional change (Lenschow, 2002c, p.
229).
Lafferty (2002) as well as the OECD (2002a) enumerate
the following factors as decisive for the success of
EPI: A common understanding of sustainable development,
a clear commitment and related leadership
by political leaders, specific institutional mechanisms
to steer integration, the effective involvement of
stakeholders and efficient knowledge management.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 211
Hertin and Berkhout (2002) identify four complementary
core functions, that EPI has to fulfil in order
to be successful: sectoral agenda setting, horizontal
communication, sectoral capacity building and policy
learning.
It is common to this studies, that on the one hand the
importance of learning in the different policy sectors,
the utilisation of knowledge, a shared vision and a
common understanding of problems is stressed. But
on the other hand, these studies point to the prevailing
importance of political will and leadership as also
to the relative strengths of actors or their capacity to
act. Our brief discussion of the different measures for
EPI revealed considerable differences in how far
these prerequisites are fulfilled. There is no single
instrument that is able to fulfil all of the different
functions. The following table gives an overview over
the different features of the discussed measures.

212
Strategic Approaches
National Environmental /
Sustainability Planning
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Table 2: Expected impacts of strategic approaches and instruments of E PI
Changes relative strengths of
existing Actors
Shaping of New Actors
Inclusion of Environmental
Actors / Opening of Networks
Improvement of Leadership
Dissemination of Vision
Improves utilisation of
knowledge
Possible
Sectoral Strategies Possible
Constitutional Provisions Possible Possible Possible
Instruments
Consultation procedures Possible
Veto power
Initiative rights
Agenda Setting
EPI in policy implementation
Amalgamation of departments Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible
Independent institutions for
advising and evaluation
Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible
Green Budgeting
Green Cabinet
Interdepartmental working
groups
Strategic Environmental Assessment
Environmental departments
in the different sectors /
Environmental Correspondents
Possible
Sectoral Conferences Possible Possible Possible
Appraisal of policy initiatives
Source: Own Compilation
References
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Trees, Science, and Public Processes: A Western Australian Experience
Martin Brueckner *
Introduction
Perceptions of science and of its role in political
processes have changed significantly over the last 50
years, and today’s science-society relations can best be
described as paradoxical. Presently, there is an unprecedented
societal dependence on expertdom with
science featuring strongly in the political arena and
public life in general. At the same time, however, a
growing resentment towards expert-driven processes
(Yankelovich, 1991), a sense of marginalisation of the
general public by the dictatorship of scientific and political
elites (Waller, 1995), and a mounting rejection
of scientific determinism are becoming discernible.
These changes in public perceptions of science are
also mirrored within the sciences themselves. Science
no longer speaks with one voice (it never really did),
and public disputes with all sides in the debate supposedly
arguing best science are quite common. In
other words, science’s claims to truth, once perceived
to be absolute, have become far more relativistic, and
the notion of truth’s autonomy (after Aronowitz, 1988)
has come under attack and thus science has as well.
While we are told that these tensions are a hallmark
of post-modernity (Matthews, Young, & Elliott,
2002) and are perceived as both cause and effect of
risk societies in general, (Beck, 1986; Giddens, 1990),
questions must be asked whether and how science
can be expected to play a credible role in policy-making
processes in light of dwindling public faith in the
customarily accepted authority of science.
This paper examines, as part of a wider investigation
(see Brueckner, 2002b), the role of science in a national
government process, coined Regional Forest
Agreement (RFA), which was designed to put to rest
a long-standing dispute over native forest use and
management in Australia. Using the Western Australian
experience of this government process, RFA
stakeholders’ perceptions of science are investigated
employing discourse analysis. Stakeholder responses
are assessed to identify the way and extent to which
science had been engaged in the RFA, gauge the
*
Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. Contact:
m.brueckner@curtin.edu.au.
perceived adequacy of the use of science in the process,
and measure the degree to which science enabled
capacity building as a process outcome. In an attempt
to answer the question as to what can be
learned from this process, the study results point
towards contradictions between scientific and political
processes and existing tensions that potentially
jeopardise the public credibility of both environmental
policy-making and science itself. It is suggested
that credible environmental policy-making
depends on credible science. To this end, calls are
made for the revisiting of science-politics relations,
especially with respect to the rules of scientific engagement
in processes of policy formulation, the
treatment of plural perspectives, and the issue of
transparency as it relates to ideology and assumptionmaking.
Some Comments on Science and Public
Processes
Much debate has been, and is being, had on science,
its methods, its sociological and philosophical underpinnings.
Most of these somewhat esoteric debates
about what science is, or is not, chiefly involve experts
rather than laypeople and therefore give the impression
of being somewhat removed from the public.
Paradoxically, public perceptions are what shape and
define the dominant conceptions of science (Ravetz,
1971), although the public is seen to largely misunderstand
science (Wynne, 1991). It might be immaterial,
therefore, whether experts consider science and its
methods to be best characterised by conventionalism
(e.g. Duhem, 1962), inductivism (e.g. Reichenbach,
1938), deductivism (e.g. Popper, 1968), golem (see
Collins & Pinch, 1993) or indeed Dada (see Feyerabend,
1975) since science’s public image and perceived
essence is seemingly defined outside the expert
realm.
On the question of how the public perceives science
the literature speaks of a so-called standard view of
science (see for instance Scheffler, 1967). This standard
view, also coined inductivism, although not in the
Baconian sense (Riggs, 1992), sees science in a very
positive light, portraying science and its methods as
the one best way of discovering and learning about
the laws of nature. Thus, science and scientists are
positioned in the centre of public life as society’s
principal problem-solving authority (Cotgrove, 1982;

Milbrath, 1989). In light of the widespread admiration
for, and acceptance of, the wonders of science
(Ravetz, 1971), there is a seeming incongruence between
what scientists and the public perceive as objectivity.
Inductivism seems to confuse, or indeed
replace, what scientists would regard as the ideal of
objectivity in science (Scheffler, 1967) with the myth
of objective science. Certainly, science attempts to
“transcend the social and economic background, to
overcome the weight of prejudice, of custom and
example, and to formulate statements that in some
way or another capture how the world is” (Jarvie,
2001, p.560). And science is considered credible and
is respected because of its methodical nature, rigorous
protocols, in-built checks and balances such as
peer review and all the hallmarks of scientific research.
Objectivity, however, is a philosophical
maxim, which the scientific protocol aims to maintain
but cannot guarantee. Still, the perception of objective
or quasi-infallible science seems to exist and is
apparently underpinned by science itself.
Snow (1964) argues that the shallow optimism ostensibly
exuded by (in particular hard) science is fuelling and
perpetuating this myth of objectivity. Hard sciences
with their highly codified and often quantitative work
(and their technology), as argued by Deetz (1996), are
often privileged to receive the objective label and are
therefore favoured in public and political life. Soft
sciences, or interpretivists in general (after Morgan,
1986), are given the subjective label for the more qualitative
nature of their work, which deals with interpretations
of an interpreted world, and are therefore
considered less credible and reliable in the eyes of the
public (Deetz, 1996). In fact, it seems as if openly
stated assumptions and values raise greater suspicion
than when hidden behind methodology and numbers.
Nevertheless, this perception of objectivity arguably
provides relative certainty, which represents one of
humanity’s holy grails. Science’s quasi-monopoly on
certainty has given rise to scientific determinism, and
this, in turn, has allowed science to attain a prominent
social status and itself to become a symbol of progress
and human welfare (Paehlke, 1989). So, within
inductivism, science is not only seen as humanity’s
provider and guardian of knowledge and truths but
also the driving force behind social and economic
advancement.
It is therefore not surprising perhaps, that the twentieth
century has witnessed an ever growing reliance on
science by a society, which has been willing to invest
considerable public trust in the expert system (see
Giddens, 1990). In part, this trend can be seen as the
result of the growing complexity of modern, technology-driven
life and the perceived inability of lay-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 215
people to make informed decisions in light of such
complexity (Ophuls & Boyan, 1992); thus, the concomitant
need for scientific competency in decisionmaking
processes on policy, governance, and control
(see Postman, 1992). However, the hegemonic social
status and position of power held by science and
scientists, however, has also created tensions, leading
to a dissipation of public trust in traditional institutions,
including scientific institutions.
Certainly since the Manhattan Project in the early
1940s a public awareness grew of the less than benign
(political and commercial) applications of science and
technology, their consequences, and associated risks.
Such awareness was heightened by published scientific
work on the environmental depredation caused
by industrial life (e.g. Carson, 1962) and the postulation
of limits to unconstrained population, and economic,
expansion throughout the doomsday decade
of the 1970s (e.g. Ehrlich, 1970; Meadows, Meadows,
Randers, & Behrens, 1972; Mesarovic & Pestel,
1974). Publications such as these were seen to provide
the scientific backbone for modern environmentalism,
blurring the boundaries between science and
environmental/social advocacy and deepening the
aforementioned trenches between so-called soft and
hard sciences; the latter being more closely linked to
the political and economic status quo. In the ensuing
years well publicised environmental disasters such as
Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, climate
change - or more locally, salinity in many parts of
Australia - gave an increasingly alarmed public a sense
of science, or certain spheres within science, “[being]
at the heart of many environmental disruptions”
(Paehlke, 1989, p.116).
Predictably, this tainted image of science triggered a
growing distrust towards science manifested in public
resentment towards expert control and power over
fateful political and social decisions (Yankelovich,
1991; Jasanoff, 1996). Knowledge constitutes power
(see Foucault, 1982), and scientific knowledge can
therefore be considered a political tool as experts’
cognitive powers can be used to influence public
affairs. While power and control may be exercised, it
is not necessarily done by those who generate the
knowledge that underpins it. While science has become
the weapon of choice in what Waller (1995) calls
scientific-cum-political struggles in today’s political arena, it
is rarely the scientists themselves however, who become
involved in those disputes 1 . Scientists are said
1 The existence of professional/institutional allegiances means,
however, that scientists can and do become (politically) involved.
This relates to the issue of ideological denial, which is
addressed at a later point.

216
to have “a modesty about expressing opinion”, and
this may only occur once “ideas have been tested in
the realm of their peers through publication in peerreviewed
literature” (Gascoigne & Metcalfe, 1998,
p.6). In fact, it could be argued that scientists’ commitment
to accuracy and proper scientific procedures
precludes, due to perceived methodological handcuffs,
their active engagement in public discourse (see
Hobbs, 1998; Recher, 1998). Consequently, scientists
operating from within this passive-defensive position
are inadvertently prone to be used to legitimate political
processes, hence enabling the politicisation of
science. It needs to be acknowledged however, that
scientists also operate under professional/institutional
constraints, as will be illustrated by
the case study in hand, shaping allegiances that can
prompt scientists to become (politically) involved in
policy processes. This involvement can either be
active or passive and therefore relates to the issue of
ideology and ideological denial, which is addressed at
a later point.
In toto, scientific input is required into public/political
processes (Yankelovich, 1991; Waller, 1995;
Lubchenco, 1998). Yet, there are numerous unanswered
questions relating to the extent to, and the
capacity in, which science and scientists should be
involved in those processes. Also, a fundamental
question relates to the problem-solving capabilities of
science where reductionism meets holism (soft/hard
science divide), meaning situations where intertwined
and often conflicting ecological, ethical, social, and
economic aspects need to be considered. This also
incorporates the issue of scholarship and advocacy
and the problematique of professional/personal
allegiance. Where does science need to draw the line?
It is against this background that the role of science
in the Western Australian Regional Forest Agreement
will be analysed in the following, and it is these issues
that will be returned to in the ensuing discussion.
The Western Australian Regional Forest
Agreement: A Brief History and Methodological
Notes
In Australia, there has been a long-standing dispute
over native forest use and management. The intensification
of industrial forest exploitation in the 1960s
coincided with the emergence of new cultural and
social values, which resulted in a change in public
sentiment concerning the nation’s forests. Over the
years, the conflict escalated, and by the early 1990s
the forest debate represented the country’s single
most controversial environmental issue with strongly
contested ecological, economic, and socio-political
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
dimensions (for a history of the forest debate refer to
Carron, 1985; Australian Conservation Foundation
(ACF), 1987; Dargavel, 1995; Mercer, 1995).
In an attempt to end the conflict between conservationists
and the country’s timber industries, also in
response to the growing electoral significance of the
forest issue, the Federal Government committed all
States and Territories to the signing of a National
Forest Policy Statement (NFPS) in 1992. Three
aspects formed the core of this policy framework,
these being resource security for an internationally
competitive forest products industry, comprehensive,
adequate, and representative (CAR) forest reserve
systems, and ecologically sustainable forest management
(ESFM) (Commonwealth of Australia, 2002).
The NFPS offered a mechanism whereby the Commonwealth
and the State governments could reach
agreement on the long-term management and use of
forests in a particular region. This mechanism was
the RFA process, which was portrayed as a comprehensive
national blueprint for balance, certainty, and
sustainability in the management of Australia’s forests.
RFAs were based on comprehensive regional assessments
(CRAs) of environmental, heritage, economic,
and social values within delineated RFA areas. These
scientific studies were to form the basis for the generation
of forest use and management options subsequently
to be agreed on by the Commonwealth and
the respective States. Environmental values, in particular,
needed to be assessed consistent with a set of
nationally agreed, albeit scientifically contentious,
criteria (also known as JANIS criteria after Joint
ANZECC/MCFFA National Forest Policy Statement
Implementation Sub-Committee) for the development
of CAR reserve systems. The JANIS criteria
were a critical part of the RFAs for they defined the
national standard for forest reserves in relation to
biodiversity, oldgrowth, and wilderness protection;
these represented the issues that were at the heart of
the enduring forest dispute.
Australian RFAs were portrayed as “agreements
backed by science, science and more science” (Commonwealth
of Australia, 2000, p.9). RFAs were purported
to have been based on the most detailed and
comprehensive scientific assessments ever made in
Australia (Commonwealth of Australia and Government
of Western Australia, 1997). Indeed, a total of
AUS$115 million was spent on CRAs nationally
(Commonwealth of Australia, 2000). Moreover,
science was said to have formed the basis for sound
decision making on commercial forest use and conservation
(Hill, Anderson, & Edwardes, 1997; Forests
Taskforce, 1998), and in that regard Western Austra-

lia was no exception. The Western Australian RFA
was also promoted as being scientifically based, and
the public was assured that scientific input to the
RFA was sought by the State and Commonwealth
governments via workshops, expert panels, and the
commissioning of CRA research projects. More than
500 scientists and experts were said to have been
involved in the process (see WA Parliamentary Debates
- Hansard, 1999b) producing 38 CRA reports
over a period of three years and providing advice to
the process’ Steering Committee (WA Parliamentary
Debates - Hansard, 1999b). Nonetheless, the science
of the Western Australian RFA was contested as
numerous questions arose during the process regarding
its credibility in light of alleged data manipulation,
intellectual suppression, and bureaucratic censorship.
In the end, partially because of credibility problems,
the Western Australian RFA triggered an enormous
public backlash with petitions, mass protests, and
rallies when it was finalised in May 1999. Although
the RFA was described many times as an extensive
scientific process which could not be overturned
overnight (WA Parliamentary Debates - Hansard,
June 1999, p. 9390/3) it was amended in response to
public pressure only eight weeks after it had originally
been signed. The changes to the original RFA were
without discernible reference to the science of the
RFA process, which ostensibly damaged the credibility
of science and the process it was said to have
underlined. Science, the purported strength of the
RFA was seen by many RFA stakeholders to have
become its fundamental weaknesses.
This paper addresses the credibility issues surrounding
the science in the Western Australian RFA, its
role in the process, and the impact it had on the final
outcome as perceived by RFA stakeholders. The
analysis of stakeholder perceptions, as presented here,
is based on interview data collected as part of a
broader, case study-based, investigation into the
Western Australian RFA (see Brueckner, 2002b). For
the purposes of that research around 60 interviews
were conducted with RFA stakeholders and transcribed
over a three year period from 1999 to 2002.
Research participants were chosen based on snowball
sampling 2 , which enabled the involvement of a wide
range of RFA stakeholders including politicians,
process managers, bureaucrats, conservationists,
timber workers, forest industry representatives, scientists,
members of the general public, and others. The
idea was to utilise the interview data - crossreferenced
with RFA-related literature and media
2
This approach is discussed in more detail by Goodman (1961)
and Babbie (1992).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 217
content - to identify stakeholder views, desires, and
mindsets within stakeholder discourses (here in relation
to the science of the RFA). Discourse analysis
was employed as the method of choice for the treatment
of the research data, and this approach is briefly
described blow.
Discourse analysis has a widespread application to
various corners of the human and social sciences, and
many definitions of, and applications for, discourse
analysis exist. This study has adopted a constructionist
variation of this approach following other work
done in the area of public policy development (see
for instance Fischer & Forester, 1993; Dryzek, 1997;
Meppem, 2000). Within social constructionism discourse
is seen as a product of a shared version of
reality (subjectivity) between interlocutors. Discourse
itself is defined as a “shared way of apprehending the
world” (Dryzek, 1997, p.8), and language is viewed as
“a reality-creating social practice” (Fowler, 1985,
p.62), being reflexive or reciprocal (Durnati &
Goodwin, 1992; Gumperz & Levinson, 1996), simultaneously
reflecting and construing reality (Gee,
1999). Indeed, reality is seen as a social construct and
consequently “no single correct reading of the external
world [is said to exist] within discourse analysis”
(Manning, 1979, p.660). Moreover, as affirmed by
Butteriss (2002), truth and reality are not only socially
constructed or created but also contextual (Agar,
1994; Clark, 1996), a product of language (see Fowler,
1985), as well as political (see Saussure, 1974; Lacan,
1975; Foucault, 1978; Dryzek, 1997). This essentially
means that what is perceived to be true or real can
vary just as meaning and content of discourse can
change in response to contextual changes (e.g. temporal,
cultural, geographical) and that discourse itself
can be determined by motives to specific ends (i.e.
discourses for courses).
The aim of this study was to gain insights into people’s
perspectives and aid the understanding of multiple
paradigms at work. In the light of that aim discourse
analysis was deemed an appropriate tool for it
lends itself to critical reflection (Luks, 1998), the
detection of norms and ideologies (Manning, 1979),
the exposure and analysis of power relations (Putnam,
Phillips, & Chapman, 1996; Foucault, 1978), the
improvement of communication (Luks, 1998) and
organisational effectiveness (Morgan, 1986), the
sense-making of unfamiliar environments (Ortony,
1993), and the formulation of new ideas and concepts
reflective of newly gained knowledge and values
(Butteriss, 2002).
Based on a grounded theory approach (for details see
Strauss & Corbin, 1990; Glaser, 1998), the discourse
analysis method employed here proceeded with the

218
coding of the transcribed interview data through an
iterative process. This involved the selection of
phrases and entire sentences from the interview data;
however, fragments such as adjectives, adverbs, past
participles and other temporal verb conjugations, and
nouns were also considered. The motivation was to
analyse interview data rather on the sentence level
than, for instance, the metaphor level driven by the
desire to leave as much of research participants’
statements intact as possible. This in turn (a) enabled
minimal author intervention (b) reduced the risk of
selectiveness, and (c) enabled participants to tell their
story. An exclusive focus on metaphors, in contrast,
would have meant the loss of much valuable context
and harboured the risk of simply putting forward the
author’s story.
Following the data selection, through a process of
iteration, chosen information fragments were then
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
[we] produced a draft on criteria for forest conservation, and then that draft was basically shunted
The 15 per cent, as I understand, was huge because the IUCN criteria at the time were 10 per cent
We were fundamentally unhappy with putting quantitative restrictions on forest management
not all scientists may have been agreeing that these criteria were correct because … that’s a political statement
about whether you protect five per cent, ten per cent, or 20 per cent of forests
we fundamentally opposed the whole concept and the set of criteria that were being adopted
These figures are totally arbitrary [our] draft was shunted to back to JANIS
[The JANIS figures] were very good within the limitations of the … you know, recognising that you are using
surrogates … it is so unfair dragging us down to a lowest common denominator
the ministerial representatives … put in a lot of “may” or “if it’s appropriates” etc., etc. in to it so that it did
not have any real force like the original document and the process went ahead
It may have been that some scientists did not agree with those JANIS criteria
There is no scientific justification, and it was clear right from the outset that science and scientists were used
to validate a political process
The scientists were instructed to come up with the volumes … which said that 10 per cent of all existing forested land of
all the various ecosystem types should be put into the reserve system … that was changed to 15 per cent … that was, I
think, a huge political mistake
Word Map 1: Stakeholder Perceptions of JANIS Criteria
partitioned into word maps, also called rhetorical landscapes
(Butteriss, Wolfenden, & Goodridge, 2001) or
environets (Myerson & Rydin, 1996), by way of
identifying emerging themes and creating more
manageable data categories in the course of the
analysis. Word maps were produced using interview
data that related to specific interview questions,
which effectively helped define data categories such
as stakeholder perceptions of the NFPS, the JANIS
criteria, the RFA process, its outcomes or certain
aspects of. As shown in the example in Word Map 1,
selected interview data were then randomly placed
inside the corresponding word maps. A random order
was chosen to allow the scanning of stakeholder
information without superimposed structures and
without superimposed structures and hierarchies,
which constituted an attempt to eliminate/minimise
author pre-eminence. While the chosen thematic
groups can be seen as arbitrary, they signified in a
sense experimental hypotheses, and at the end, the
discourse data itself was to either validate or invalidate
earlier assumptions about existing categories.
Data partitioning also provided the basis for further
questioning and analysis and allowed for a parenthetical
presentation of the interview data, which was then
complimented with, and compared to, data derived
from relevant RFA-related literature and media content.
Word maps were primarily used as a structural
tool, and due to space limitations they are not included
in the analysis provided below.
The data mapping also involved a form of in-text
coding, yet without specific reference to the information
source because the protection of participant’s
anonymity was a research condition. For this purpose
research participants were grouped through a
process of self-identification. This meant that research
participants were essentially categorising themselves
by way of stating their memberships, affiliations,
and/or the capacities in which they were being
interviewed or responding to certain interview questions.
Out of all interviewee responses that were
collected a total of five broad stakeholder categories
emerged, which are listed in Table 1. The use of
colour-coding meant that direct quotes taken from
the interview transcripts appeared in the colours
corresponding with participants’ affiliations (e.g.
statements by members of the scientific community

are shown in blue etc.).
• Timber Industry/Industry Groups/Unions
• Government/Departments/Political Parties
• Stakeholder Reference Group/General
Public
• Environment Groups
• Scientific Community
Table 1: RFA Stakeholder Key
One methodological reminder needs to be issued
here in light of the postmodern character of this
paper. It was not the intention of this analysis to
deliver outcomes readers would readily agree with or
to arrive at authoritative statements about how things
really were. In other words, the question was not
whether what was found is true or not but rather
what could be learned from it. This is also how the
discourse analysis method could be characterised in
general in that the usefulness of this approach does
not to lie in the absoluteness of the findings that it
may produce but in the learning that may occur during
the analysis. This point is emphasised by Butteriss
(2002) stating “the question that should be asked
of any discourse analysis is not how truthful it is,
since each reading will be different according to its
own theoretical premises”. Instead, as argued by
Burr (1995), the usefulness of this analysis is to be
gauged by the contribution it can make to sensemaking
and problem solving. The intention here was
to unearth stakeholder perceptions of the role science
played in a contentious political process in an attempt
to use the insights gained in connection with related
research to contribute to the debate on science, society,
and environmental policy-making.
Stakeholder Perceptions of the Science of the
Western Australian RFA
An analysis of the science of the Western Australian
RFA needs to start with the establishment of the
JANIS criteria, which provided the scientific benchmark
for forest reservation around the country, as
was mandated by the NFPS. As pointed out by
Kirkpatrick (1998), scientifically credible criteria were
not only needed to operationalise the terms of the
NFPS but also to overcome the distrust of conservationists
towards government-driven processes in
relation to forestry. In other words, much was dependent
on the acceptability of these criteria.
A group of widely respected scientists entrusted with
the task of criteria development drafted a set of
benchmarks for the national reserve design, identifying
percentage figures for the reservation of
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 219
oldgrowth, wilderness, and biodiversity in conjunction
with a suite of recommendations for off-reserve
forest management; however, the draft was basically
shunted. This meant that the work done by the scientists
was referred back to a group of “experts
within the bureaucracies and the bureaucrats at the
higher policy levels” (Kirkpatrick, 1998, p.34). These
ministerial representatives … put a lot of “may” or
“if it’s appropriates” etc., etc. in to it so that … [the
final targets] did not have any real force like [in] the
original document. The ensuing changes allegedly led
to the exclusion of the conservation of biological
diversity on private land, left open the “question of
the proportion of the reserve system that should be
secure”, allowed for socio-economic provisos to
modify the strength of the criteria initially proposed,
and deleted “all reference to the maintenance of the
unreserved forest in a largely native condition” (p.34).
The various changes to the draft criteria meant that
the revised document, the later JANIS document, had
“little scientific credibility” (Kirkpatrick, 1998, p.34).
The JANIS figures were contested territory also because
there was no theoretical or empirical basis for
justifying 15 per cent … over 12 per cent or 16 per
cent or 50 per cent as a reservation target other than
to say that it was far in excess of what was being
promoted anywhere in the world at that stage. For
reasons relating to this absence of scientific justifiability
strong opposition towards the criteria development
was voiced from within the wider scientific
community, which was fundamentally unhappy with
putting quantitative restrictions on forest management
and fundamentally opposed the whole concept
and the set of criteria that were being adopted. It was
feared back then that, because there was no scientific
justification for the criteria, science and scientists
were used to validate a political process. All in all,
prior to the commencement of the Western Australian
RFA, its scientific footing was - in the eyes of
many stakeholders - already compromised.
The Western Australian RFA process, which commenced
shortly after the States and the Commonwealth
had reached agreement on the JANIS criteria
in 1997, can best be described as acrimonious.
Newspaper headlines at the time employed a language
of open warfare to describe the climate in which
negotiations over WA’s forests occurred, using terms
like “battle” (Rees, 1999), “kill” (Burns, 1999), “war”
(Rechichi, 1999), to mention only a few. Research
participants also pointed towards a similarly tense
atmosphere when describing the environment in
which the science of the RFA was conducted. Much
of the tension was considered historical, and there
was an acknowledgement of a long history of acri-

220
monious dispute and debate in the scientific community
over forest management in the south-west of
Western Australia. It was felt that there was a general
recognition among some scientists with expertise and
interest in the area, that to speak critically of current
management practices risked attack from some of the
government departments working in the area.
The department referred to here in particular is the
Department of Conservation and Land Management
(CALM), whose responsibilities covered among other
aspects both forest conservation and exploitation, the
latter being its source of revenue. CALM stood accused
- virtually since its inception in 1985 - of
opaque public relations, intellectual suppression, the
withholding of information, and specific cases of
scientific censorship and perversion of the scientific
process by CALM management as a means of protecting
commercial interests. In particular, it was the
forestry section of the department that attracted
much public criticism for its perceived neopositivistic
attitude towards forestry, which assumed
sufficient knowledge of the impacts of current use
and management practices on forest biota to confidently
manage the forest estate. Also, what was perceived
as an aggressive philosophy to timber cutting
and as a categorical, and at times hostile, dismissal of
dissenting views towards forestry was cause for much
antagonism. Evidence of the department’s philosophical
stance and management style can be found on
various public records (e.g. Lowe, 1993; Schultz,
1993; Nicholson, 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1995; Tan-
Van Baren, 1996b, 1996a; Schoombee, 1998) and in
the scientific literature on forest management issues
in Western Australia (e.g. Abbott & Christensen,
1994, 1996; Calver, Hobbs, Horwitz, & Main, 1996;
Calver et al., 1998; Abbott & Christensen, 1999). In
general terms, the positivism exuded by the department
and the strong claims to objectivity and truth by
some of its staff led to the perception of the department
granting de facto protection of timber interests,
meaning that scientific forest management and commercial
forest exploitation were seen by many to have
become synonymous terms.
Unsurprisingly, CALM’s appointment as the State’s
lead agency for the RFA process in Western Australia
was greeted with a sense of unease and was interpreted
by many research participants to mean that the
department was absolutely and completely in control
of the process. This was because it meant that
CALM, due to its involvement in forest matters, …
received a lion’s share in terms of the funding and
[that] they also …[had] the lion’s share in terms of
involvement of scientists. Other scientists, however,
did not consider this to be an accurate representation
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
of the amount of science that [was] … going on in
the forests outside of CALM. In addition, many
forest biologists in WA were … employed by CALM
and therefore not [considered] free to speak up.
CALM’s involvement in the RFA was contested also
because much of the data [for the biological CRA
studies] came from existing information held by [the
Department of] Conservation and Land Management
obviously as the primary data holder for forests in
WA. It was questioned however, whether all the
CALM databases … were [made] available to CRA
researchers.
Many of the CRA reports, which formed the scientific
backbone of the RFA, were challenged by scientists
and members of the public, especially those
investigating forest ecosystem disturbance (mining,
logging, fire, pests etc.). Common to all disturbance
reports were comments by their authors in relation to
the time they were given to conduct their reviews and
compile their reports, which on average was a period
of six weeks. This was considered an “extremely
brief contract time-frame” (Lamont, Pérez-
Fernández, & Mann, 1997, p.3), substantially limiting
their capacity to critically reflect on, and digest, their
often complex data (Horwitz, Jasinska, Fairhurst, &
Davis, 1997; Majer & Heterick, 1997). Similar views
were expressed from authors of other CRA reports
who also argued that not enough time was given and
to the extent that the time available was considered
utterly inadequate.
Also, interviewees questioned whether … short-term
desktop review[s], which many of the studies were,
[were] adequate for the topic[s] researchers were
asked to look into, and numerous scientists complained
that there was no scope to go and acquire
additional data. To some interviewees the scoping of
projects, which effectively prevented the collection of
additional data, was deliberate and based on the attitude
that: We don’t want a particular sort of information,
we don’t want good data sets on this, we don’t
want to know. It was alleged that there was a guiding
fear that if there [were] good quality data and they
[were] in the public domain then the nature of the
debate would change enormously. In relation to the
disturbance reports it was repeatedly stated that the
conclusions were extremely suspect in the sense that
they … [were] based on inadequate data and neither
… on a fair and comprehensive assessment of the
entire forest region nor … on any assessment of
major conservation requirements throughout the
forest region.
Disputes also erupted over the issue of peer review.
Peer review is considered a standard procedure in
science with an aim to establish the validity and qual-

ity of research; it is supposed to keep the charlatans
out of science and help maintain science as a process.
In short, peer reviews to some extent legitimise science
and are therefore considered a vital part of the
scientific method. During the Western Australian
RFA process complaints were made by scientists
involved in CRA projects, suggesting that there ha[d]
been an inadequate review process, that all … reports
went through some sort of haphazard review, an
unclear process of incorporating the material found
within them, [and] a very stifled publication process
in which the reports were made public. Confirmation
of these assertions came from researchers and reviewers
alike. Research scientists suggested that the
peer review was a higgledy-piggledy mess in terms
of… how the reports were going to be dealt with,
how they were going to be reviewed, how they were
going to be assessed and handled.
On the reviewers’ side it was revealed, for example,
that a disturbance report copy … received … [for]
review was clearly incomplete. This was being attributed
to the assumption that the authors were not …
given adequate time and hence, in response to very
pressing time deadlines, submitted a draft rather than
a final version and then presumably, when a final
version was received, that it was actually felt that the
time was too short to actually go through with the
review process. Thus, there was a sense that the
process itself seemed to leave too little time for the
actual preparation of the reports and then for the
proper assessment of those reports once they were
submitted.
Another issue of concern was data handling and data
publication. Interviewees expressed considerable
misgivings about how the reports were dealt with and
how they were incorporated into the process. Participants
were concerned that the people who were
actually in control were not scientists and had no
knowledge. Numerous interviewees held that the
coverage [of certain views] was inadequate and that
the process was failing to take into account the intensity
of some of the scientific dispute that ha[d] occurred
prior to the RFA. The issue of selectiveness
was also addressed by Horwitz & Calver (1998) who,
as part of their critique on the scientific credibility of
the RFA process, took issue with the fact that much
of the current scientific debates on aspects of forest
management were ignored in the final CRA report.
In other words, the CRA process was not only criticised
for being selective about data derived from
CRA reports but also for being selective about research
conducted prior to the RFA.
The CRA reports were promised to be in the public
domain for they were to form part of the “materials
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 221
developed to assist community consultation” (Commonwealth
of Australia and Government of Western
Australia, 1998, p.7). However, not all reports were
made available during the time of public consultation,
which meant that the public’s ability to crossreference
the various documents made available for
public comment was greatly impaired. This was
considered a fundamental weakness by many RFA
stakeholders because it was widely believed that the
public needed to know what the processes were, why
those reports were commissioned, what was important
about each of the reports; in other words, the
rationale for each report, and the public needed to
have time to review and adequately assess all of these
reports to enable the logic trail, the reason trail, and
the paper trail to be followed from the commencement
of the RFA process to the final decision.
Scientists’ dissatisfaction with the science of the
Western Australian RFA was widely publicised,
mostly by conservation groups but also by scientists
themselves with calls for a more open and genuine
process. Such publicity fuelled widespread cynicism
towards the RFA (distrust of the Western Australian
RFA was growing also in response to other perceived
procedural flaws of the process (see Brueckner,
2002a)) and the science which it was supposedly
underpinned by. The RFA created high expectations
among community members who were told that the
RFA [was] giving [them] ESFM, implying that the
RFA would produce a sustainable outcome for WA’s
forests. With the announced introduction of ESFM
it was widely hoped for, especially among conservationists,
that the big ticket issues of the forest debate
such as the allowable cut for indigenous hardwoods,
and the logging of oldgrowth forests would be resolved
(e.g. the community wanted to hear that we
won’t be logging oldgrowth forests anymore). Towards
the end of the process however, not many
people were confident that a lot of the public
underlying disquiet about forest management in …
[the] State would be addressed by the process.
Indeed, despite scientific support for the immediate
reduction in logging levels and the cessation of
oldgrowth forest logging, the RFA document, as
signed in May 1999, endorsed an allowable cut [that
was] in excess of what … [was considered]
sustainable and allowed, whilst protecting around 70
per cent of all oldgrowth, the continuation of some
oldgrowth logging. A greater reduction in logging
levels was postponed until 2004 to protect current
timber contracts and employment in the timber
industry, and the only partial protection of oldgrowth
was justified on the basis that the areas still available
for logging were considered “not [to] contain
significant areas of oldgrowth or were not needed to

222
needed to meet nationally agreed criteria” (WA Parliamentary
Debates - Hansard, 1999a, p.7890/1). The
quality of the forest areas protected under the RFA
was contested (see WA Parliamentary Debates - Hansard,
May 1999) for many people believed that forests
of high vulnerability and poor quality were being
protected while high quality forests remained available
for logging. To them the RFA was just favouring
the timber industry and maintaining the status quo.
The controversy surrounding sustained logging levels
combined with the government’s refusal to protect all
remaining oldgrowth forests under the RFA ensured
that, after the signing of the RFA document, the
debate would continue and ultimately lead to the
amendment of the RFA only eight weeks later, this
time triggering condemnation from the timber industry
who saw the changes as a gut reaction by government
to what they perceived to be an overriding
political need or political set of circumstances. In a
sense, many thought that after three years of research
and negotiation that the forest debate was almost
back to square one.
Discussion
“All that science, and in the end it was all worth nothing”
-Western Australian Senator, 2000
The first question to be asked at this point is whether
the WA RFA was a scientific process? What can be
answered here in the affirmative is that the process
tended to rely very much on the scientists, who were
heavily involved in the process and that [t]here were a
lot of scientists involved, supposedly, we are talking
about the top scientists in WA. Many RFA stakeholders
saw a discrepancy, however, between the
quantity and the quality of the science of the RFA.
In WA, so it seems, the strength of the RFA was to
be gauged on the amount of science and number of
scientists involved in the process. As suggested by
research participants, [i]t was almost a numbers game,
and the number of 500 scientists purported to have
been involved in the process was stated many times
during the RFA (see WA Parliamentary Debates -
Hansard, 1999b). The philosophy behind such a
scheme was described as a sort of religious blessing
type approach to science, which means that a process
would simply need enough science … so that it has
veracity. Indeed, high numbers seemingly meant that
the RFA process [was] based on science. The main
problem was though that science did not speak with
one voice, neither prior to the RFA nor during the
process. At times it was almost like having one group
in the debate saying: Look, we have 17 scientists to
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
say we are right, while another group was saying:: We
have 17 scientists to say that it is not right. Consequently,
it was difficult to convey a sense of scientific
unity on highly contested issues, and the stumbling
block for the RFA seemingly proved to be (a) the way
in which these scientific disputes were dealt with and
(b) to what extent science would determine the final
outcome.
The confrontational style towards problem resolutions,
as indicated by interviewees, instilled the feeling
in many RFA stakeholders that science was used as a
weapon, which amounted to a manipulation of science.
Many respondents believed that science was
used to build a façade, a façade that the process
would be using … to provide [Western Australians]
with … answers, and that was publicly acceptable,
whereas in reality, the guidance, the levels of forest
reservation and so on, was coming from elsewhere,
and it was not coming from science. It was this blurring
of science and politics that led many to believe
that the RFA process has not been about science and
overall that the scientific arguments were rather unimportant.
A number of stakeholders, members of
the timber industry in particular, had confidence …
in the scientific studies and the rigour of the assessment
work, and even conservationists conceded that
there was some good stuff in the WA RFA. Still,
most were convinced that the RFA had nothing to do
with logic or science and that it was all but a political
process where [e]ven some of the science outcomes
were political outcomes.
In relation to what the process delivered, many stakeholders
believed that scientific outcomes were not
necessarily reflected in the outcomes of the RFA. In
other words, the nexus between what the science has
found out and what actually happened was not [considered]
particular strong. This feeling was also expressed
in connection with the amendments of the
WA RFA, which meant that the whole thing [was] …
dissolved … in ten weeks via a … resolution [that]
was pretty much a spontaneous thing rather than an
outcome of all that good science that had been done.
As was put soberly, [p]olicies come and go.
It was this apparent treatment of science that was
seen by many stakeholders to have damaged both
science and the process, and it was held that if the
science had been used honourably to really work out
the best long-term reserve system, the best silvicultural
methods etc., …it could have been a much
better outcome. It was argued by a number of participants
that the RFA was damaged because people
could not see how science was giving [them] the
answer[s]. The perceived problem was that science
could not give the answers because it was science that

needed to be given an honest direction, and they did
not think that science was given that moral guidance.
Moral guidance was deemed important, however,
based on the view that science itself cannot make this
last step to policy, … to outcomes in the real world,
…the real environment, and in the forests. It could
not … [produce the answers] because the reductionist
nature of science was in this particular case exploited
as a weakness … especially, its weakness as an integrating
perspective was absolutely exploited to the
maximum by the Department of Conservation and
Land Management in order to control the process. It
seems that very useful strengths of science to have
that precision and that reductionist ability allowed
that to occur.
Similar sentiments were expressed by research participants
in a study undertaken by Bigler Cole (1998),
whose work also examined the perceptions of science
in the Western Australian RFA process with an emphasis
on the nature of science itself. Her results also
pointed to the exclusion and/or marginalisation of what
was coined reliable scientists due to bureaucratic elements
limiting scientific inquiries and placing restrictions on what
scientists could either say or do. This was said to
have been particularly true for government employed
scientists. Similar arguments were put forth by research
participants in this study. Bigler Cole unearthed
signs of institutional positivism and a strong
sense of disinterestedness, objectivity, and truth among
individuals working as scientists for government
departments, a strong reminder of the basis for the
ideological antagonisms between CALM and non-
CALM scientists mentioned earlier on. Not dissimilar
to the findings presented above, three quarters of
Bigler Cole’s research participants questioned the
empirical validity of the WA RFA process. Many expressed
concerns about the secrecy involved in the
process, a sense of distrust in relation to CALM, and
much public confusion about the science of the RFA.
She reported many criticisms directed against the
CRA reports, identifying perceived deficiencies, as
this study has, in relation to the quality of the CRA
reports, the timeframes allowed for the CRA studies,
the stifled publication process, poor public consultation, and
the lack of peer review.
So what? is the legitimate question one might ask at
this point. What can be learned from this exercise
and the insights gained? Many of today’s natural
resource conflicts may best be characterised as
wicked and complex due to overlapping, competing,
and conflicting demands placed on complex natural
systems by a diverse range of resource stakeholders.
The difficulty here is, as suggested by Beer (1984),
that complex systems with great variety are difficult
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 223
to manage and require the limiting of the effects of
such variety. Policy processes designed to resolve
messy resource conflicts consequently need to deal
with complexity and the issue of reducing variety. In
situations such as these science, as happened in the
case of the Western Australian RFA, is called upon to
reduce complexity and to provide certainty and stability.
This, however, comes at a risk of oversimplification
in that approaches to limit the complexity of a
system, according to Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety,
require the same amount of complexity as that of
the system which they intend to reduce (Ashby,
1960). The RFA stakeholder data provide support
for the suggestion that an oversimplification of the
policy process occurred due to the adoption of a
reductionist, closed-system, approach towards process
design and policy formulation. The case study
revealed perceptions of the political favouring of
positivistic forest science as a means of underpinning
the economic status quo of the industry and the political
status quo for the government and its forest department,
exuding faith in forest management practices
and dismissing dissenting calls for more precautionary
approaches towards forestry. The RFA outcome
was thus perceived as a product of the meshing
of reductionist science and reductionist policy making,
ostensibly excluding plural perspectives from the
debate and instead conveying a message of scientific
agreement and unity on contentious matters pertaining
to the use and management of native forests.
Dissent from this unified perspective, which came
largely from scientists working outside the State’s
government bureaucracy, was labelled nonfactual,
emotional, and ideologically charged, while departmental
forest science was portrayed as true and objective
and free from ideology and value-laden assumptions.
This serves as a reminder of the standard view of
science mentioned earlier, which renders the work by
unbiased and value-free specialists objective and correct
(Bijker, 1995), meaning that science is equated with
positivism and positivism with factualness. In contrast,
scepticism or precautionism are considered
value-laden and less, if at all, scientific.
Policy processes deal with the issue of integration;
essentially, they are processes of integrating multiple
perspectives. It follows that the scientific involvement
in those processes requires science to also address
the issue of integration, as suggested by Bigler
Cole (1998), dealing with the integration of boarder issues,
methodologies, logical and empirical assumptions. Yet, positivistic
dogmatism would hamper, even preclude,
such integration leading to the marginalisation of
alternative perspectives, which in Western Australia
was compounded by the issue of censorship, im-

224
paired scientific freedom of speech, and methodological
obstacles to scientific engagement in public
discourses. Transparency, public scrutiny, and an
open exchange of ideas are the lifeblood of science.
This does not necessarily imply unity and agreement.
In contrast, science needs a plurality of viewpoints
and disagreement for the resulting tensions are often
a driving force within science. Scientific homogenisation
and forced singularity however, are potentially
dangerous, especially within today’s complex and
rapidly changing environment. Ignorance towards, or
suppression of, alternative perspectives can lead to
metanoia (see Emery & Trist, 1965; Emery, 1997; Trist,
Emery, & Murray, 1997) systemic blind spots, which
in an applied policy context may result in wrong
problem specifications and type-3 errors (after Mitroff,
1998) in policy outcomes (i.e. perfect answers
to the wrong problem). The Western Australian RFA
can be seen in those terms, which according to stakeholders
represented a closed process that was ignoring
the communities’ wishes (e.g. the bureaucrats
ignored the community) and marginalised dissenting
scientists whose advice was ignored (e.g. they ignored
all of our recommendations), which led to an outcome
that missed the mark in political acceptability.
Environmental management is people management,
and different people have different perspectives.
Environmental policy processes generally deal with
the solving of a community problem and hence face a
similar problematique. Consequently, environmental
policy-making is multi-dimensional for there are
ecological complexity and multiple paradigms at
work. For environmental policy-making to be effective
the addressing of both social and ecological
complexity is required. This is where science is expected
to deliver integration. Policy processes, however,
relying on a scientific façade are highly unlikely
to achieve integration for they do not move beyond
the earlier referred to religious blessing type approach
to science, which does not allow for inclusion and
plurality. Science is not at risk because of existing
alternative perspectives and scientific argument. It is
the way through which these disagreements are resolved
that determines scientific credibility and the
development of trust – the key ingredient to capacity
building. The treatment of scientific disunity on
environmental matters exhibited in Western Australia,
which was largely based on philosophical and ideological
differences between departmental and nondepartmental
scientists, can serve here as an example.
Non-government scientists working outside institutional
constraints repeatedly called for a widening of
the focus of RFA science, transparency, inclusion,
and collaboration as well as a slowing down in the
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
pace of environmental commodification and greater
precaution in the face of risks relating to the management
of the State’s native forests (e.g. Horwitz &
Calver, 1998). Yet, perceivably due to short-term
economic and electoral imperatives, which require ad
hoc solutions, people’s ability to slow down and take
time to reflect was effectively limited. The timing and
scoping of CRA projects in Western Australia are a
case in point where political decision makers guided
by political pragmatism - backed by departmental
science - ignored calls for additional data, more time,
and more in-depth analyses. It is these types of process
constraints that essentially produce predetermined
process outcomes and prevent transformational
change and therefore undermine science and preclude
the development of trust in science.
Political processes need science, and credible political
processes depend on credible science. Science can
only be credible, however, if allowed to follow its
processes and protocols. This is what political processes
need to enable and allow. There ought to be a
recognition that scientific processes differ in nature
from political processes. These differences lie in time
lines, structure, and agenda, and by treating both
processes the same, science can become dysfunctional
through the loss of integrity and credibility,
damaging both science and the political process.
Certainly, political reality demands that compromises
need to be made, especially in relation to time, but
this does not need to occur at the expense of the
integrity of science. Science’s role in political process
is always going to be instrumental in that science
plays an informing role. Traditionally, the informants
were assumed to be objective experts without motivations,
values, and ideologies, a view which denies the
existence of allegiances, biases, and assumptions. A
new form of honesty or transparency may be needed
to allow science as the process informant to become
more contextual, meaning that scientific data is made
available in conjunction with assumption specifications
that can be publicly scrutinised and debated.
An approach such as this would not only help overcome
allegiance problems in that professional constraints
would be acknowledged but also effectively
minimise the risk of the political abuse of science.
Yet, this form of overt politics would require a radical
shift in the perception of science-politics relations.
Inductivism maintains that science transcends politics
and in a sense objectifies them. Science, however, is
not apolitical for it operates from within a context,
that may be institutional, societal, or professional.
Different contexts mean different values and different
assumptions. In other words, scientific data is
value-laden data (after Mitroff & Emshoff, 1979), a

point which Lines (1998, p.87) illustrates rather well
by saying that:
“The certainties of science are as pluralistic, as conflicting
and as subject to opinion as politics or economics
or any other human enterprise. The procedures of
‘objective’ inquiry are just as much modified by self, by
fantasy and folly as those of subjective inquiry”.
Inductivism and positivistic science generally reject
this notion as postmodern relativism, which is feared
to damage science and render it obsolete. But how
can science lose credibility and how is its value being
diminished when assumptions are made transparent
and the processes of data generation and analysis
made open to peer review? Would it not be the denial
of context and bias that would undermine the
credibility of science in future policy processes?
In times of intensifying environmental problems
there is a real need for effective environmental policymaking.
Environmental policies can only be effective,
however, if they enjoy community support and
can be trusted. In light of the case study data presented
above it seems reasonable to suggest that
perhaps more overt environmental politics are needed
in order to (re-)gain public trust in political processes
and their supporting sciences as well as the trust of
science and scientists in their role in these political
undertakings. Without trust and the development of
a trust culture, capacity building cannot occur and
much needed environmental restoration and protection
are delayed. While some (institutional/departmental)
science may thrive in a climate
of public distrust and cynicism, the case study data of
this research suggests that that type of society-science
relations are ultimately unhealthy and potentially lead
to dysfunctional processes of policy formulation.
Conclusion
An attempt has been made in this paper to provide an
understanding of stakeholder perceptions of science
within a political process and to identify the lessons
that may be learned from this exercise. The Western
Australian case study data has revealed that covert
politics and political interference in scientific processes
were responsible for a climate of public distrust,
which ostensibly led to the rejection of a political
process resulting from a lack of credibility.
In this context, consideration was given to a new
approach to the relationship between science and
policy-making involving science in political processes
based on the recognition of science’s political nature
and acknowledging scientific process requirements as
being distinct from political process requirements. A
new form of transparency has been suggested, prem-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 225
ising public deliberation on contextually grounded
scientific data. It is believed that the inclusion of
values and assumptions would allow for a more open
and honest debate, which in turn may improve the
public’s understanding of science, political processes,
and their interactions and so enhance the quality and
durability of policy outcomes.
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the
Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge
for Social Science”, Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 228-238.
International NGOs as Knowledge Mediators: A Case Study on
Decision-Making on Hydrocarbon Refrigerators by a Japanese Appliance
Maker
Yasuko Matsumoto ∗
I. Introduction ♣
Arresting global warming will necessitate substantial
greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. Technological
improvement and innovation, and the introduction of
improved technologies by business will play a major
role, and much research has been done to analyze the
factors behind decision-making on technological
development and commercialization. But there is not
much research on what role can be played in technological
innovation processes by environmental
NGOs, which are important actors involved in various
facets of global environmental issues. Performing
an accurate analysis of businesses' decision-making
factors makes it imperative to examine also the influence
and role of environmental NGOs, whose activities
are now broadened, multifaceted, and specialized.
While decision-making is influenced by many factors,
this paper focuses on the role of international NGOs
as knowledge mediators, both domestically and internationally,
and their influence on decision-making
processes, which was one of Greenpeace's most
important strategic tools. 1
∗ National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan (presently,
Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto
University). Contact: y.matsumoto@gsges.mbox.media.kyotou.ac.jp
♣ Interviews: Director, Refrigeration Research Laboratory, Matsushita
Refrigeration Company (October 10, 2002); General
Manager, Engineering, Quality & Planning Group, Refrigeration
Research Laboratory, Matsushita Refrigeration Company
(October 10, 2002); Former Division Director, Former chairman
of JEMA Environmental Committee, presently JEMA
Managing Director (October 17, 2002), JEMA (October 17);
Former Director (1993), Refrigeration Research Laboratory,
Matsushita Refrigeration Company (October 10, 2002); former
JAREP/TC chairman, Japan Refrigeration and Air Conditioning
Industry Association (formerly in the Air Conditioning
Division, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.), formerly a member
of the UNEP TOC Refrigeration, AC and Heat Pumps,
Report Drafting Committee (October 16, 2002); Business Department
director at a Japanese gas supplier (November 11,
2002); Former Head of the Ozone Protection Office in the
MITI (February 7, 2003); Former Director of the JEMA and
Senior Expert Member of the TEAP (February 21, 2003);
JEMA Appliance Division section manager (February 21,
2003).
1 In this paper Greenpeace refers to the entire Greenpeace organi-
This paper discusses the February 2002 commercialization
of consumer refrigerators using hydrocarbon
(HC) refrigerants by Matsushita Refrigeration Company
(below, "Matsushita RC"), one of Japan's biggest
consumer refrigerator makers under the "National"
brand name. This paper will spotlight the influence of
Matsushita's in-house and external knowledge and the
role of the international environmental NGO Greenpeace
as a knowledge mediator, and show what influence
the multifaceted activities of Greenpeace exercised
on the awareness of knowledge held by the
major actors inside and outside Matsushita, on the
flow of that knowledge, and on Matsushita RC's
decisions.
This paper addresses this matter because a number of
factors make it quite possible to identify the general
influence of Greenpeace's campaign on Matsushita
RC's decisions: Both internationally and in Japan,
Greenpeace was the primary actor in the campaign to
eliminate in-kind chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) alternatives,
namely, the ozone-depleting and potent greenhouse
gases (GHGs) hydrochlorofluorocarbons
(HCFCs), as well as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs),
which are also potent GHGs; in Japan there had
previously been hardly any clear administrative policy
or measures on technologies that do not use CFCs or
HCFCs/HFCs (i.e., not-in-kind, or NIK technologies
that not only are ozone layer-friendly, but also minimize
the contribution to global warming); and prior
to Greenpeace's campaign in Japan, Japan's media
had hardly carried any stories about HFCs.
The reasons for choosing Matsushita RC include:
Matsushita RC was the first to announce intended
commercialization, and likely to begin working on it.
Research sources included: Searches of the literature,
and interviews . From an academic viewpoint, the
author also reinterpreted her own experience and
information gained during eight years in charge of
Greenpeace Japan's ozone protection and climate
change campaign.
zation, especially Greenpeace International, Greenpeace Germany,
and Greenpeace Japan. "Company A" signifies a Japanese
LPG supplier. The analysis of factors affecting the Matsushita
Refrigeration Company’s decision-making is the author's
overall analysis of all interviews conducted and experiences
while running this campaign at Greenpeace Japan. All
responsibility rests with the author alone.

The technology discussed here can be classed as
creative improvement of existing technology. But it is
the author's understanding that to Japanese makers
these improvements were innovative, not just technologically,
but also socially and culturally. For that
reason the discussion makes liberal use of analyses
about research on technological innovation.
2. Background
2.1. GREENPEACE'S CAMPAIGN TO ELIMINATE
HCFCS AND HFCS, AND PRODUCTION OF A
CONSUMER HC REFRIGERATOR
Since the end of the 1980s, the international environmental
organization Greenpeace has run an ozone
layer protection campaign that has sought the total
phaseout and international regulation of not only the
ozone-depleting substances CFCs and HCFCs, but
also of HFCs, a new and powerful class of GHGs
that were developed by the industry as CFC/HCFC
substitutes. Governments and industry encouraged
the expanded production and use of HFCs as key
substitutes for CFCs. Montreal Protocol Meetings of
the Parties (MOPs) concluded that the treatment
according to international law of HFCs should be
discussed under the Framework Convention on Climate
Change (FCCC). It was not until the third conference
of the parties to the FCCC (COP3) (December
1997), seven years after convention negotiations
started, that HFCs became formally subject to the
protocol.
CFCs have been used as both the insulation blowing
agents and the refrigerants in consumer refrigerators.
After agreement on the CFC phaseout schedule under
the Montreal Protocol, refrigerator makers in
Germany began reducing their CFC use by 50%, and
Japan began switching to ozone-depleting HCFCs for
insulation blowing agents, while both countries chose
HFCs for refrigerants.
To refute the argument that "HFCs are essential for
the CFC phaseout" and to discontinue the production
and use of HFCs, Greenpeace Germany in 1992
commissioned the design of a totally fluorocarbonfree
consumer refrigerator prototype to a refrigerator
maker (later to become Foron) in the former East
Germany, which was the only refrigerator maker
using fluorocarbon-free insulation in both the former
West and East Germany, and to a municipal research
institute in the city of Dortmund in the former West
Germany that had developed a refrigerator using a
hydrocarbon refrigerant. This HC refrigerator technology,
dubbed "Greenfreeze," was placed on the
market in March 1993 by Foron with support from
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 229
the German government, and it heavily influenced
market trends not only in Germany, but throughout
all of Europe owing to factors including a pan-
European campaign by Greenpeace, which simultaneously
extended its campaign to other countries.
Greenfreeze's market debut has also had spillover
effects on technologies in other fields and government
policies. It also influenced the transfer of technologies
to developing countries under the Montreal
Protocol; and one can assume that it helped bring
about new policies such as Denmark's levying of a
global warming potential (GWP) tax on HFCs.
Currently refrigerators using HC refrigerants hold
15% of the world consumer refrigerator market, 52%
of the European market, and 19% of the Chinese
market. 2
Greenpeace Japan launched a campaign in 1991 to
eliminate HCFCs and HFCs, and when the Greenfreeze
prototype appeared in Germany in 1992, it
relayed the technological knowledge and information
to media people and the government. At the Montreal
Protocol MOP4 in November 1992, the Greenfreeze
prototype displayed at the venue by Greenpeace
became known to the Japanese on two popular
TV news programs. 3 In April 1993 Greenpeace
Japan imported three Greenfreeze units from Germany,
invited a German engineer to Japan, and held
an exhibit for corporate representatives in Tokyo,
which was attended by nearly 700 people in four days.
Later, Greenpeace Japan conducted a wide variety of
activities, including a consumer campaign exhorting
appliance makers to sell the Greenfreeze, exhibits,
media work, the provision of knowledge and information
on NIK technologies to the government,
refrigerator makers, and other user-maker companies,
and lobbying at FCCC and Montreal Protocol
MOPs. 4
2.2. GREENFREEZE DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN
Getting fluorocarbons out of consumer refrigerators
necessitates stopping their use for both insulation
blowing agents and refrigerants. Both were achieved
at about the same time in Germany, but commercialization
of non-HCFC refrigerators in Japan started in
1994, while it was about eight years later, in 2002, that
commercialization of non-HFC refrigerators began.
In 1993 Japanese appliance makers began switching
2 According to Matsushita RC document, October 2002.
3 Representatives of the Japan Electrical Manufacturers' Association
(JEMA) also visited the site.
4 For detailed information on the Greenfreeze campaign, see
Greenpeace 1994; Maté 2001; Matsumoto 2002.

230
their consumer refrigerators to HCFCs and HFCs.
Even after the Greenfreeze debuted in Germany, the
official view of the Japan Electrical Manufacturers'
Association (JEMA) on switching to HCs was consistently
negative because of their flammability, and
differences between Europe and Japan in cooling
systems and size (Greenpeace Japan 2002).
In April 1994, one year after the Greenfreeze exhibit,
Matsushita RC had already switched again, from
HCFCs to a hydrocarbon insulation blowing agent,
and since then nearly all manufacturers have been
using HC insulation technology.
In January and February 2002, three major Japanese
consumer appliance manufacturers including Matsushita
debuted Japan's first fluorocarbon-free refrigerators
using an HC refrigerant. Such refrigerators came
on the market about nine years later than they did in
Germany (1993), but it is still extremely rare in Japan
for large manufacturers to switch their production
lines to a new technology and begin mass production
after already investing huge sums in research, development,
and production lines for another technology
despite the lack of legal controls or government guidance.
Further, this was nearly unprecedented in that
the choice was a technology long championed by an
environmental organization, and Matsushita RC too
admits that Greenpeace influenced its decisionmaking
(interview).
This paper focuses mainly on the domestic activities
of Greenpeace Japan against the backdrop of Greenpeace's
international activities, and on the direct and
indirect interaction with Matsushita RC.
2.3. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF HFCS, AND
THEIR PLACE IN INTERNATIONAL
AGREEMENTS AND DOMESTIC POLICY
HFCs were found to be substitutes for CFCs in the
early 1980s. 5 In 1987 a Du Pont pilot plant for HFC-
134a started operating in the US (Du Pont 1988, 8). It
is anticipated that their production, use, and emissions
will henceforth increase rapidly (Kroeze 1995,
4; Oberthür 2001, 362).
FCCC COP3 adopted the Kyoto Protocol, which
includes HFCs as one of the six GHGs in Annex A.
The six types of gases are lumped together in a "sixgas
basket" when calculating GWP equivalent to
determine reductions, which lets each country deal
with HFCs in its own way.
In 1998 Japan's government released the "Guideline
of Measures to Prevent Global Warming," which is a
5 Andersen. 1999. Dr. S. Andersen is TEAP co-chair of the Stratospheric
Climate Projects, US/EPA.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
policy aimed at achieving a 6% reduction target. To
that end, it proposes to hold the effects of HFCs,
perfluorocabons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride
(SF6 ) 6 down to a 2% increase, which corresponds to
an increase of about 50% over 1995. In addition, the
May 1998 “Home Electrical Appliance Recycling
Law” requires that fluorocarbon refrigerants in consumer
refrigerators and room air conditioners be
recovered. The “Fluorocarbon Recovery and Destruction
Law”, legislation drafted by House of Representatives
members and passed in June 2001, requires
the recovery and destruction of HFCs and
other fluorocarbons in industrial chillers and space
conditioning units, and in car air conditioners.
3. Main HFC-Related Knowledge
This paper discusses HFC/NIK alternatives-related
knowledge by dividing it into scientific knowledge
and technological knowledge for the sake of convenience.
3.1. SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Scientific knowledge such as the GWPs of HFCs is
the subject of scientific reports under the Montreal
Protocol regime, which provides UNEP/WMO
scientific assessment reports, and the climate change
regime, which provides IPCC assessment reports. 7
The high GWPs of HFCs were already pointed out
by many papers submitted to a UNEP meeting in
January 1988. 8
3.2. TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
Technological knowledge on HFCs has been produced
mainly by UNEP's Technology and Economic
Assessment Panel (TEAP), which assesses CFC substitutes.
The Montreal Protocol MOP4 in 1992 resolved
that TEAP assessments of methods to substitute
CFCs and HCFCs (which include the use of
HFCs), would also consider their contribution to
global warming (Decision IV/13,
UNEP/OzL.Pro.4/15). Greenpeace intensively lobbied
the process behind this decision. The reason that
HFC use was facilitated under the Montreal Protocol
was largely because of TEAP knowledge that had
given HFCs a favorable rating as an essential replacement
for the CFC phaseout.
There was hardly any policy linkage until, under a
6 GHGs listed in Annex A of the Kyoto Protocol.
7 The first IPCC report, "Climate Change – The IPCC Scientific
Assessment," was published in August, 1990.
8 Op. cit., note 5.

proposal from the Swiss government, a decision
(Decision 13, FCCC/CP/1998/16/Add.1) was made
at COP4 that the IPCC and the TEAP would hold
joint workshops, and that the FCCC Subsidiary Body
would report the results at COP5.
4. Greenpeace's Perspective and Strategy
4.1. ACQUISITION AND USE OF KNOWLEDGE
Greenpeace obtained a wide variety of technological
knowledge about NIK substitution methods from
academic societies, workshops, company engineers,
and other sources, and broadened its contacts with
experts on NIK technologies. These sources provided
Greenpeace with new knowledge and information
about technologies, while businesses gained
information and analyses on technological and political
trends in intergovernmental negotiations and
other countries from Greenpeace. This exchange
created a dynamic cycle of constructive feedback for
knowledge and information. 9
4.2. THE GREENPEACE PERSPECTIVE
Greenpeace gained scientific knowledge on the two
global environmental problems through its involvement
in them. Conversant with the course of intergovernmental
negotiations on both issues, it found a
new problem in HFCs (Matsumoto 1999; Oberthür
2001).
Greenpeace tried to "reframe" environmental discourse
in the two global environmental regimes by
submitting to international society that HFCs were
part of the problem instead of part of the solution
(Jamison 1996, 226; Keck an Sikkink 1998, 2-3;
Jasonoff 1997, 582). And by presenting technological
breakthroughs itself, Greenpeace overturned the
more or less accepted knowledge that the regimes had
"no alternatives."
4.3. THE GREENPEACE STRATEGY
Greenpeace's strategy made a transition from trying
to directly persuade fluorocarbon makers to phase
out fluorocarbon production, to a worldwide campaign
to reduce HFC demand for major uses mainly
through existing or potential NIK alternatives.
Most of the technological knowledge on assessing
CFC substitutes was limited to fluorocarbon makers,
user-makers, and a limited number of experts, which
"obstructed market entry by other firms" (Kemp
9 Matsushita RC and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
engineers, gas suppliers, auto air conditioner engineers, etc.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 231
1997, 228). Proving the existence of non-HFC substitute
methods required that NGOs also obtain much
detailed technological information and knowledge
and have their own internal capability for assessing
them.
Formerly the flow of knowledge and the flow of
CFCs, HCFCs, and HFCs, i.e., the choice of technologies,
both went in the same direction: from the
chemical industry, which is one of the more knowledge-intensive
sectors (Kemp 1997, 220), to usermakers.
Thus the chemical industry almost totally
dominated the flow of knowledge, but Greenpeace
weakened its relative influence by creating a new flow
of alternative knowledge to user-makers.
4.4. WHICH EVENTS INFLUENCED MATSUSHITA
RC'S DECISION-MAKING?
The events recorded in materials prepared by Matsushita
RC for presentations meant for the general
public show which events influenced Matsushita RC's
decision-making.
• “From 1991: Anti-HFC campaign by
Greenpeace”
• “Jul 1992: Foron puts HC refrigerator on
sale. 10 Six months later all Germany refrigerator
makers follow suit.”
• “From 1994: HC refrigerators appear on
market in Northern Europe and England.”
• “Dec 1997: HFCs become controlled substances
at COP3.”
• “Aug-Dec 1999: Consumers asked Matsushita
to sell HC refrigerators.”
• “Nov 2001: JEMA issues standards for HC
refrigerators.” 11
5. Flow and Role of Knowledge
Various actors directly and indirectly influenced Matsushita
RC's decision-making.
5.1. GERMAN REFRIGERATOR MAKERS
Until Greenfreeze became commercially available,
Japanese makers were watching trends among the
major US manufacturers (interview). (See 6-2)
About midway through the year when Greenfreeze
appeared, JEMA sent a group to Europe to investi-
10 Actually this was the completion of a prototype.
11 The creation of voluntary safety standards by JEMA was indispensable
when Matsushita RC was to actually begin selling a
refrigerator using a flammable HC refrigerant. After the standards
were issued, Matsushita RC declared it would sell HC refrigerators.

232
gate HC blowing agents and refrigerants.
Presumably, the German-initiated European trend
toward a shift to NIK alternatives influenced Matsushita
RC to decide that it would at least be ready to
make HC refrigerators at any time. 12 Further, because
Matsushita RC was a compressor maker with a
considerable world market share and counted major
German refrigerator makers among its customers,
after the Greenfreeze went on sale in Germany, Matsushita
RC quickly began exporting HC refrigerant
compressors from its Singapore plant. Overseas sales
personnel served as another channel for knowledge
and information on the latest market and social
trends in Europe (interview).
After the 1993 debut of HC refrigerators, German
refrigerator makers and an expert at the Dortmund
institute frequently exchanged knowledge and information
with Greenpeace Germany. Greenpeace
Germany provided other Greenpeace offices around
the world with the technological knowledge and
information thus obtained, and by funneling it
through local Greenfreeze campaigns made it available
to consumer appliance makers, other usermakers,
and governments in other countries.
5.2. LPG SUPPLIERS (BRITISH AND JAPANESE)
In 1994 Calor Gas, England's largest LPG supplier,
was inspired by Greenfreeze and offered a new type
of blended HC refrigerant for commercial use, which
marked its entry into the refrigerant market. Greenpeace
began cooperating with Calor Gas as an extension
of its solutions campaign. Calor Gas then obtained
the cooperation of Company A, a Japanese
LPG supplier, and with the purpose of marketing,
they provided Matsushita RC and other Japanese
user-makers with technological knowledge about HC
refrigerants and information on the introduction of
HC refrigerants in Europe. These two companies'
efforts widened channels among Japanese companies
for technological knowledge and information, which
metamorphosed from the "knowledge and information
of environmental organizations" into the
"knowledge and information of companies considered
reliable on the market," which was of particular
significance in Japan. To Matsushita RC, the knowledge
and information obtained from those two companies
"were useful in determining its direction and
getting preparations made." Calor Gas and Company
A also helped Matsushita RC with "experimental
equipment and preparing service manuals" (interview).
12 A Matsushita RC document said, "Began development (research)
of a HC-600a refrigerator in April 1993."
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
In an attempt to get HFCs into the Kyoto Protocol,
Greenpeace had presentations by experts from Calor
Gas, and from a German maker of commercial chillers
and refrigerators at Greenpeace-sponsored NIK
workshops for governments and industry at COP3
and other venues. This increase in the number of new
knowledge actors increased the number of participants
for discussion on HFCs, a subject that had long
been given short shrift.
5.3. MASS MEDIA
The Greenfreeze campaign, which was based on the
actual availability of NIK alternatives in the market,
triggered coverage of the HFC issue by Japanese
media.
A big article on June 6, 1993 in a nationwide newspaper
about the Greenfreeze exhibit by Greenpeace
Japan had a major impact on other media. Describing
Greenfreeze as a social phenomenon, the article
wrote about how Greenfreeze had shocked the consumer
appliance industry and elicited its interest. By
giving a clear positive assessment of the impact of the
Greenfreeze campaign on Japanese industry, this
article created an environment that enabled other
media to write about Greenfreeze without fear of
being criticized. Immediately after this article, Greenpeace
Japan began receiving far more media inquiries
about Greenfreeze, which appeared with increasing
frequency in industry newspapers and journals.
Further, it was because of newspaper articles that the
campaign seeking the sale of Greenfreeze refrigerators
had such heavy citizen participation in Japan. It
is not an overstatement to say that the "trend" that
Matsushita RC referred to as a decisive factor behind
its decision on commercialization was indeed partly
the product of continuous media coverage over a
certain period of time.
Media coverage also prompted other HFC user industries
to contact Greenpeace Japan for information.
These new connections helped Greenpeace
acquire new knowledge and information on business
trends, which was added to its store of knowledge
and used in discussions with targeted appliance makers.
In this way the media played a role that created new
channels for the flow of knowledge and increased the
number of actors.
5.4. MATSUSHITA'S INSIDE ACTORS
Within the Matsushita group, Matsushita RC develops
and manufactures refrigerators, while Matsushita
EI makes air conditioners, TVs, and other products.
Each has its own research facility. While the president

of Matsushita RC made the final official decision on
HC refrigerators, the decision prior to that was made
mainly by executives in charge of technology (interview).
It was engineers at Matsushita RC and EI who
provided these actual decision-makers with the
knowledge, information, judgments on trends, and
other criteria on which the decision was largely based.
Information from Matsushita EI was influential in
Matsushita RC's decision to switch to HCs for blowing
insulation (commercialized in April 1994).
For example, one engineer in Matsushita EI's air
conditioning department, who had been seconded to
the Japan Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Industry
Association (JRAIA), was also involved in the
process of developing technological knowledge by
serving on a Technical Options Committee (TOC) of
UNEP's TEAP and attending meetings of the ISO
and the International Electrotechnical Commission.
At the same time, he provided Matsushita RC and EI,
JEMA, JRAIA, and other entities with the latest technological
knowledge gained at such committee meetings,
and information on international political trends.
His role was passed on to other engineers, who attend
related academic conferences, conventions
abroad, and other events, where they learn about the
latest technology trends and knowledge. Such international
contact makes it possible for engineers to gain
a global perspective.
Furthermore, Matsushita RC engineers, its research
laboratory's director, and other senior engineers have
cooperative relationships with academic societies and
university researchers (knowledge communities). This
is another channel allowing access to the latest
knowledge and trends.
But at the same time, there were other important
factors for concluding that working toward the switch
to HCs was necessary, especially for insulation blowing
agents. These included: There were no discrepancies
between the information possessed by the aforementioned
Matsushita RC and EI engineers about
technological and market trends in Europe, and it
was consistent with the knowledge and information
from Greenpeace; and verification by researchers at
universities to which Matsushita RC engineers had
ties confirmed the validity of the knowledge provided
by Greenpeace (interview).
Another important factor was that, because Matsushita
RC made both refrigerators and compressors,
the technical managers with influence over chief
decision-makers were able to quickly obtain technical
knowledge and information from their customers for
their compressors in Germany soon after commercialization
in Germany, which allowed them to make
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 233
comprehensive judgments. Internal and external
stores of knowledge, technological expertise, and the
acquisition and communication of new knowledge are
essential to making decisions affecting a company's
technological innovation, but that is not enough to
explain the instance at hand.
Green et al. point out the importance of not only
external factors, but also that of "institutional assumptions
about potential markets and the desirability
of different courses of action," and say that "the
firm, as an organization, has to be structured so as to
"interpret" the signals in the first place" (Green 1994,
1057). Kemp also observes that a "firm's ability to
absorb external knowledge" and "the ability to use inhouse
knowledge" are major elements of the ability to
innovate (Kemp 2000, 52). In this instance it is possible
that, as an organization, Matsushita RC had a
process and interpretive structure that integrate and
interpret a wide variety of information and knowledge
covering technological and sociocultural aspects, and
it is possible to hypothesize that these made a difference,
but verifying this would necessitate more study,
including inter-company comparisons.
In May 1997 Matsushita RC invited a Greenpeace
Japan campaigner to be the special keynote speaker
("Global Warming and the Current State of International
Negotiations") at a large training session for
engineers in its group because the company wanted
its technology development engineers to understand
world trends, i.e., "where to go, what problems to
solve, and what sort of knowledge to use" (Kemp
1997, 277) regarding the global warming issue and to
take those trends into account in technological development.
It was very unusual for a major Japanese
corporation to be so open to the knowledge of environmental
NGOs. This affords a glimpse of Matsushita's
stance toward contact with new knowledge
actors and incorporating new knowledge.
5.5. JAPANESE GOVERNMENT
Not a single person interviewed mentioned the Japanese
government as a decision-making factor. The
Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI,
now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry,
METI) consistently argued that HFCs are essential
for phasing out CFCs.
TEAP reports provided knowledge that heavily influenced
MITI in deciding its position in Montreal Protocol
intergovernmental negotiations (interview).
In 1992 and 1993 when MITI obtained information
about German HC refrigerators through the media,
MITI personnel asked appliance makers about the
possibilities of HC technology, but received unfavor-

234
able explanations (interview). Most of MITI's knowledge
sources were industries with vested interests in
HFCs; USEPA, whose policies favored HFCs; and
TEAP, whose knowledge tended to favor HFCs.
Even after some NIK substitutes had been found
commercially successful, MITI did not actively perform
NIK substitute research in the refrigeration
sector, 13 transformed little information on them to
industry, and developed few policies with a perspective
on the policy interlinkages between ozone layer
depletion and global warming. But neither did
MITI/METI hamper the efforts of appliance makers
and others to use HC refrigerants (interview).
Some examples in which the government played a
role in the sense of limiting atmospheric emissions of
HFCs include the two laws and the guideline described
in 2-3. Considering that in Japan, both the
government and manufacturers have used fluorocarbon
recovery to argue that the switch to NIK technologies
is unnecessary, it is hard to tell how this
legislation influenced Matsushita RC's decisionmaking,
but as regards the contribution to
disseminating among consumers the awareness that
in general something must be done about HFCs, the
government did in effect make a certain indirect
contribution to the flow of knowledge to industry
and the public.
5.6. GREENPEACE AND GREENPEACE JAPAN
Greenpeace's four–day Greenfreeze exhibit in 1993
attracted about 700 people including those from the
seven major consumer appliance makers, and it
aroused both much interest and rebuttals among their
engineers. As its strategy, Greenpeace Japan at first
eschewed the confrontational approach that was
known to be characteristic of Greenpeace, and supplied
appliance makers with much documentation on
HFCs and NIK technologies, information on trends
in Europe, and other information. In the summer of
1993 Greenpeace Japan called on the director of
Matsushita RC's research laboratory, and it launched
a postcard campaign calling on consumers to directly
ask appliance makers to develop and sell Greenfreeze
refrigerators. The following April, Matsushita RC
became the first company in Japan to sell a refrigerator
with fluorocarbon-free insulation, namely HCblown
insulation.
In 1998, after the Kyoto Protocol had been adopted,
Matsushita RC decided to develop refrigerators using
HFC refrigerant
13 MITI has subsidized research and development of substitute
technologies on insulation blowing agents to phase out
HCFCs.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
(with the two purposes of energy conservation and
low GWP (interview)). In 1998 Greenpeace Japan
started another major campaign targeting Matsushita
with a series of different activities including a consumer
campaign and soft direct actions on the street
and in a technology fair. In April 1999 Greenpeace
Japan submitted to the president of Matsushita RC
over 10,000 signatures of people asking Matsushita
RC to quickly sell Greenfreeze refrigerators, and the
president issued a verbal statement that they planned
to do so by the end of 2002. In November 2001 the
company premiered the refrigerator.
According to the interview with Matsushita RC, the
1988-99 Greenpeace Japan consumer campaign was
the primary factor making the company decide to
market HC refrigerators much earlier than 2010, as
originally planned after adoption of the Kyoto Protocol,
which was the main incentive for deciding to
market HC refrigerators (interview).
Using Greenpeace Germany's strategy, Greenpeace
Japan used hard data to show Matsushita RC that
consumers were willing to buy HC refrigerators. This
was accomplished by helping to reduce uncertainty
about market demand, and reinforcing the incentive
to decide on commercialization.
6. The Influence of Knowledge on
Matsushita RC's Decision-Making
6.1. THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC
KNOWLEDGE
While both the IPCC and UNEP/WMO are authoritative
providers of scientific knowledge, they themselves
were not effective carriers of knowledge in
terms of direct influence on Matsushita RC's decision-making.
Appliance makers including Matsushita were aware of
global warming issues in a general sense, and also had
specific knowledge about the GWPs of HFCs when
they chose HFC refrigerants for their consumer refrigerators.
However, interviews also made it clear that high
GWPs alone were not sufficient knowledge to persuade
executives or engineers. When Greenfreeze was
commercialized in Germany, GWP knowledge became
a matter of business for them. Matsushita RC
began basic R&D for HC refrigerants and barely kept
the research alive to allow a just-in-case response, but
German commercialization was not directly a reason
for commercialization by Matsushita RC, while a
more direct impact can be discerned in its commercialization
of refrigerators with HC-blown insulation.

Already, as with wastes, recycling laws, and energy
conservation, the consumer appliance industry had
been pressured by domestic law to take action on
major environmental problems. Phasing out HFCs
imposed a new burden on refrigerator makers just
after they had switched to HFCs, which had entailed
many difficulties in technological development and
big R&D investments.
As noted before, it was the inclusion of HFCs among
the gases in the Kyoto Protocol that was the decisive
factor behind Matsushita RC's decision for commercial
production. The current director of Matsushita
RC's research laboratory noted that the potential
change of +2% in the Guideline of Measures to Pre-
vent Global Warming was an item of major concern
to be closely watched (interview).
This is one example in which numerical targets made
Japanese companies mark out a clear direction and
make a major business course-change decision.
6.2. CHANNELS AND INFLUENCE OF
TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
When the industry was starting to consider the substitution
of CFCs, JEMA had attached importance to
the knowledge, information, and trends of parties
including US appliance makers using the same refrigeration
systems (refrigerators), fluorocarbon maker
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 235
Figure 1 Flow of knowledge among major actors (Source: The author)
organizations, and USEPA (interview). These knowledge
sources were oriented toward continuing HFC
use.
TEAP/TOC was more or less the sole official international
forum for assessing CFC substitution technology.
More than with scientific knowledge, technology
assessments are directly connected with the
selection of technologies in the market, and with the
debate on whether HFCs are necessary, constitute
knowledge that could be influenced by politics.
TEAP has great influence on decision-making in
intergovernmental negotiations, and those items to be
assessed are determined in MOPs (Matsumoto 2002,
195), i.e., with regard to CFC substitution, the nature
of knowledge is such that politics to a considerable
extent determines the scope of knowledge related to
technology assessment.
Nearly all the technological knowledge on HFCs was
held by the industry, which had vested interests
(Kemp 1997, 228; Matsumoto 2002, 195). Experts at
LPG companies, at the appliance makers that had
either developed or commercialized NIK technologies,
and at other refrigerant users began to influence
the formation of technological knowledge to an extent
through UNEP's TOC and other venues midway
through the process. In the Montreal Protocol and
FCCC processes, Greenpeace helped establish avenues
to link NIK companies and experts with proc-

236
esses under the two agreements. In its lobbying of the
Montreal Protocol political negotiating process,
Greenpeace revealed the lack of assessments of NIK
substitutes in the TEAP. By helping the introduction
and dissemination of HCs, ammonia, and other NIK
technologies in the market (especially for areas such
as refrigerants and rigid foam blowing, which were
formerly said to have no substitutes), Greenpeace
exerted influence by increasing the NIK assessments
of TEAP (Williamson 1997, 39). It can be seen as "an
active contributor to the new disciplines and orders
of knowledge production" (Jamison 1996, 238).
Another major decision-making factor that especially
affected the switch to HC-blown insulation was that
Matsushita RC had a direct channel to the flow of
technical knowledge and information at the technical
manager level with Bosch and other German manufacturers
which imported Matsushita compressors.
THE ROLE OF GREENPEACE AS A KNOWLEDGE
MEDIATOR, AND INFLUENCE ON MATSUSHITA RC'S
DECISION-MAKING
As the determinants of eco-innovations, Rennings
identifies technology push, market pull, and regulatory
push, including expected regulation (Rennings
2000, 326). In effect, the strategy of Greenpeace and
Greenpeace Japan applied persuasion from all three
of these directions: It created a market by HC refrigerator
commercialization and a consumer campaign;
it tried to reduce market uncertainty and its attendant
risk for appliance makers, and it lobbied to have
HFCs included under the Kyoto Protocol.
Following are the roles of NGOs as knowledge mediators
and how they influenced Matsushita RC's
decision-making in this case, and as determined in
this research.
1. Greenpeace acquired specialized knowledge,
identified the relevant items in this raw knowledge,
and "translated" it for the general public and
the media, thereby helping build a knowledge base
and awareness (Dunlap 1998, 490) within society
about global warming in general.
2. Greenpeace reframed the two HFC related
issues by providing discussions on policy and
technology selection with an approach based on a
perspective of policy interlinkages between the two
issues (Matsumoto 1999, Oberthür 2001).
3. It then used this approach to show parties
of both conventions the need for consistency and
interlinkage between the two regimes. It also connected
NIK experts and businesses with the FCCC
process, and brought their knowledge into the FCCC
process.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
4. By focusing on the refrigerator and bringing
complex and unfamiliar knowledge on HFCs into
the context of people's everyday life, Greenpeace
made it into a social phenomenon. Also, people came
to see the question of "HFCs or not" as a criterion
for purchase choices and a perspective on the issue.
5. Through the efforts in 1 through 4 above,
Greenpeace helped create the trend that was eventually
discerned by Matsushita RC. That trend can be
described as, for example, what criteria consumers
base their product choices on and on what things in
daily life they place priority value (Wapner 2002, 46-
47), and the orientation of international and domestic
HFC policies and control measures. 14
6. Greenpeace endeavored to create the
initial channels for knowledge and information
among major actors. Greenpeace's diversified approach,
which was tailored to the problem, resulted in
an autonomously functioning quasi-network that
functioned to bring NIK technologies into society
and to create and develop a niche for HC technologies.
This was not a network whose members from
the outset shared a philosophy and worked to achieve
it, and the members perhaps had different interests
and goals, but one shared goal was mainstreaming
NIK.
Greenpeace's role in this network was being the strategic
initial mediator and coordinator of the knowledge
flow, while at the same time it was a member of
the network.
7. Greenpeace's thinking -- HFCs are part of
the problem, not the solution, and there are alternatives
-- served to bring existing but little-known
knowledge and information out of obscurity.
8. Conveying knowledge across borders
among actors that were and were not in the same
sectors and industries made it possible for Germany's
HC refrigerator technology and its commercialization
to have spillover effects in other countries.
9. Greenpeace was also able to transcend
Matsushita RC's hierarchy in purveying knowledge
(scientific, technical, and political) and deliver it directly
to decision-makers.
In summary, Greenpeace carried out a "political
debate over scientific and technological issues" with
appliance makers, the government, and consumers
either directly or through the media, and as Jamison
said, this debate was "an important mechanism in the
process through which new scientific ideas and tech-
14
COP3 was the biggest trend-setting event to Matsushita RC
(interview).

nical innovations are assimilated into societies" (Jamison
1996, 238).
Conclusion
Seen chronologically, the actions officially announced
by Matsushita RC and the release of new scientific
knowledge on climate change, including high GWPs,
through UNEP scientific assessment reports, IPCC
assessment reports, and other sources show that this
scientific knowledge exercised hardly any direct influence
on the decision-making of either Matsushita RC.
As observed, the commercialization of HC refrigerators
in Germany was one of several factors that
largely influenced Matsushita RC's decision-making,
especially with regard to blowing agents, but interviews
with Matsushita RC personnel and JEMA revealed,
first, that the most decisive factor behind the
commercialization decision and the full switch to
HCs was the listing of HFCs among the Kyoto Protocol's
six controlled substances at COP3 in December
1997, and second that the company decided to
revise its commercial production timetable about
eight years earlier than the initial 2010 because of
Greenpeace Japan's consumer campaign. It is safe to
say that Matsushita RC's decisions were not based so
much on its own understanding of global warming
science; more likely, the company set its course based
on international agreements that might develop into
specific international or domestic regulations, and on
world trends that embraced those agreements. In
other words, Matsushita RC was not "persuaded by
science" (Wapner 1995, 330), but mainly by its own
judgments regarding changes in political and market
trends, including public opinion. On the other hand,
largely through science-based action, Greenpeace
played a major role in engendering changes in these
two trends by facilitating discussions on policy and
technology choices with a multi-pronged approach
that included lobbying on international treaties and
technological criteria for funding to developing countries.
Greenpeace's approach was based on a perspective
of policy interlinkage between ozone depletion
and global warming.
In the area of technological knowledge, Matsushita
RC had access to knowledge communities through its
engineers and through Matsushita EI engineers who
were internationally active. The trend in knowledge
and information brought into Matsushita RC via
those engineers coincided with the case and the
knowledge presented by Greenpeace, with the information
on and analyses of world technology trends,
especially in Europe, and with technology-related
political trends induced by Greenpeace. This conflu-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 237
ence was important to Matsushita RC's decision makers.
When it came to commercialization of HFC-free
refrigerators, it was important to the company's refrigerant
decision not only that knowledge (including
verification of technologies) and information on
political trends be in agreement, but also that this
knowledge assume concrete form as binding numerical
controls under international agreements, and as
the emission ceiling under the government’s guideline,
which although not legally binding is potentially
subject to lower emission allocations. One can assume
that Matsushita RC perceived this as a trend
only with these conditions fulfilled.
Greenpeace served as the strategic initial mediator of
knowledge among diverse actors, and coordinated the
building of pathways for knowledge and information.
This resulted in the formation of a transnational
autonomous quasi-network whose shared goal was to
mainstream certain technologies in the market, while
involving new actors including the media, progressive
consumers, companies in other sectors, and user
industries. This quasi-network induced the "trend"
referred to by Matsushita RC, served to sustain it, and
ultimately became a major influence on Matsushita
RC's decision-making. The network constituted "a
dynamic process" that generated new knowledge and
information that is useful for expanding, maintaining,
and controlling a niche for HC technology in the
market, transferred them among actors, and provided
feedback (Kemp et al. 2000, 4). In a sense, Matsushita
too could be seen as having been part of this dynamic
process since the commercialization of its HC refrigerators.
Network members share the objective of
mainstreaming NIK substitutes, even though they do
not necessarily share any philosophy or
environmental objectives. Each actor uses the
knowledge and information it obtains to broaden the
network for its own benefit and purposes. Until NIK
substitutes are mainstreamed in the market and
society, this network will likely autonomously expand
and maintain itself while embracing a variety of
potential
However,
actors.
the role of environmental NGOs as intranetwork
knowledge mediators will perhaps become
obsolete when NIK substitutes find, or are about to
find, markets in major uses.
Future Research
This paper focused on the role and influence of an
international environmental NGO in terms of the
flow and roles of knowledge, and discussed the factors
affecting Matsushita RC's decision-making. Fu-

238
ture research will have to incorporate the present
analysis into an overall analysis of Matsushita RC's
decision-making factors.
Another matter for study is the commercialization of
hydrocarbon refrigerators in Japan, specifically, to
determine if this has sufficiently universal elements to
make it a subject for analyzing the factors behind
decisions made by Japanese companies with regard to
global environmental problems, if it was something
that happened by chance under certain limited conditions,
or if it was a combination of the two. It is likely
the last case.
Acknowledgment
This research is part of "S-1: Integrated Carbon Balance
Research Project," conducted under the Global
Environment Research Fund of Ministry of the Environment,
Japan. The author wishes to thank the
Environment Ministry.
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 239-251.
Education, Science, and Environmental Organizations
By Gabriel Ignatow ∗
Since its inception in the late 1960s, the modern
environmental movement has comprised a broad
spectrum of social and organizational forms worldwide.
This diversity is a strength of the movement
(Dunlap and Mertig 1992), allowing various groups—
including grass roots organizations, radical environmental
groups, large non-governmental organizations,
green political parties, ecofeminists, deep ecologists,
and everyday citizens interested in conservation and
preservation—to pursue their mutual interests in
environmental causes.
While grass roots organizations, NGO’s, and green
political parties have received a great deal of scholarly
attention (e.g. Bullard 1993, 2000; Jordan and Maloney
1997; Bomberg 1998), much of the long-term
success of the environmental movement is due to its
associations with research science, and specifically to
public interest science organizations dedicated to
ecological concerns. Unlike most social movements,
the modern environmental movement is “profoundly
anchored in science” (Yearley 1992, 529; also
Schnaiberg and Gould 1994, 145-46), and is in many
ways dependent on scientific evidence and expertise.
Many environmentalists are at least ambivalent about
science (Yearley 1992), and several movements reject
science altogether, choosing moral, ethical, and spiritual
legitimations for environmental protection over
scientific ones (Devall 1992). But in its mainstream
form, environmentalism is in many facets a scientific
enterprise, as evidenced by studies of lay environmentalism
which find public perceptions of environmental
problems to be rooted in scientific (or quasiscientific)
theories (Kempton, Boster, and Hartley
1995).
Despite, or perhaps because of the availability of
extensive public opinion and organizational data,
mainstream “reform environmentalism” (Brulle 2000)
remains something of a mystery for social scientists.
Consistently high levels of public concern for the
environment and the dramatic growth of environmental
organizations, both largely unforeseen as of
the early 1970s (Downs 1972; Morrison 1973), have
proven vexing for leading social science theories
(Brechin and Kempton 1994; Dunlap and Jones
∗ Koc University, Turkey. Contact: gignatow@ku.edu.tr.
2002). Theoretical debates in this area have recently
focused on three conceptual issues. The first concerns
the role of resources—individual and societal
wealth—in the movement. Older debates over
whether or not the environmental movement is “elitist”
(Neuhaus 1971; Sills 1975; Tucker 1982; Gale
1983; Morrison 1973, 1986) have been replaced by
debate over whether environmentalism is motivated
by increases in individual and societal wealth (Brechin
and Kempton 1994; Kidd and Lee 1997; Dunlap and
Mertig 1997; Brechin 1999), or perhaps by a collegeeducated
“new class” of business managers and social
and cultural specialists (Brint 1984).
The second conceptual issue relevant to the study of
modern environmentalism is also central to environmental
sociology generally: whether environmental
sociological analysis needs to make a decisive break
with orthodox sociology’s ignorance of non-social
variables, environmental facts and the reality of nature
(Catton and Dunlap 1978). Scholars who argue
for the need to make such a break can be thought of
as “environmental realists” (as opposed to environmental
“constructivists”; Lidskog 2001); they suggest
that sociologists should ground their work in an ecological
perspective, and should view human societies
as components of larger ecosystems (Dunlap and
Catton 1983, 129). Such researchers thus advocate a
“re-naturalization of society” in the sense that “biophysical
aspects of reality should be included in sociology’s
analysis of society” (Lidskog 2001, 117).
While scholars have occasionally argued that the
environmental movement resulted primarily from real
ecosystem damage (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994),
most sociological approaches assume that relationships
between ecological degradation and organized
social responses are mediated by a variety of purely
social factors. Yearley (1991, 49-50) has made this
argument forcefully:
The mere fact that there were objective circumstances
which constituted a potential problem was not enough
for a ‘social problem’ to emerge...sociologists concerned
with social problems should suspend any interest
in whether the objective circumstances merit the existence
of a social problem or not...they should focus
on the social processes involved in bringing an issue to
public attention as a social problem.
Supporting Yearley’s argument, much recent scholarship
has highlighted dramatic loose coupling between
actual environmental degradation and public perceptions
of degradation (e.g. Hannigan 1995). Thus it

240
remains an open question whether environmental
organizations are founded primarily as a reaction to
real environmental degradation, as an environmental
realist perspective implies, or whether they result
from social, economic, and political forces only indirectly
associated with environmental conditions.
The third set of issues concerns the role of education
as an impetus to the modern environmental movement.
Careful studies of public opinion have found
that an individual’s years of education consistently
predicts pro-environment attitudes, although these
effects are generally small (e.g. Klineberg, McKeever,
and Rothenbach 1998; Jones and Dunlap 1992; Rohrschneider
1990, 18), and are not well theorized.
Nonetheless, education is generally assumed to affect
individuals in such a way that people with more education
will be more concerned about the environment
than those with less. Early environmental sociological
research seemed to bear this out: “Early studies reported
fairly consistently that those most concerned
with environmental protection were well-educated,
affluent young urbanites (e.g. Buttel and Flinn 1974).
As survey evidence mounted, however, only education
and especially age…turned out to
be…consistently and significantly related to environmental
concern” (Buttel 1987, 473). In this paper I
argue that that while years of education may have
some direct effect on individuals’ attitudes and practices,
education’s effects are institutional as well.
Systems of mass public education have encouraged
the development of the modern environmental
movement by: 1) promoting voluntary and complex
organization generally through increased literacy, 2)
encouraging modern notions of individual agency,
and 3) inculcating environmental concern directly to
students in public schools. In this model, the appropriate
imagery for understanding mainstream environmentalism
is neither “bottom-up” nor “topdown,”
but is instead “historical sedimentation,” the
process by which earlier institutions necessarily leave
their impress on subsequent ones (cf. Goldstone
1998). This explanation differs significantly from
most current understandings of the modern environmental
movement in that it defocuses resources;
its scope is mainstream environmentalism only; and it
is comparative and “macro,” focusing on national
educational systems rather than, for example, the
education levels of individuals.
In this paper I first review current social science
theories relevant to the modern environmental
movement, and then elaborate on my mass-education
model. I test the model, and extant theories, through
an event count analysis of the founding of proscience
ecology organizations worldwide. The ecology
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
organizations examined here are non-profit nongovernmental
public interest organizations that are
national in scope and dedicated to ecological issues.
Many of these ecology organizations were established
during and soon after the late 1960s (during the 20 th
century’s ‘third wave’ of public interest science organizati
on foundings; Moore 1993, 50), and include,
as examples, the American Conservation Association
and Citizens for a Better Environment (U.S.), the
British Ecological Society (U.K.), the Ecological
Society of Australia, the Clean Air Society of Australia
and New Zealand, and the Asociacion para la
Conservacion y el Estudio de la Naturaleza (Argentina)
(see Table 1). These are primarily domestic (not
transnational) organizations. By seeking to apply
scientific knowledge to environmental issues and to
inform public opinion at the national level, these
organizations have helped to promote the environment
as a mainstream social concern. 1
Results of the event count analysis of organization
foundings in 43 nations between 1968 and 1995 show
that the most powerful nation-level predictors of
foundings are variables measuring 1) energy consumption
and 2) mass education. Higher education variables did
not have significant effects. There is also evidence
that a nation’s association with world society has
some effect on foundings. Thus, in brief, results
support environmental realist arguments and my
mass-education model, show some evidence of the
effect of world society, and provide no support for
resource- or class-based theories.
ENVIRONMENTAL REALISM
Environmental realism, perhaps the most important
theoretical contribution of American environmental
sociology, asserts that sociology needs to take ecological
and material factors into consideration, both
theoretically and in empirical studies. Among environmental
realist scholars, Allan Schnaiberg and
Kenneth Alan Gould have most directly addressed
possible causal relationships between ecological degradation
and the formation of ecology organizations.
The premise of their argument is that fundamentally,
the political-economic system of industrial society is a
kind of “treadmill” of production and consumption
by which for-profit firms are structurally induced to
continuously increase production and “extractions”
of energy and other resources from ecosystems, and
also to stoke demand for material goods among con-
1 At the same time, public interest science organizations may serve
as a “safety valve” for scientists, allowing scientists to demonstrate
the public relevance of their research without appearing
too directly partisan (Moore 1996).

sumers. Environmental movements have emerged
over the past 150 years as a response to this treadmill
and its consequent ecological damage: “...all observers
of industrial history and ecological change are in
loose agreement that for all this nearly 150-year period,
there was an acceleration of the treadmill. This
upsurge in ecological withdrawals and additions reduced
ecological stability throughout industrialized
nations, as well as in their colonies and economic
client or dependent states.” (Schnaiberg and Gould
1994, 145). Schnaiberg and Gould go on to address
the question of “why the 1960s and 1970s produced
an upsurge of environmental concern” (p. 148). They
argue that post-World War II increases in industrial
production and consumption were a primary cause:
Rampant consumerism produced an acceleration of
waste disposal problems...More and more electric appliances
sold to more and more households accelerated
energy resource depletion problems. And the new materials
used in the production of these consumer items
resulted in new, often more pernicious ecological additions.
...In addition, as production and consumption accelerated
in the postwar era, the ability of ecosystems to absorb
negative impacts was overwhelmed as early dilution
solutions were similarly strained beyond their capacities
(p. 148).
Schnaiberg and Gould’s (1994) argument that environmental
movements resulted from acceleration of
industrial production and consumerism suggests the
following testable hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: Ecology organization foundings
increase with increases in per capita energy consumption.
RESOURCE MOBILIZATION AND POSTMATERIALISM
Since the 1970s, western scholars have sought to
explain the development of voluntary political organizations
in terms of macro social structures, rather
than in terms of grievances or the psychological characteristics
of participants (e.g. McCarthy and Zald
1977). Structuralist theories of social movements
have focused, until recently, almost exclusively on the
material resources available to insurgent organizations.
Two such theories relevant to the founding of
ecology organizations are “resource mobilization”
theories of social movements (cf. McCarthy and Zald
1977), and Inglehart’s “postmaterialism thesis” on the
material basis of the political cultures of modern
western nations (Inglehart 1977, 1990, 1997).
The basic tenet of resource mobilization approaches
is that organizations are more likely to develop where
material and human resources are more plentiful.
One way in which resources may affect the likelihood
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 241
of founding and growth of organized political groups
is through potential support constituencies
(McCarthy and Zald 1977). The more resources available
to potential activists, the more likely such groups
are to form and grow. Communities of more affluent
and educated individuals are, in general, more likely
to form groups (McCarthy, Wolfson, Baker, and
Mosakowski 1988, 75). Overall, in resource mobilization
theories, the larger society provides the resources
needed by political organizations, and so these organizations
come to rely on the larger society. Society
provides “the infrastructure…[including] communication
media and expense, levels of affluence, degree
of access to institutional centers, preexisting networks,
and occupational structure and growth”
(McCarthy and Zald 1977, 1217).
A related perspective on modern environmentalism is
that public environmental concern is associated with
increasing wealth. Theoretical backing for this view is
provided by sociological theories of modernization
generally, and by the “postmaterialism” thesis in
particular. Building on the generally accepted view
that people rank physical needs above cultural and
ideological needs (cf. Maslow 1954), social scientists
have long argued that a fundamental shift in values
has accompanied the increase in the wealth of Western
societies following the second world war. Inglehart
(1977, 1990), a leading proponent of this view,
defines this as a shift “from giving top priority to
physical sustenance and safety toward heavier emphasis
on belonging, self-expression, and the quality of
life” (Inglehart 1990, 66). The emergent set of postmaterialist
values includes heightened concern for
environmental quality as a central theme. Increasing
concern for the conditions of both the local and
global environment is deeply resonant with the core
of a postmaterialist worldview: increasing concern for
one’s quality of life, and for the welfare of others.
Inglehart (1990) has argued that this shift has led to
growing support for environmental organizations
among economically secure citizens across the globe.
Thus, taken together, resource mobilization and
postmaterialism perspectives hypothesize a positive
relationship between societal wealth and ecology
organization foundings
Hypothesis 2: Ecology organization foundings
are more likely in wealthier nations than in
poorer ones.
THE EMERGENCE OF WORLD SOCIETY
World society researchers trace the flow of normative
commitments and policy models across the network
of international organizations that has arisen since the

242
end of the second world war (including, for example,
the United Nations and the World Bank). For students
of world society, nation-level factors (such as
material resources or education levels) are insufficient
to explain the global scope and trajectory of modern
environmentalism. Instead, environmental organizations
have developed as part of a worldwide “environmental
regime” (Meyer et al. 1997) of international
non-governmental organizations linking environmental
scientists and social movement organizations
with national and international governing bodies.
Virtually all nations are connected to world society to
an appreciable degree. However, some nations are
more tightly linked than others: they include within
their borders larger numbers of offices of international
non-governmental organizations. For world
society theorists, the primary motor for the development
of environmentalism is the robustness of a
nation’s overall level of interconnection with world
society. The relationship of environmental organization
foundings to linkages to world society has been
demonstrated in at least one study (Frank et al.
2000a).
Hypothesis 3: Ecology organization foundings
are positively affected by the strength of a nation’s
linkages to global networks of nongovernmental
organizations.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Sociological research on higher education and the
“new class” suggests that higher education, specifically
higher education in the humanities and social
sciences, encourages adoption of a spectrum of progressive
political attitudes, of which support for environmental
protection is one part. Sociologists of
education have often found that college students
majoring in the humanities, and especially in the
social sciences, profess more liberal political attitudes
than do students in the natural sciences, mathematics,
business, or engineering. And social science and humanities
majors apparently act on their beliefs, both
during and after their college years (for reviews of the
empirical literature, see Feldman and Newcomb 1994,
161; Pascarella and Terenzini 1991, 304-311). Sociological
studies of the “new class” take a similar tack,
arguing that the college-educated middle class is divided,
or at least disunited, in terms of college majors
and career paths stemming therefrom. “There is a
split in the new middle class,” writes Kriesi (1989,
1111), separating “social and cultural specialists”
from “technocrats” and “managers… controlling
organizational assets.” Brint (1984) finds a similar
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
split, between an “oppositional intelligentsia” composed
of younger specialists in social science and artsrelated
occupations (p. 30), on the one hand, and
corporate managers and salaried professionals on the
other.
Thus based on these two bodies of theory, and presuming
that ecology organizations are founded and
supported by liberal-leaning citizens worldwide, we
should expect that college enrollments in the social
sciences and humanities will predict the founding of
ecology organizations. Enrollments in engineering
and the natural sciences would be expected to have
either no effect or a negative effect.
Hypothesis 4a: Ecology organization foundings
increase with increases in tertiary education enrollments
in the humanities and social sciences.
Hypothesis 4b: Ecology organization foundings
decrease with or are unaffected by increases in
tertiary education enrollments in engineering
and the natural sciences.
MASS EDUCATION AND MODERN
ENVIRONMENTALISM
Several lines of theory suggest that voluntary organizations
generally, and ecology organizations in particular,
may be products of systems of mass compulsory
education. Both Zaret (2000) and Stinchcombe
(1965) argue that public education and public literacy
are instrumental for the founding of political organizations.
For Stinchcombe, “literacy and schooling
raise practically every variable which encourages the
formation of organizations and increases the staying
power of new organizations” (1965, 150). Complex
forms of organization are simply untenable in societies
with low rates of literacy, as rational accounting,
the learning of new roles, and the distribution of
information over a large area all depend on literacy.
From Stinchcombe’s historical review, he concludes
that large-scale industrialization, economic development,
and the formation of voluntary associations
have virtually always been attended by a rapid advance
in the literacy of the population. Thus an educated
polity a) is needed in order for complex organizations
to function, and b) is more likely to support
political interest group organizations: “Every study of
political apathy in every country shows that interest in
the distant political realm and the decisions of nations,
as opposed to involvement in private concerns,
is directly and strongly related to the number of years
of education...And, of course, the existence of political
interest-group organization depends on interest in
public issues among the population” (Stinchcombe

1965, 150).
Effects of schooling on the formation of political
organizations may have an institutional facet as well.
Meyer, in a series of articles (1977, 1980), has argued
that mass education has consistent cultural and institutional
effects on modern polities. Systems of mass
education do more than socialize individuals to be
productive members of modern societies (Dreeben
1968) and provide legitimating credentials to members
of high-status groups (Collins 1974). Education
has higher-order cultural and instititutional effects as
well. Serving as a “sacred canopy” (Berger 1967) of
shared cultural meaning, modern extended systems of
education validate not only elites, but notions of
individuality, personhood, and universal citizenship as
well (Habermas 1962). As education expands, “individuals
come to be defined as possessing the competencies
and the moral orientations to participate in an
expanded collective life” (Meyer 1980, 70; also Meyer
and Jepperson 1999). So mass education may affect a
society’s capacity for voluntary association not only
through increasing literacy and the interest of individuals
in non-local politics—the points Stinchcombe
emphasizes—but through a more fundamental process
of encouraging individuals to think of themselves
as empowered citizens, rather than as subordinate
members of particular ethnic, religious, or class
groups.
Finally, mass education may drive environmentalism
more directly, by schools’ transmission of environmental
concepts and values to students in classroom
settings. Environmental studies and environmental
science are increasingly incorporated into primary and
secondary school curricula, in part through a variety
of organized movements (see Hale 1993; Environmental
Literacy Council 2001; Independent Commission
on Environmental Education 1993). This is
likely part of a more general trend, in which science
has been edging out humanistic studies worldwide
(Frank et al. 1994).
Hypothesis 5: Ecology organization foundings
increase with broadening mass education.
DATA AND VARIABLES
Dependent variable. This study’s dependent variable, the
founding of scientific ecology organizations, is based
on a cross-national longitudinal record (time series)
of organization foundings collected in the World
Guide to Scientific Associations and Learned Societies
(1998, 1990). This collection indexes scientific
organizations by nation and by area of activity, and
includes founding dates for most organizations. Or-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 243
ganizations used in this study were those indexed
under “Ecology” as an area of activity, and that had a
founding date listed. The time series file was compiled
beginning with the 1998 World Guide. Then,
any ecology organizations listed in the 1990 World
Guide but not listed in the 1998 guide were added.
The data are censored at 1968 and 1995, and include
a number of organizations founded well before 1968
that, over time, refocused on ecology (as over preservation
or conservation of natural resources).
These ecology organizations are all “national” organizations
(see Table 1 for examples). Most are independent
organizations, while some are national chapters
of international organizations (such as Friends of
the Earth [FoE], which has semiautonomous national
chapters in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere), but all
are basically national in the scope of their activities
and concerns. 2 Table 1 presents a partial list of the
organizations. As listed in the World Guide, this
organizational data is perhaps the most comprehensive
time-series data on the founding of environmental
organizations currently available. However, it
is of course limited in that national ecology organizations
are but one organizational form among many
comprising the environmental movement. While this
dependent variable does not allow for generalization
of this study’s results to other types of environmental
or social movement organizations, it does provide a
useful test of the theories outlined above.
There are several other important points to note
about the dependent variable. The first is that the
World Guide to Scientific Associations and Learned
Societies picks up relatively large, relatively wellfunded
ecology organizations, but does not keep
track of smaller, local, community- and issue-oriented
protest groups. In so far as these smaller organizations
require less in the way of material resources
than do larger groups, the dependent variable may be
biased toward resource-based explanations of organization
foundings.
Secondly, in so far as these larger organizations are
disproportionately staffed by individuals with college
degrees (cf. Snow 1992, 49; Sills 1975; but see Morrison
and Dunlap 1986), the variable may be somewhat
biased toward new class explanations (which I operationalize
with a measure of enrollments in tertiary
education). Also, some of these ecology organizations
have clear ties to higher education institutions (e.g.
the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences in
2 This time-series data has been used in one previous study. In
Frank, Schofer, and Hironaka (2000) it was used as a control
variable representing “domestic ecology organizations” (as
opposed to international or transnational organizations).

244
Beijing, and the Ecological Society of Australia; see
Table 1), so we would expect to find an association
between organization foundings and tertiary education
enrollments.
The sample of 43 nations includes all of the nations
for which data is available, encompassing most of
Europe and North America, and a good deal of the
rest of the globe (see Table 2). Selection of nations
was based solely on availability of data. 3
Covariates. All of the covariates are time-series variables
covering the period 1968-1995. A measure of
national population, from the Arthur Banks Cross
National Time Series Data Archive (cf. Banks 1971,
1976), was used as a control variable. This variable
was logged in all models. The remaining covariates
were chosen to tap concepts derived from the five
theories presented above: environmental realist, resource
mobilization, new class, world society, and
mass education theories (see Table 4).
Material extractions. Two covariates are used to test the
environmental realist hypotheses (1a and 1b). Level
of industrialization is measured by percentage of
workers in the industrial labor force. Energy consumption
is measured by energy consumption per
capita, logged. Both variables are from the World
Bank. 4 While these two covariates measure different
factors, they are thought to operationalize one underlying
concept: the industrial “treadmill” as outlined by
Schnaiberg and Gould (1994). This notion is supported
by a high Pearson product-moment correlation
(0.864) between the two covariates.
Financial Resources. One covariate, gross domestic
product per capita, from the Arthur Banks Cross
National Time Series Data Archive, was used as a
proxy for the financial resources available within a
nation. This variable was logged in all models.
World Society. National memberships in international
non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), one of the
standard time-series variables used by world society
researchers (see Boli and Thomas 1999), was used as
a proxy for the strength of a nation’s ties to world
society. This variable is drawn from the statistical
yearbooks of the Union of International Associations.
Higher Education. A pair of indexes was created to
3
Malta, Andorra, and Liechtenstein were dropped from the analysis
because of their small populations.
4
The industrial labor force variable includes data from 1970 and
1977, the energy consumption variable from 1970 and 1980.
Data for the intervening years was imputed from the available
data. See appendix * for results of models run through 1982
only, in which less imputation was required. These results are
not substantially different from the results for the full 1968-95
period.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
represent enrollments in ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ higher education
majors. The soft index includes enrollments in
the humanities and social sciences; the hard, in engineering
and the natural sciences. Data on business
enrollments was available but was unfortunately insufficient,
in terms of the nations and years covered,
for use in this study. The source *******
Mass Education. The mass education covariate is an
index based on three variable drawn from UNESCO
yearbooks. These include 1) national literacy rate, 2) a
nation’s years of compulsory education, and 3) secondary
school enrollment ratios. As these variables
are all thought to measure an underlying concept,
namely the breadth of a nation’s system of mass
education, they were assigned equal weight in the
index (and indeed, these covariates are highly intercorrelated:
between 0.459 and 0.843).
All of the covariates varied with time. However,
change in these variables was generally quite gradual
over the historical period examined, as is to be expected
with nation-level demographic and organizational
data. 5 Univariate statistics for the dependent
variable and covariates are presented in Table 3.
METHOD OF ANALYSIS
Because the numbers of organization foundings were
relatively small, the data was treated as event count
data following a Poisson process, which assumes
independence of events. That is, events are not “contagious,”
and past events are assumed not to affect
the likelihood of future events. In the study of organization
foundings, contagion and temporal ordering
effects are recognized as important, and two
distinct processes have been identified. First, the
founding of one ecological organization might decrease
the likelihood of future foundings, because of
a decrease in available resources due to the first
5 The large 1968 values of the d.v. in the US, the UK, Australia and
W. Germany posed problems. Typically, new organizations
were founded at a rate of only one or two per year per nation;
therefore these values are clearly outliers (see Table 2). To test
for the effect of these outliers I ran models taking the integer
value of the square root of the dependent variable. Results
were essentially unchanged, although all models fit less well.
Because the Negative Binomial model relaxes the Poisson distribution’s
assumption that the sample’s variance on the dependent
variable equals its mean, this model is appropriate
given the “overdispersion” of the d.v. Another strategy for
dealing with the large initial values of the d.v., particularly in
the UK and US, is dropping these cases (that is dropping year
1968). This is particularly appropriate for studies examining
period and other temporal effects (e.g. Baum and Oliver
1996). However, because I am not interested in period effects
in this study, including the 1968 data does not skew the results.
Further, dropping the data reduced the models’ statistical
power significantly, although again all coefficients retained
their original direction and, roughly, their size (see Carroll and
Hannan [1989] for criticism of studies that do not address the
early years of an organizational population’s history).

founding. By this logic, contagion would be expected
to work the same way (on “density dependence” cf.
Hannan and Freeman 1989). Yet the founding of one
organization may increase the societal legitimacy of
the organizational form, and may therefore increase
the likelihood of other foundings, particularly during
an organizational field’s early period of development
(cf. Carroll 1984; Hannan and Freeman 1989). Multivariate
analysis revealed some evidence of this latter
effect, as the number of ecology organizations in a
given nation in 1968, the first year of my data, had a
significant positive effect on subsequent foundings.
There was no evidence of competition among the
organizations. The effect of the cumulative number
of ecology organizations in a nation, lagged 1 year,
was also tested, and had no effect on subsequent
foundings. Thus, because there was no evidence of
competition, and “contagion” effects were modest,
modeling these foundings as a Poisson process is
appropriate.
Further analysis of the data showed that the event
count over time had an overdispersion problem,
where the variance of the dependent variable exceeded
the mean. Consequently, I adopted a version
of a generalized Poisson model—the negative binomial
model—to examine the effects of the covariates
on the founding rate (cf. Cameron and Trivedi 1986;
Hannan 1991). A second problem was the large
number of 0’s. That is, in many countries, for many
years, no environmental organization foundings were
recorded (see Table 2). A series of zero-modified
negative binomial models were therefore estimated,
because zero-modified models explicitly model the
number of predicted 0’s (Lambert 1992; Greene
1994). However, as results of a Vuong test (Vuong
1989) revealed only minimal difference between the
zero-modified and unmodified models, unmodified
negative binomial models were estimated in all models.
6
Results
Table 3 presents descriptive statistics for all covariates.
Results of the multivariate analysis are presented
in Table 4, which displays coefficients and standard
errors from 10 models, all estimated by negative
6 Superficially, zero-inflation of the negative binomial model seems
to make sense due to the large number of 0’s, but conceptually,
inflation assumes partial observability of the dependent
variable, such that some 0’s will be due to the period of observation,
while others will be due to observed processes. These
premises do not fit the present data. Further, it is difficult to
determine with any confidence which variables would be responsible
for partial observability, and should therefore be inflated.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 245
binomial regression on the event count data. All
models include a term for national population
(logged), whose coefficients were consistently positive
and significant, and varied relatively little across
the models, as would be expected since nations with
larger populations simply have more people available
to found and join organizations.
Models 1 and 2 explore the effects of national wealth
(GDPPC) and energy use on foundings. Model 3
includes a term for NGO’s, i.e. national memberships
in international non-governmental organizations,
thought to represent the strength of a nation’s linkages
to world society. Model 4 includes both soft and
hard tertiary enrollment indexes, and Model 5 includes
the mass education index. Results are presented
below by the category of the covariates. The
theoretical relevance of the findings are addressed in
the general discussion.
Economic and industrial development. Models 1 and 2
(Table 4) explore effects of the energy use and national
wealth variables on ecology organization
foundings, and show that energy use per capita has a
sizable positive effect. As Model 1 shows, on its own,
GDPPC has a modest positive effect on foundings,
as would be predicted by resource mobilization and
postmaterialism theories. 7 However, as other variables
are added, as in Model 2 and subsequent models,
the coefficient changes sign. Net of other factors,
the magnitude of a nation’s financial resources
(GDPPC) has a depressing effect on ecology organization
foundings. While this negative effect is likely
due to colinearity with the energy use covariate, it is
nonetheless worth noting that on its own, as in
Model 1, GDPPC has only a small positive impact on
ecology organization foundings. When compared
with the large positive effect of energy use per capita
(Models 2-6), it becomes reasonable to conclude that
industrialization (measured by energy use per capita),
and not wealth per se, seems to motivate the founding
of ecology organizations. 8 Naturally, this finding
supports an environmental “realist” perspective
(Schnaiberg and Gould 1994) in which national envi-
7 As the data set includes a wide range of nations, and as many of
the organization foundings occurred in wealthy western nations,
separate analyses were run for developed and developing
nations (see Appendixes A, B, and C). The data set was divided
in terms of GDP per capita in 1968, with $1000 (U.S.)
separating developed from developing countries (Appendix
A). This substantially reduced the statistical power of the
analysis, particularly for developing nations, and did not reveal
substantially different patterns of coefficients for the two sets
of nation. Population size did have a much smaller positive effect
on foundings for the less developed nations, however.
8 Also, the effect of energy consumption per capita was consistent
over different time periods examined, e.g. through 1982 or
1989.

246
ronmental movements are seen as responses to accelerating
material and energy extractions within nations;
the finding casts doubt as to whether postmaterialist
shifts in attitudes have had any direct effect on the
founding of mainstream ecology organizations.
World society. The one world society covariate, a nation’s
memberships in international nongovernmental
organizations (NGO’s), had a small but
consistently significant positive effect on foundings in
all models in which the variable was included (Models
3-6). This finding is consistent with scholarship on
world society, and particularly with empirical work on
the effects of world society on environmental politics
(Frank, Schofer, and Hironaka, 2000a).
Educational variables. Two of the mass education variables,
the literacy rate and the years of compulsory
education, had fairly large, significant positive effects
in virtually all models. Interestingly, the effect of the
literacy rate is strengthened when the compulsory
education covariate is added, suggesting that the two
variables indeed represent discrete social factors, both
of which have a positive effect on the founding of
ecology organizations. Years of compulsory schooling
had the stronger effect, which is interesting given that
the variable had a relatively low standard deviation of
1.6 years, and suggests that relatively subtle shifts in a
nation’s dedication to the schooling of all its citizens
can have powerful effects on organization foundings.
The two remaining education covariates, the tertiary
and secondary enrollment ratios, had only small effects
that disappeared as other variables were entered.
However, it is important to recognize that this may
be due in part to limitations of the data, specifically
the relatively small N’s for both variables (Table 3).
Crude imputation of hundreds of missing cases resulted
in models with positive, statistically significant
effects for both of these covariates. However, given
the limitations of the data, based on this study alone
it is difficult to determine whether tertiary education
enrollments have had an independent impact on
ecology organization foundings. Because the secondary
enrollments measure is thought to operationalize
an underlying concept, mass education, that is also
tapped by other variables, we can be more confident
in assessing the impact of mass education on the
dependent variable.
General Discussion
Ecology organizations of the type examined here are
of only a small portion of the spectrum of organizations
that comprise the modern environmental
movement. These particular organizations embrace
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
science and are politically reformist; as such they can
be thought of as embodying a mainstream environmentalist
“institutional logic” (Friedland and Alford
1991). However, while the global diffusion of this
logic—this set of cultural understandings and related
practices—may be of interest in and of itself, understanding
the social origins of mainstream ecology
organizations can perhaps contribute to our understanding
of the development of the modern environmental
movement as a whole.
The primary negative finding of this study concerns the
effects of national wealth (as measured by gross domestic
product per capita) on ecology organization
foudings. Despite possible biases in the data favorable
to resource mobilization and postmaterialism
theories (see above), the strongly negative effect of
wealth suggests that in this context, these theories are
simply wrong, or at least not useful. Economic
growth does not seem to be the motor of the modern
environmental movement, as the postmaterialism
thesis in particular suggests (Inglehart 1995), and as
resource mobilization theories imply (McCarthy and
Zald 1977; Brulle 2000). This finding is consistent
with results from recent empirical studies, in which
resource-based explanations have not fared well in
accounting for variation in founding patterns of nongovernmental
organizations (Schofer and Gourinchas
2002; Frank et al. 2000a). Nor, not incidentally, do
financial resource variables (e.g. personal income,
national wealth) explain much variation in environmental
attitudes in analyses of public opinion surveys
(Brechin and Kempton 1994, 1997; Dunlap and Mertig
1995, 1997; Dunlap, Gallup and Gallup 1992).
Clearly, resource availability and procurement practices
can have dramatic effects on individual voluntary
environmental organizations (e.g. Rose 1993).
However, in trying to explain the development of
fields of ecology organizations, emphasizing financial
resources seems to be a misguided strategy.
If ecology organizations do not result from economic
growth, then what are their social origins? The findings
of this study implicate two primary causal processes.
The first is that ecology organizations are
founded as a reaction to the expansion of a kind of
“treadmill” of industrial production and energy consumption;
the second, that national systems of mass
education encourage the founding of these civil society-type
organizations.
The “treadmill” of production. The surprisingly strong
effects of the measure of energy consumption per
capita suggests that while the modern environmental
movement is surely shaped by social, cultural, political,
and economic forces, it is, fundamentally, a social

eaction to changing material conditions in modern
societies: to industrialization and its negative “externalities,”
including pollution and ecosystem despoiliation,
and to massive, tangible increases in energy
consumption. Put another way, modern ecology
organizations arose largely as a response to an accelerating
“treadmill of production” (Schnaiberg 1980),
i.e. to an acceleration of ecological “withdrawals” and
“additions” (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994).
Mass education and environmental organizations. Having
established that the founding of ecology organizations
is strongly associated with energy consumption,
we can still inquire as to the specifically social forces
at work. Education is of primary importance here,
and the results of this study help to clarify how education
has affected the modern environmental
movement.
Results from the event count models suggest that the
primary social factor contributing to the growth of
fields of ecology organizations is the scope of national
systems of mass schooling. Strong, positive
effects of the mass education index (made up of
variables for national literacy rate, duration of compulsory
education, and secondary school enrollment ratios) on ecology
organization foundings make this clear. Thus
these results support the mass-education model
elaborated above, which builds on Stinchcombe’s
(1965) argument on mass literacy and complex organization,
Zaret’s research on literacy and the publis
sphere (2000), and Meyer’s (1977, 1980) theoretical
vision of mass education as a collective, institutional
process having broad and dramatic social consequences.
As noted above, the tertiary enrollments variables did
not have statistically significant effects, all else being
equal. This result casts doubt on the applicability of
new class theory to the study of environmental organizations,
and, when combined with the strong
effects of mass education, suggests that mainstream
environmentalism results from a broad educational
process: the education of whole societes, as evidenced
by national literacy rates and national dedication
to mass education, not merely of circumscribed
classes or class fragments.
It is important to recognize how theoretical interpretation
of these finding is contingent on how one
understands modern educational systems. If compulsory
schooling is understood as a societal institution
(Ramirez and Ventresca 1992; Tyack 1999; Meyer
1977, 1980), rather than as perforce functional for
modern societies, or else as exploitative or hegemonic,
then the relationship between mass schooling
and the growth of fields of environmental organiza-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 247
tions can be seen as a process of historical sedimentation,
rather than as one of linear change. The gist of
the sedimentation metaphor is that earlier institutions
necessarily leave their impress on subsequent ones
(cf. Goldstone 1998). This process is not necessarily
“bottom-up” nor “top-down,” 9 but diachronic. Ideational,
institutional, and material practices are contingent
bases for the evolution of new institutions and
organizations (cf. Thelen 1999; Stinchcombe 1965).
National systems of compulsory schooling result
from many factors, of course, including occupational
diversification and urbanization, pressures for nationbuilding,
and ideological and religious commitments.
Yet over the latter half of the twentieth century, the
causes of the expansion of mass schooling worldwide
may have shifted. Many scholars now argue that
membership in “world society” and itsnormative
commitments have come to be the primary impetus
for expanding educational enrollments (Benavot et al.
1991; Meyer et al. 1992). This point is relevant to
interpretation of this study’s findings, because the
variable thought to gauge a nation’s connection to
world society, membership in international nongovernmental
organizations (NGO’s), had a positive
and highly significant, albeit modest, effect on the
dependent variable in all models which included the
NGO covariate. So world society does seem to encourage
the formation of ecology organizations directly.
And yet, even students of environmental
NGO’s generally acknowledge that global civic society
is, at this time, “thin” (Wapner 1996, 4). This
being the case, the stronger causal linkage between
world society and ecology organizations may be indirect:
world society encourages compulsory schooling,
which in turn fosters the establishment of civil society-style
ecology organizations.
Taken as a whole, this historical and institutional
argument suggests that various factors contributing to
the expansion of national systems of mass public
education, and that in turn mass education has become
a critical social base for the growth of fields of
ecology organizations. This argument from education
is somewhat more complex than current theories of
the environmental movement, but it is this argument
9 Recently, sociologists interested in global environmentalism have
debated whether a bottom-up perspective (focused on local
political conflicts, social movements, and national politics) or a
top-down perspective (focused on the actions of international
governmental and non-governmental organizations) is more
appropriate (Frank et al. 2001; Buttel 2001). I would argue that
rather than picturing the growth of fields of ecology organizations
in terms of bottom-up or top-down causal imagery, a
more explicitly historical, diachronic perspective may be appropriate,
one that focuses on the temporal ordering of the establishment
of broad educational and environmental social institutions.

248
that best explains this study’s findings.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Table 1. Examples of Ecology Organizations (Dependent Variable)
Name Founded Current web site Nation
Centro de Investigaciones de Recursos Naturales 1944 na Argentina
Australian Conservation Foundation, Hawthorn 1965 www.acfonline.org.au Australia
Clean Air Society of Australia and New Zealand 1966 mem-
bers.ozemail.com.au/~mainpage/mis
c/overview.htm
Australia and
New Zealand
Ecological Society of Australia Incorporated 1960 life.csu.edu.au/esa/ Australia
Wildlife Conservation Society 1967 na Australia
Natural Resource Conservation League 1944 www.nrcl.org/au Australia
Plant Protection Society of Western Australia 1976 members.iinet.net.au/~weeds Australia
Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 1979 na China
Ecological Society of China, Beijing 1979 na China
Association Française pour la Protection des Eaux 1960 na France
Comité Scientifique Chargé des Problèmes de
l’Environnement
Société Nationale de Protection de la Nature et
d’Acclimitation de France
1969 na France
1854 na France
Deutscher Rat für Landespflege 1962 na Germany (W)
Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel 1963 www.teva.org.il Israel
Ente Fauna Siciliana 1973 na Italy
Federazione Nazionale pro Natura 1959 www.pro-natura.it Italy
Instituto de Ecologia, Xalipa 1974 na Mexico
Oecologische Kring Arnhem 1955 na Netherlands
British Ecological Society 1913 www.britishecologicalsociety.org UK
The Civic Trust 1957 www.civictrust.org.uk UK
Commonwealth Human Ecology Council 1969 www.gsf.de/UNEP/ukchec.html UK
Conservation Trust 1970 na UK
Council [Campaign] for the Protection of Rural Wales 1928 www.cprw.org.uk/ UK
Friends of the Earth, London 1971 www.foe.co.uk/ UK
Citizens for a Better Environment 1971 www.cbemw.org USA
Ecology Action Educational Institute 1969 na USA
Ecology Center 1969 www.ecologycenter.org USA
Ecological Society of America 1915 www.esa.org USA

United Kingdom
West Germany
East Germany
France
Italy
Switzerland
Belgium
Austria
Netherlands
Finland
Denmark
Sweden
Norway
Greece
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 249
Table 2. Nations Included in Analysis
United States
Canada
Mexico
Barbados
Bahamas
Brazil
Argentina
Chile
Costa Rica
Venezuela
Uruguay
India
Australia
Israel
South Africa
Zambia
Senegal
Algeria
Trinidad and Tobago
Ghana
Ethiopia
Nigeria
Zimbabwe
Japan
China
Malaysia
Thailand
Philippines
Taiwan
Table 3. Descriptive Statistics: Nation-Year as Unit of Analysis
Variable N Mean S.D. Min. Max.
population 985 6.49e+07 1.72e+08 190,000 1.12e+09
energy use pc 963 2871.395 2724.867 26.01179 10811.37
gdppc 985 3872.944 4156.5 65 19790
ngos 985 693.9289 519.952 0 2132
Mass Education
literacy rate 985 76.38315 29.38697 4.1 99.5
compulsory education
secondary enrollment
pc
Soft Higher Ed.
soc. science enrollments
humanities enrollments
Hard Higher Ed.
engineering enrollments
897 8.218506 1.5907 5 11
985 .0494223 .0290101 .0024917 .1260163
985 .0034455 .013959 0 .1178673
985 .0021512 .0087039 0 .074312
985 .0019349 .0084361 0 . 1074266

250
natural science enrollments
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
985 .0014016 .0056018 0 .0458294
Table 4. Negative Binomial Models of Ecology Organization Foundings
Model (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
D.V. in 1968 .606*** .302*** .252*** .224*** .190***
Pop.
(logged)
Energy p.c.
(log)
GDPpc
(logged)
Soft higher
education
Hard higher
education
NGO’s
Mass education
.323*** .244*** .176** .180** -.038
-- 3.069*** 3.551*** 3.578*** 3.458***
.224*** -1.009*** -1.436*** -1.446*** -1.732***
-- -- -- 1.072 3.119
-- -- -- 5.525 2.621
-- -- .0009** .0008** .0008**
-- -- -- -- .106***
Intercept -9.135*** -8.415*** -6.246*** -6.338*** -1.928
L.R. χ2 167.28 228.38 235.50 236.63 249.73
df 3 4 5 7 8
N 985 963 963 963 963
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 252-260.
Knowledge for Sustainability-governance: From Policy Advice to Policyoriented
Knowledge Communication
Harald Heinrichs ∗
Introduction
The broad diversity of knowledge claims regarding
global (environmental) change and the sustainability
transition must be harnessed within advisory systems
and communicated to political, economic and societal
decision-makers. On international and national levels
there have been institutionalized numerous advisory
processes during the last two decades: scientific advisory
systems, such as the International Panel of Climate
Change (IPCC) or the Global Change Advisory
Council (WBGU) for national advice in Germany, as
well as pluralistic advisory systems such as the Presidential
Commission on Sustainable Development
(PSCT) in the US or the German Council for Sustainable
Development (RNE). It is hoped for that this
advisory processes are able to inform policymaking
and influence sustainability-governance. This paper
analyzes the structure and performance of (sciencebased)
environmental advisory systems in Germany
and the US and explores to what extent their current
institutional design renders efficient and democratic
advice. At first I will sketch the interrelation of global
(environmental) change, advisory systems and sustainable
development as starting point for the analysis
of advisory systems. Since (environmental) policy
advice is not independent of the social context I will
then present the key elements of the concept of pluralistic
knowledge society as context of current advisory
processes in countries like Germany and the US.
After that some important theoretical, empirical and
normative aspects of (scientific) policy advice are
addressed. The concept of pluralistic knowledge
societies and the aspects of (scientific) policy advice
work as frame of reference for the empirical analysis
of advisory processes in Germany and the US. Selected
insights of the comparative study are presented.
Finally, based on the theoretical and empirical
findings, I will discuss options for policy-oriented
knowledge communication.
∗
Research Center Jülich, Germany. Contact: h.heinrichs@fzjuelich.de.
Global (environmental) change, advisory systems
and sustainable development
If we speak about global change in relation to human
societies we are dealing with ”glocal” issues: globally
distributed local emissions – mainly produced in the
industrialized northern hemisphere - contributes to
global climate change which may have negative local
consequences – oftentimes in other less developed
regions in the southern hemisphere (Heinrichs &
Peters 2002). Since this glocal mechanisms of causes
and consequences are oftentimes synergistic, unintended,
delayed and surprising, it is helpful to engage
the concept of risk to grasp the geological, physical,
chemical and biological as well as the socio-economic
processes. Through the lens of risk we are looking at
potential damages in terms of probability of occurrence
and the extent of consequences, characterized
by cognitive uncertainty and normative ambivalence.
In this sense global change is marked by three dimensions
of risk:
1. environmental risks: e.g. climate change,
biodiversity, soil degradation and land use /
urban sprawl, (eco- and humantoxicological)
chemical substances
2. social risks: e.g. infectious diseases (Malaria),
inter- and intragenerational development
justice, environment and security (environmental
refugees)
3. economic risks: e.g. resource exploitation
and inflation, unemployment, income loss
(tourism, agriculture etc.), economic inequality
The development of reliable policy strategies to master
this enormous challenges need to integrate the
available knowledge as well as the normative implications.
In this regard it is the function of advisory
bodies on international and national level to do
status-quo-analysis, to describe possible and probable
trends and consequences of (human-induced) global
change. They do reviews and assessments of scientific
findings and advice policymaking. Therewith advisory
systems influence societal decision-making and environment-related
action. The advisory processes play
an important role to compile knowledge about global
(environmental) change and help society to find its

way to a sustainable world civilization.
However, sustainable development as an (normative)
idea about a path to the future is inevitable controversial:
social actors (including scientists!) have multiple
opinions and representations about the meaning
of sustainable development and its governance. Furthermore
future knowledge and values are unknown
in principle. The way to sustainability therefore is an
open search, learning and transformation process of
individual and collective actors. Nevertheless, adequate
structured advisory processes, which are
adopted to their specific socio-cultural context, can
optimize the interrelation between reflexive knowledge
(by advisory systems) and action (by politics,
economy, society).
Pluralistic knowledge society as context
Science-based advisory processes are not detached
from their societal context. Nevertheless many studies
about policy advice focus on the relationship
between experts and policy-makers. This decontextualized
perspective – labeled as ‘knowledge
transfer’ or ‘use of expertise’ – does not pay appropriate
attention to the social embededness of advisory
processes and the historically variable sociostructural,
socio-cultural and socio-political dimensions.
The changing power relations, the collective
and sub-group specific values and basic orientations,
the conflicts of interests and pluralistic knowledge
claims are highly important for the function as well as
the process of policy advice. In hierarchical organized
industrial societies, in which apparently unambigious
knowledge is ‘transferred’ from science to policy, and
policy makers make clear and unequivocal, because
factual uncontested decisions, it might be rational to
have a body of wise experts, which works apart from
public debate as ‘souffleur’ of policy-makers. But a
modern democracy in pluralistic knowledge societies,
which is characterized by political organization and
societal self-organization, by civil society and pluralism
of values, interests and knowledge, needs different
advisory processes. The concept of pluralistic
knowledge societies grasps the increase of social
complexity, differentiation of knowledge claims,
interests and values as well as the increase of participation-oriented
integration.
The societal differentiation, pluralization and reintegration
has been analyzed by many social scientists
(Overview: Schimank 1996). The concept of
pluralistic knowledge societies as I understand it, is
based on three dimensions:
1. The socio-structural dimension is characterized
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 253
by diversified differentiation: intentional actors
are embedded in multiple stratificationary (social
classes, milieus etc.), segmentary (organizations,
institutions, bureaucracy, private households etc.)
and functional (social systems such as the media,
economy, science, politics etc.) patterns of differentiation,
which shape the social complexity.
2. The socio-cultural dimension is characterized by
the pluralization of values, interests and knowledge:
the pluralization of values and interests has
been analyzed for quite a long time and is widely
accepted (e.g. Inglehardt 1995; Sebaldt 1997).
And the pluralization of knowledge claims and
science has been described as well (e.g. Gibbons
et al. 1994; Nowotny, 1999). With regard to scientific
knowledge the disciplinary differentiation
and segmentation as well as recent forms of inter-
and transdisciplinary knowledge production,
labeled as mode-2 in contrast to ‘normal’ mode-1
science, has been discussed. Additionally multiple
forms of knowledge, like professional knowledge
or everyday knowledge are seen as relevant
for social planning and decision-making (e.g.
Stehr 1996; Krimsky 1984). The heterogenity of
societal groups and actors produces pluralistic interpretations
and multiple patterns of thinking
and acting.
3. The socio-political dimension focuses on the
integration of this kind of differentiated and pluralized
societies: political organization (laws etc.)
and societal self-organization (participation and
actor networks) are seen as appropriate mechanisms
to (re-)integrate pluralistic knowledge societies
(e.g. Mayntz 1995).
This three dimensions shape the context for advisory
processes in pluralistic knowledge societies like Germany
and the US nowadays. And if we look at science-based
advisory processes, as part of social integration
mechanisms, the changing role of experts and
expertise becomes relevant additionally. The social
role of experts has changed, due to the loss of unambigious
knowledge, the industrialization of science,
the political function of experts, the value-ladeness of
expertise and public expert controversies (Kleimann
1996). The acceptance of trans-scientific influences,
that means the relevance of values and interests in
communicating scientific knowledge into social
praxis, and the proactive handling of pluralism of
expertise is essential for advisory processes to support
sustainability-governance (Rip1985).

254
(Scientific) policy advice: theoretical, empirical
and normative aspects
In democratic societies science, politics and the public
are dependent from each other: Science have at
their disposal systematic knowledge, and politics –
legitimized by election – makes collective binding
decisions, for which they have to gain public support.
The concrete forms of interaction, however, are
historically variable. Since the influencing study of
Jürgen Habermas, where he differentiated three basic
types of interaction, namely decisionism, technocracy
and pragmatism, many research about advisory processes
has been done (Habermas 1969; Weiss 1974;
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Table 1: Cultural Styles
Badura 1976; Bruder 1980; Wingens 1989; Renn
1995; Weingart 1998). Depending of the research
perspective different aspects like forms, functions
and processes of the science-policy interaction have
been analyzed. For the present paper three aspects
are especially of interest:
1. Beyond abstract models of advisory processes
cultural styles can be differentiated,
which shape the relationship between science,
politics and the public (Renn 1995):
Style Characteristics Role of scientific expertise
Adversarial
(eg. US)
Fiduciary
(eg. Italy)
Consensual
(eg. Japan)
Corporatist
(eg. Germany)
Open to professional and public scrutiny
Need for scientific justification of policy
selection
Precise procedural rules
Oriented towards producing evidence
Closed circle of "patrons"
No public control, but public input
Hardly any procedural rules
Oriented towards producing faith in the
system
open to members of the "club"
flexible procedural rules oriented towards
producing solidarity with the club
open to interest groups and experts
limited public control, but high visibility
strict procedural rules outside negotiating
table
oriented towards sustaining trust of the
decision-making body
Regarding the function of policy advice Christina
Boehmer-Christiansen identified beyond legitimization
and instrumental use further policy roles for
advisory processes (Boehmer-Christiansen 1995).
Main emphasis on scientific evidence and
pragmatic knowledge
Integration of adversarial positions through
formal rules (due process)
Little emphasis on personal judgement and
reflection on the side of scientists
Contingent on claims of methodological
objectivity
Main emphasis on enlightenment and background
knowledge
Strong reliance on institutional in-house
"expertise"
Based on bureaucratic efficiency
Contingent on personal relationships
Main emphasis on (scientific) reputation
Strong reliance on expert judgement (also
non-scientific experts)
Main emphasis on positive attitude
Contingent on social status and political position
Main emphasis on expert judgment and political
prudence
Strong reliance on impartiality of experts
Integration by bargaining within scientifically
determined limits
Contingent on senior status within science
communities

Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 255
Table 2: Advisory functions
Function Meaning
Legitimacy Scientific authority to legitimate political action
Persuasion (conflicting) scientific expertise to enforce positions
Delaying or avoiding action Expertise to reduce scientific uncertainty instead
of political action
Justification for unpopular policies Expertise to justify difficult decisions
Scapegoat Scapegoat for new decision because of new findings
Centralising decision-making Expertise for monopolization of decision-making
of higher policy levels
Protecting sovereignty Use of scientific uncertainty to maintain autonomy
over political action
Problem solver Instrumental knowledge to rationalize and raise
efficiency of decisions
Judge Referee to rationalize conflicts
Clarification of conflicting interests Expertise to identify potential conflicts and options
for action
2. Finally there are studies looking particularly
at the interaction between experts and policy-makers.
This studies shifted their focus
of analyzes from rationalistic approaches of
linear knowledge transfer towards a communication
and negotiation perspective.
They stress the relevance of the situational
context of decision-making, the cognitive
limitations of information processing by decision-makers
and the specific nature of scientific
expertise (Hammond et al. 1983).
Therefore expertise can be seen for decision-makers
as just one information source
between others, information processing is
context-dependent, information does not
determine policy decisions and information
is used selectively. Advisory processes in
this sense are not seen as linear process, but
as ‘…web of communication…’(Rich/Oh2000).
Characteristics Relevance
Table 3: Characteristics of integrative advisory approaches
This studies regarding forms (‘cultural styles’), functions
(‘policy function’) and interactions (‘information
processing’) show, that the science-policy-link is
influenced by cultural, functional, social and cognitive
aspects. From this perspective it becomes obvious,
that a sophisticated organization of advisory processes
is needed to grasp the complexity of the relationship
between science, policy and the public.
Based on this findings integrative approaches of
dialogue-oriented policy- and public advice have been
developed during the 90ties in different OECD countries
(Krevert 1993; Renn 1999; Halliwell et al. 1999).
This approaches aim to propose new ideas for democratic
and efficient advisory processes with regard
to the current social context of pluralistic knowledge
societies and the changing role for experts and their
expertise. Important characteristics of the concepts
are shown in the following table.
Balanced committees Experts from different disciplines and with diverse background put together, in
order to grasp the variety of opinions and potential bias
Acceptance of pluralism of expertise, in order to considerate the spectrum of
scientifically acceptable data interpretation and to identify unclear evidence or
unprooved hypotheses
Identification and acceptance of dissens, in order to allow acceptable interpreta-

256
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
tions of phenomena
Nature of expertise Open and honest communication about the pre-conditions, possibilities and
limits of scientific expertise
Scientific uncertainty Precise identification and labeling of scientific uncertainty and non-knowledge
Communication of uncertainties to decision-makers and the public
No promises of certainty, without scientific support
Review Review procedures to secure quality of expertise and to reflect potential bias
Transparency
Procedures should be comprehensible
Publication of and access to documents and studies – especially regarding scientific
uncertainty
Openness Access for public input via hearings etc.
Inclusion of public comments
Participation Involvement of stakeholders, in order to integrate pluralism of values and interests
Local knowledge Aside systematic scientific knowledge, consideration of local knowledge, in
order to reach comprehensive representations of ‘reality’
Dialogue Face-to-Face communication between experts and decision-makers, in order to
secure connectivity
Training of experts and decision-makers with regard to their tasks, responsibilities
and co-operation
Taking into account the studies about the changing
social context and the advisory processes in specific,
we can confront the traditional model of ‘knowledge
transfer’ in hierarchical organized (industry-)societies
with the notion of policy advice as communication-
and negotiation-process in pluralistic knowledge
societies. The following section gives an overview to
what extent scientific advisory systems for environmental
policy in Germany and the US are able to
deliver efficient and democratic advice to support
society’s efforts finding it’s way to a sustainable future.
Insights from Germany and the US: Sciencebased
advisory systems for environmental policy
and sustainable development
Within my doctoral thesis I analyzed seven sciencebased
advisory systems for environmental policy and
sustainable development in Germany and the US 1 :
1 In the US I analyzed exemplary three advisory systems in the area
of endocrine disruptor / hormonally active agents. The US
study was employed in order to mirror the German advisory
organization.

Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 257
Table 4: Advisory Systems in Germany and the US
Advisory body Characteristics
German Council of Environmental Advisors
(SRU)
German Advisory Council on Global Change
(WBGU)
Scientific expert body of the national government:
national / European environmental policy
Scientific expert body of the national government:
international environmental and development policy
German Council for Land Stewardship (DRL) Body of (scientific) experts and professionals sponsored
by the national government: regional / national
nature protection policy and land stewardship
policy
Enquete-Commission ‘Humans and Environment:
concept sustainable development'
Commission of the parliament, experts and politicians;
national sustainability policy
NAS Committee on Hormonally Active Agents Scientific expert body of the National Academy of
Science (NAS) charged by the environmental protection
agency (EPA): issue-specific knowledge synthesis
Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory
Committee (EDSTAC)
Commission charged by the EPA, scientific experts
and professionals of administration, economic-,
environmental- and public health organizations:
development of issue-specific program
SAB / SAP Subcommittee on Endocrine Disruptor Commission charged by the EPA, scientific experts
and professionals; issue-specific program evaluation
I conducted semi-structered interviews with experts
of the advisory bodies, representatives of the involved
ministries, members of the parliament, representatives
from economic and environmental organizations
as well as journalists, in order to find out, how
the advisory-processes are organized and how the
interaction between advisory bodies and policymaking-institutions
work in praxis. The seven case
studies show – apart from abstract ideas about environmental-related
policy advice – a high degree on
context-relatedness and specific details influencing
the different advisory processes. Nevertheless all
advisory systems are confronted with similar challenges
set by the changed social context of pluralistic
knowledge societies, the changed role of experts and
expertise, and the integrated approaches of advisory
processes. Four challenges are of particular interest
for the comparative analyzes in Germany and the US:
1. Differentiated context of advice
2. Pluralism of values, interests and knowledge
3. Change of function of experts and expertise
4. Integrative policy- and public advice
1. Differentiated context of advice
The heterogenity of the advisory systems in the case
of Germany is useful with regard to the social complexity.
The plurality in perspectives reduces the
danger of one-sided analysis and hasty closure of
advisory discourse. Numerous scientific, political and
subpolitical actors are involved in the diverse organized
advisory processes, so that many relevant aspects
concerning environmental policy and sustainable
development come to the table. But the single advisory
systems as well as the advisory processes in
general are insufficient structured and functions are
insufficient differentiated: e.g., the involvement of
relevant actors is not systematic and transparent,
communication with policy-actors and the media is
scarcely target-group-oriented, the functions of the
advisory systems are in parts not precisely defined
and overlapping.
In contrast, the advisory organization in the US is an
example for a function-specific approach of different
types of advisory systems: knowledge advice (NAS-
Committee), strategy advice (EDSTAC), and evaluation
advice (SAB/SAP) are clearly separated. The
value of this advisory organization is, that actors as
well as knowledge claims (scientific and non-

258
scientific) can be integrated at the particular advisory
steps where they are needed; the differentiated contexts
of advice can be addressed very specific. However,
the analysis showed, that the integration of
advisory steps can be difficult, if there is a mismatch
in time (exchange of results) and if there is no structured
information flow respectively communication
chain from one advisory system to the other.
2. Pluralism of values, interests and
knowledge
In German advisory systems pluralism of values,
interests and knowledge is represented, accepted and
pragmatically handled. The interviewees belief, that
during the production of expertise different positions
in values and interests balance each other. There is no
proactive, structured discussion, to what extent interests
and values interfere with knowledge claims. A
deficit in reflection and transparency regarding the
pluralism can be observed.
In the US the handling of pluralism of values, knowledge
claims and interests is fixed in the Federal Advisory
Committe Act (FACA). 2 A systematic and
transparent handling of pluralism – e.g. installation of
balanced committees – is binding for almost every
advisory committee. This procedural organization
enables a structured handling of pluralism. Interestingly
the NAS-Committee, which is exempted from
FACA had serious problems, because underlying and
conflicting values and interests strongly hindered the
knowledge discourse. This committee was set up in
order to compile the scientific knowledge about endocrine
disruptor, but it turned out, that there were -
beyond differences in knowledge claims - basic conflicting
beliefs concerning the risks of hormonally
active substances. In research- and policy-fields,
where knowledge is uncertain and political action
pressing it seems rational for advisory committees to
proactively reflect the existing pluralism: a careful
reflection of knowledge, uncertain knowledge and
non-knowledge, of underlying values and interests
seems to be necessary in order to produce efficient as
well as democratic expertise.
2 That advisory processes are closely related to the power relations
within a certain historic situation can be observed in the US at
the moment: Scientists are worried about the efforts of the
Bush-Administration to evade FACA. They observe, that the
Bush-Administration tries to install ‘Advice without dissent’,
by re-structuring balanced committees towards administration
friendly entities (Michaels et al. 2002).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
3. Change of function of experts and
expertise
Similar to the previous challenge, the change of function
of experts and expertise in Germany and the US
is handled differently. In Germany due to the corporatist
advisory style the pluralism of expertise is accepted,
but non-scientific influences are not reflected
systematically, due to the idea of impartial experts.
The characteristics of pluralistic knowledge society in
mind, the corporatist style seems to be insufficient to
cope with the new role of experts and expertise in a
democratic and efficient manner.
In the US the new role of experts and expertise is
dealt with by the procedures demanded by FACA.
FACA allows to realize a transparent selection of
experts, a systematic pluralism; it does justice to the
new expert role. The NAS-Committee is an example,
that ignorance of the changed function of experts and
the plurality of expertise can provoke a difficult advisory
discourse.
4. Integrative policy- and public advice
In Germany integrative policy- and public advice is
realized just to a limited extent. The rules and procedures
for the inclusion of different actors and knowledge-holders
are not clearly defined and transparent,
the communication with different target-groups,
especially with the media is underdeveloped. Opportunities
for face-to-face communication with actors
for the production of expertise as well as for the
dissemination of expertise is used scarcely. The connectivity
of the advisory processes to policy and public
debates is reduced by the lack of inclusive advisory
structures.
At the contrary, the advisory processes running under
FACA in the US are mainly dialogue-oriented, inclusive,
with a high degree for public access, face-to-face
communication and professional media relations,
which proofed useful for policy-oriented advisory
processes in pluralistic knowledge societies. The
NAS-Committee is a good example, that in areas of
scientific uncertainty and political dispute, exclusive
advisory processes can make things even more difficult
and less useful for the policy-arena, than a proactive,
transparent and open handling of issues characterized
by cognitive uncertainty and normative ambivalence.
This exemplary insights from science-based advisory
systems for environmental policy and sustainable
development should demonstrate, that in pluralistic
knowledge societies like Germany and the US many
features of modern advisory structures are already

ealized, but nevertheless there is potential for optimization
in order to adapt advisory systems to the
complexity of the issue at hand and the societal contexts
in which the problems have to be solved.
Outlook: Options for policy-oriented knowledge
communication to support sustainabilitygovernance
Advisory systems for sustainability-governance in
modern democracies have to adjust to the transition
from industrial societies, in which apparently unambiguous
knowledge is translated into political action
within a hierarchical social structure, towards a process
oriented pluralistic knowledge society, in which an
inclusive web of communication continuously reflects
and deals with diverse claims. In this sense advisory
systems can not be thought of anymore as linear
knowledge transfer, but as politically initiated, moderated
and structured knowledge communication, taking
into account values and interests. That means an
organized and structured communication of and
about knowledge with scientific, political and subpolitical
actors as well as citizens is needed. Regarding the
options for policy-oriented knowledge communication
to support sustainability governance, two levels
can be differentiated:
Firstly there are options to optimize the performance
of advisory bodies:
1. Transparency of political influences, precise
task definition, transparency in selection of
experts and knowledge claims, balanced
committees
2. Precise definition of policy function, adequate
equipping and design of advisory system
3. Systematic reflection of basic values and interests
in knowledge discourse, transparency
of limits of knowledge, uncertain knowledge
and non-knowledge
4. Extended inclusion of relevant actors, more
input-/output-communication
This options may help to set up more discourseoriented
advisory processes in order to match the
challenges described before.
Secondly there are options to optimize the advisory
infrastructure by integrating different advisory steps
in an overall structure:
1. Orientation advice: systematic knowledge
gathering and assessment as orientation
about new (or existing) problem areas
2. Strategy advice: development of strategies
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 259
for problem solutions on the basis of orientation
advice
3. Evaluation advice: examination, to what extent
the developed program is efficient and
useful concerning the objectives
These options may help to optimize the interfaces
between different advisory processes and different
advisory functions.
In sum: to adapt advisory processes to the needs of
sustainability-governance in pluralistic knowledge
societies, policy-oriented knowledge communication
could be realized by function-specific integration and
coordination of knowledge, values, interests through
adequate participation of scientific, political and subpolitical
actors as well as citizens.
The present comparison study has focused on national
advisory systems in Germany and the US. The
design of the study presented in this paper could be
although useful for the analysis of advisory systems
for global governance. From the perspective of global
change and world civilization we can state, that world
society is a highly pluralistic knowledge society with
diverse knowledge claims, values, conflicting interests
and power relations. Moreover the global acting
advisory systems are confronted with the cultural,
functional, social and cognitive aspects of sciencepolicy-public-interactions.
The general approach of
policy-oriented knowledge communication proposed
in this paper is sufficient abstract to support sustainability-governance
in highly diverse contexts on national
and international levels. The collective binding
decisions concerning sustainable development nationally
and internationally, however, have to be made
– at least if we think in terms of representative democracies
- by political actors, elected by the people,
and not by selected experts no matter how integrative
the advisory processes may be.
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 261-270.
Diplomatory Science: Modeling the Hybrid Character of Policy-advisory
Science for Diplomacy
By Atsushi Ishii ∗
Why ‘diplomatory’ science?
Regulatory science
The most sophisticated model of policy-advisory
science is, up to date, regulatory science, which was enriched
and consolidated by Sheila Jasanoff in her
influential book: The Fifth Branch. The question here is
whether it provides a sufficient model for the hybrid
domain of science and diplomacy. I argue that regulatory
science, while overlapping, does not encapsulate
the whole international dimension of diplomacyoriented
science. In other words, regulatory science
implicitly models policy-advisory science at the domestic
level which has very different rules, norms, and
institutions from the international level. In The Fifth
Branch, Jasanoff scrutinizes regulatory science relying
entirely on case studies from US domestic environmental
and health policies, and, as far as I know,
there are no case studies explaining the whole hybrid
domain of science and diplomacy with regulatory science.
Therefore, we need, in order to enhance the
Core of
policy-advisory
science
Figure 1. Policy-advisory science
Diplomatory science
integrity and productivity of diplomacy-advisory
science, an appropriate model that stabilizes the
boundary between science and diplomacy, facilitates
better understanding of diplomacy-advisory science,
and, thereby, mobilizes effective scientific knowledge
into the diplomatic process.
∗ Climate Change Research Project, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan. Contact: ishii.atsushi@nies.go.jp.

262
This kind of science could be named as ‘diplomatory
science’ 1 . Firstly, I scrutinize it by, though noncomprehensive,
comparison with regulatory science. This
comparison facilitates understanding the common
and different attributes of regulatory and diplomatory
science (Fig. 1), although it may not have been Jasanoff’s
intention to construct such a model of diplomatory
science. Afterwards, the European Long-Range
Transboundary Air Pollution regime (LRTAP) is
elaborated to develop ‘diplomatory science’. The
regime is a good starting point since it has been hailed
as having a successful science-based negotiation
process. It would be better for developing the model
to begin with the most successful case, and then turn
to less successful cases, which is beyond the scope of
this paper.
Comparing diplomatory science with regulatory
science
The most clear-cut difference between regulatory and
diplomatory science is their objectives: ‘what for is
scientific knowledge produced?’. The objective of the
former is “to produce “techniques, processes and
artifacts” that further the task of policy development”.
2 Formulating after regulatory science, objective
of the latter is ‘to produce techniques, processes
and artifacts that are useful and significant in the
furtherance of diplomatic solutions’. 3 This difference
in the objective is the source of all differences depicted
below.
One of the significant dissimilarities between regulatory
and diplomatory science is the emphasis on the
courts and its judicial procedures for gauging the
fulfillment of required accountability of the regulatory
agencies. The courts are playing a significant and
enforcing role in regulatory science (Jasanoff, 1990),
in other words, in the negotiations of “contested
boundaries” 4 between science and policy. As Jasanoff
writes, “[i]f the record suggests that a difference of
opinion between administrators and experts involved
substantial policy considerations … courts should not
hesitate to probe beneath the surface of an advisory
committee’s recommendation and, if necessary, to
overrule it”. 5 The international society is not armed
1
‘Diplomatory science’ is coined following ‘regulatory science’ and
have been suggested by Shohei Yonemoto, Director of Center
for Life Science and Society, Kawasaki, Japan in relevant discussions
with the author.
2
Jasanoff 1990, 77.
3
I am grateful to Shohei Yonemoto, op.cit.note 1, for clarifying
this point.
4
Jasanoff 1987.
5 Jasanoff 1990, 249.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
with this kind of judicial review procedures; moreover,
it often lacks the capability of enforcing compliance
with international law.
There are important features regarding the difference
in actors between regulatory and diplomatory science.
One is that the mere superior power in the hybrid
domain is possessed by the sovereign states because
the international society is constructed based on the
basic norm of sovereignty, which will be addressed
later on. Another is that the international society has
no regulatory agencies with full statutory competence
and ability to enforce regulatory decisions but less
organized clusters of international organizations.
Such international organizations may play an important
role in the context of diplomatory science, which
is beyond the scope of this paper. 6
The most pertinent basic norm of international society
to diplomatory science is sovereignty which, in the
traditional sense, is the quality of having the power of
self-government with independence from outside
control. In nowadays practice, “sovereignty is generally
conceived more broadly in terms of some combination
of control, autonomy, and authority”, 7 and
continuously reconfigured by states (Litfin 2002, 487-
488), especially in their diplomatic efforts to address
transnational and global change. It is the sovereign
states who can ultimately decide on diplomatic affairs
because they possess the exclusive and legitimate
right to represent their nations. In the light of sovereignty,
diplomatory science could be viewed as having
a dual role of both one of the means to legitimate the
reconfiguration of sovereignty, and one of the ‘teachers’
of how the reconfiguration should be made. This
inevitably necessitates that, in order to generate effective
knowledge which has influence on sovereign
states’ behavior, diplomatory science must be accountable
to the sovereign states and be in conformity
with the norm of sovereignty. For instance,
when using computer models to define politicallysensitive
national reduction targets on certain pollutants,
diplomatory science cannot use non-transparent
‘black-box’ models, whose use is an ordinary scene in
research science 8 , because it cannot be accountable to
the sovereign states for what they cannot comprehend.
Alongside, the national emission data for input
to the model must be determined by the sovereign
6
See National Research Council 2002. I am grateful to Axel Volkery,
Free University of Berlin, for suggesting me the importance
of international organizations.
7
Litfin 1997.
8
Since there is no unanimity among science policy analysts about
the best way to refer to science unrelated to policy (Jasanoff
1990, 268), I would use ‘research science’, as was used in
Jasanoff 1990, to refer to ‘science unrelated to policy’.

states because it is their exclusive right to determine
their national emission data. In other words, it is not
only the scientific accuracy that determines the use of
a data but, in diplomatory science, the context of
diplomacy must also be taken into account. This
clearly exemplifies the meaning of the hybrid domain
of science and diplomacy. On the other hand, regulatory
science must be accountable to the congress,
courts and media and be in conformity with the domestic
political system (Jasanoff 1990, 80); this difference
occurs evidently because, again, regulatory science
is not solely focusing on the international dimension
of diplomacy-advisory science.
Then, what conditions must diplomatory science
satisfy for being accepted by the sovereign states?
Though the boundary between science and diplomacy
is constantly negotiated and re-negotiated, it would be
safe to say that one general condition is political neutrality.
Sovereign states would never accept scientific
knowledge which is perceived to embody particular
ideological, or unevenly distributive national interest
biases. This is not to suggest that diplomatory science
must proffer scientific knowledge that is absolutely
objective and value-free, which is argued to be one of
the main myths of science (Cortner 2000, 23). Rather,
this requirement of political neutrality is to acknowledge
the myth as false because, if the myth is true,
diplomats do not have to require neutrality as a condition
for accepting scientific knowledge. As there are
no absolute criteria of political neutrality, it would be
judged by sovereign states on intersubjective basis,
hence on the interpretation of the substance of, the
explanatory discourse on, and institutional features of
scientific knowledge and its production modes.
Again, the international society lacks both administrative
agencies with exclusive statutory authority, and
courts which can effectively resolve disputes with
enforceable decisions. In this given situation, sovereign
states must make diplomatic decisions. Therefore,
it is a prerequisite that diplomatic processes are
carried out with transparency, so that sovereign states
are fully aware of what is going on, otherwise the
process will end up with unresolvable disputes. The
production mode of diplomatory science has to be in
conformity with transparency especially in decision
with high stakes. This condition is different from
regulatory science, in which scientific products are
often unpublished (Jasanoff 1990, 80). Transparency
is also needed to use scientific knowledge for states’
legitimizing the diplomatic decision to their nations.
The legitimating power of scientific knowledge would
be diminished if the scientific knowledge in question
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 263
is produced by non-transparent processes. 9
Moreover, the lack of powerful administrative agencies
and courts in the international society assigns
scientific consensus a more significant role in diplomatory
science than in regulatory science. In regulatory
science, administrative agencies can use nonconsensual
scientific knowledge to formulate policy
with exclusive statutory authority. If a company is
against the policy which lacks backing of consensual
scientific knowledge, then it can file a suit against the
administrative agency in jurisdiction, and it becomes
clear whether the usage was felicitous or not. The
point here is that the judicial decision is not necessarily
based on the criteria of scientific consensus but
the criteria such as “conformity to approved protocols
and agency guidelines” and “legal tests of sufficiency
(e.g., substantial evidence, preponderance of
the evidence)” (Jasanoff 1990, 80). In international
society, if sovereign states dispute over using nonconsensual
scientific knowledge, there is no effective
court which can make judicial decisions with enforcement
on the felicitousness of using nonconsensual
scientific knowledge in diplomatic negotiations,
resulting in, at worst, non-agreement. Utilizing
consensual scientific knowledge has better chance
to avoid this pitfall. 10
In order to obtain scientific consensus, facilitating
participation of prominent scientists to diplomatic
processes becomes more important than in regulatory
science. Nevertheless, it is always a rather difficult
task for scientists to participate in political arenas
which has very different norm, rules and institutions
from “the Republic of Science” 11 . These are so different
that those features of scientific and political
domains cannot be comfortably harmonized. Even
worse, it is harsh for scientists to enter the political
world because it could attach politicized image to
scientists and do harm to their scientific career. This
is also the reason for urgent need to develop a model
which stabilizes the boundary between science and
politics and allows scientists to provide sound scientific
knowledge to decision-makers.
One of the necessary institutional mechanisms for
9 This may also be true for domestic regulatory science in a democratic
and adversarial political culture as in the United States,
but does not necessarily remain true in “fiduciary” style of
policymaking which has the characteristics such as “closed circle
of “patrons”” and “no public control, but public input”
(Renn 1995, 151).
10 The author is aware that scientific consensus is mere a necessary
but not a sufficient condition for acceptance of consensual
scientific knowledge. There are plentiful cases in which consensual
scientific knowledge is not accepted for diplomatic
use.
11 Polanyi 1962.

264
facilitating scientists’ participation in politics is boundary
organization. David Guston elaborates it well and
defines it as organizations satisfying three criteria:
“first, they provide the opportunity and sometimes
the incentives for the creation and use of boundary
objects and standardized packages; second, they involve
the participation of actors from both sides of
the boundary, as well as professionals who serve a
mediating role; third, they exist at the frontier of the
two relatively different social worlds of politics and
science, but they have distinct lines of accountability
to each”. 12 Before elaborating these criteria in the
context of diplomatory science, the concept of
boundary objects, 13 which the next section exemplifies
as one of the most important elements of diplomatory
science, deserves more explanation. They
were elaborated to explain how members of different
“social worlds” 14 manage to successfully cooperate, in
this case, to build the museum and to construct scientific
representations despite their different viewpoints
and interests (Nickelsen, 2001). Boundary object was
introduced by Star and Griesemar (1989) and is defined
as:
… objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to
local needs and constraints of the several parties employing
them, yet robust enough to maintain a common
identity across sites. … They have different meanings
in different social worlds but their structure is common
enough to more than one world to make them recognizable,
a means of translation. 15
In the context of diplomatory science, of course, the
main social worlds are diplomatic politics and science,
and the first criteria of boundary organization is intimating
that it institutionalizes the opportunities and
incentives to create and use of boundary objects, and
thereby, it displays an official site for advisory science
so that its confusion with research science is obviated
through out the advisory process. To put it differently,
boundary organizations may “protect scientists
on one side from accusations of bias or illegitimacy,
while protecting policy makers on the other side from
(accusations of) technocratic intrusions”. 16 Regarding
the second criteria, the main actors who participate in
boundary organization of diplomatory science are
diplomats and scientists. The mediating role could be
12
Guston 1999, 2000 quoted in Guston 2001.
13
I would skip “standardized packages” which is a hyponym of
boundary objects.
14
According to science and technology studies, the term “social
world” is defined as “a group with shared commitments to the
pursuit of a common task, who develop ideologies to define
their work and who accumulate diverse resources needed to
get the job done” (Gieryn 1995, 412).
15
Star and Griesemar 1989, 383.
16 Clark 1999 quoted in Scott 2001, 35.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
played both by diplomats and scientists but the actor
in the role must have sufficient expertise to have
authoritative and respected characteristic to fulfill the
role. The third criteria means that boundary organizations
for diplomatory science exist at the forefront
between advisory processes and negotiation processes
and have lines of accountability to each. An important
function worth mentioning is that it may create a
site for building long-term trust between the policy
and scientific community (Clark 1999 quoted in Scott
2001, 35). The concept of boundary organization for
diplomatory science will be further elaborated with
concrete examples from the European acidrain regime.
Now we turn to the elements which regulatory and
diplomatory science have in common. Both are abide
by the time-schedule of decision-making. On the
other hand, as Jasanoff writes, “[i]n research science,
time is usually on the scientist’s side. Conclusions do
not have to be accepted as true until most members
of the relevant community are satisfied by the available
evidence”. 17
This time constraint leaves decision-makers with the
dichotomized choice of acceptance or rejection of
advice, and advisory scientists with the pressure to
adopt pragmatic solutions to come to conclusions,
which may also part of research science. But the
difference is the reason for choosing pragmatic solutions;
for research science, pragmatic solutions in line
with the disciplinary requirements are adopted to
accommodate for budget and manpower constraints;
for diplomatory science, in addition to budget and
manpower constraints, to generate, interpret and
present scientific knowledge that is useful and significant
for diplomatic negotiations.
As already elaborated, comparing with regulatory
science, the norms, rules and actors and institutions
of diplomatory science are remarkably different from
research science. This difference may become so
significant that, while differences in the methodologies
and end products of research science and regulatory
science are not nearly as significant as the differences
in their institutional and cultural environments,
diplomatory science may have to adopt altered methodologies
from research science to fulfill its objective.
Pointing out the methodological differences between
diplomatory science and research science is extremely
important since it provides methodological guidelines
for advisory scientists to pursue productive scientific
work in the diplomatic domain.
The same goes for uncertainty management in diplo-
17 Jasanoff 1990, 82.

matory science. It is well known that, in facing complex
social problems, uncertainty is irreducible, hence
forms an integral part of problem-solving strategies.
In regulatory science, the examples in The Fifth Branch
show that various elements of uncertainty are source
of regulatory conflicts, effortlessly deployed in the
conflict by the contestants to attain their political
agenda, and the closure of the conflicting debates are,
at least in some exemplars of The Fifth Branch, brought
by adversarial judicial procedures. In diplomatory
science, this closing method would not survive. Other
than already mentioned factors, I would add that
diplomatic negotiations on common goods are ordinarily
done in amicable atmosphere partly because
agreement by consensus is necessary to avoid the
free-rider problem and to effectively implement the
deal. Therefore, adversarial procedures may not conform
to this surrounding atmosphere and make
reaching agreement impossible. Instead, uncertainty
should be managed through appropriate methods,
such as boundary objects utilized by boundary organizations,
and dynamic procedures respecting the
norms, rules and institutions of the diplomatic domain.
The European acid rain regime as a sample for
modeling diplomatory science
The success and effectiveness of advisory science in
the diplomatic process of LRTAP has been widely
argued in the past literature (e.g. Ishii 2001a,b; Wettestad
2000, 2002; Castells 1999). Advisory science is
utilized to pursue cost-effective reduction strategy for
addressing transboundary air pollution; concretely,
the so-called ‘effect-based’ strategy, aims to differentiate
national reduction targets according to the leastcost
distribution of reduction targets calculated by
integrated assessment techniques. This is a totally
different approach to set the politically-sensitive
reduction targets compared to the flat-rate targets of
the first sulphur protocol (adopted in 1985) and the
nitrogen protocol (1988).
Effect-based strategy necessitates various types of
scientific knowledge to be generated. Firstly, the
quantitative relationship between deposition of pollutants
and their effects is proffered by the concept of
Critical Loads (CLs) determined in diplomatic jargon
as:
Critical load means a quantitative estimate of an exposure
to one or more pollutants below which significant
harmful effects on specified sensitive elements of the
environment do not occur, according to present
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 265
knowledge. 18
In other words, CLs is a threshold determining the
level of maximum deposition rate for an ecosystem to
remain damage-free. Secondly, an integrated assessment
model, the so-called RAINS (Regional Acidification
INformation and Simulation) model, is used to
calculate the least cost distribution of reduction targets
and its associated damage level using CLs with
the input of emission and deposition data, transportation
patterns of pollutants, and economic data, such
as GDP and cost data of reduction technologies,
which are collected, synthesized and analyzed by the
Cooperative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation
of the Long-range Transmission of Air Pollutants
in Europe (EMEP). The ‘effect-based’ strategy
was first implemented in the negotiations of the Second
Sulphur Protocol (SSP; see footnote no.20) and
successively in the Multi-effect, Multi-pollutant Protocol
(MEMPP; adopted in 1999).
EMEP as a boundary organization
EMEP is the official monitoring network and database
for the LRTAP Convention and it is hailed as
the very backbone of the robust science-based regime.
Its main objective is: “to provide information
to governments on the deposition and concentration
of air pollutants, as well as on the quantity and significance
of long-range transmissions of pollutants
and fluxes across boundaries”. 19 Accordingly, its
assigned functions are: collection of emission data;
measurement of air and precipitation quality; and,
modeling of atmospheric dispersion, using both emission
and meteorological data, and functions describing
the transformation and removal processes (Castells
1999, 15). It constitutes a boundary organization
satisfying the three criteria mentioned above: it provided
the opportunity for the creation and use of
boundary objects and standardized packages such as
Critical Loads and the RAINS model as shown below
(first criteria); participants are from both the scientific
and policymakers’ community, some of the members
play the mediating role of both domains (second
criteria); EMEP is set up based on an international
agreement (the EMEP protocol), therefore it exists at
the frontier of scientific and diplomatic social worlds,
and have distinct lines of accountability to each,
which is exhibited by the fact that decision-making is
consensus-based (third criteria).
How has EMEP been attributed the authoritative
18
Protocol on Further Reduction of Sulphur Emissions (adopted
at Oslo on 14 June 1994) Art. 1.8.
19
Castells 1999, 15.

266
status as ‘the very backbone of the LRTAP regime’,
and secured and maintained its scientific credibility?
This cannot simply be attained by just verifying collected
data by approaches of research science, e.g.
probability distribution or experiments, because the
key for scientific credibility in the context of diplomacy
is not only reducing the level of data uncertainties,
but also assuaging sovereign states’ concerns of
particular national-interest bias by assuring EMEP to
be politically neutral. The answer lies in the interpretation
of its institutional feature as ‘international
common resource’ (ICR) which conforms to the
norms, rules and institutions of the LRTAP’s diplomatic
context. The logic of ICR is as follows.
Drawing from economics, ICR has features of nonexclusiveness
and non-rivalness, which indicates that
benefits of ICR can be equally shared by all participating
parties. This attributes notion of fairness
among participants to the knowledge-base and helps
avoiding political struggle for getting more benefits
than others by its use. Additionally, these features let
participating parties share the notion that the ICR is
possessed not by sovereign states but by the international
community as a whole. This facilitates the
understanding that the ICR does not serve for pursuing
interests of a particular party but for deriving
universal benefits for the international community.
Sovereign states as members of the international
society tend to act as ‘faithful men’ when treating
such ICRs. The participating parties show respect for
ICRs to demonstrate their good faith as member of
international community. Altogether, in effect, these
features reduce states' incentives to abuse scientific
uncertainty for their own sake. In other words, ICR
can be said to constitute a methodology of uncertainty
management in the context of diplomacy,
hence allows EMEP to retain the authoritative status
and to secure and maintain scientific credibility. 20
EMEP’s institutional features and operational principles
make it an ICR. It was constructed based on an
international protocol, the EMEP protocol, which
was agreed in the era of East-West divide and stipulates
cost sharing among participants. In order to
ensure that the EMEP had been established as a
balanced international organization between the East
and the West, each of two meteorological centers
were established in Oslo, Norway and in Moscow,
Russia. The key institution for collecting and synthesizing
CLs data, the Coordinating Center for Effects
(CCE), is in close cooperation with EMEP. The
operational principles of EMEP, such as openness,
20 This is a revised version of the logic of ICR elaborated in Ishii
2002b.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
transparency, and sharing are in full consistency of
the features of ICR. 21
To date, there is no evidence that participating parties
have ever significantly challenged the credibility of
EMEP data. Oppositely, EMEP data were well accepted
and even convinced some countries to take
necessary steps to fight acidification (Wettestad, 2000;
Levy, 1993). Without the status of ICR, EMEP could
raise parties’ suspicion of biases and induce strategic
behavior, especially against controversial assessment
results, e.g. so-called ‘blame matrices’ 22 , which was
not the case.
Nonetheless, without the ability of EMEP scientists
to cross-check the observed data and governmentsubmitted
data, and to make periodic inspections to
EMEP monitoring sites, EMEP could not have such
power of persuasion and influence on participating
parties.
Given the long-term success and expansion of
EMEP’s activities, EMEP as boundary organization
have also contributed to build long-term mutual trust
between scientific and policymakers’ community,
which was argued above to be an important function
of boundary organizations.
Boundary objects in the context of LRTAP
Specifically in the context diplomatory science,
boundary objects, again, are objects that enable
members of relevant scientific and diplomatic community
to successfully cooperate to nurture solutions
on a sound scientific footing, by having two distinct
features: they are flexible enough to accommodate to
the different needs and constraints of the scientific
and diplomatic community; and, still robust enough
to sustain a common identity. From the scientists’
side, they do their boundary work and scientific work
intensified around the construction and deployment
of boundary objects to attain their very objective to
cooperate as well as to satisfy their local needs and
concerns. In LRTAP, their local needs and concerns
were twofold: to avoid immoderate responsibility for
the proffered advice which can diminish their motivations
and break their moral grounds to participate in
the advisory process; and, to successfully gain support
from their peer scientists outside the hybrid domain
of the science and diplomacy to enhance their scientific
credibility (Ishii 2002a). On the other hand, the
21 See EMEP 2000, 10. Even though this strategy was formulated
in 2000, the operational principles were borrowed from past
experiences. Hence, they were valid in the past.
22 These quantify source-receptor relationships by each country
(who receives how much of who’s emitted pollutants).

local needs and concerns of the diplomats were: to
pursue the cost-effective reduction strategy based on
sound scientific knowledge; and to legitimate authoritative
decisions to the other members of the international
society and their nations. The boundary objects
of Critical Loads and the RAINS model simultaneously
addressed these needs and concerns leading to
successful cooperation between the two. 23 Due to
spatial constraints, I scrutinize only CLs as a boundary
object in the below section.
Critical Loads
CLs first entered into the diplomatic negotiations for
the nitrogen protocol which stipulates for CLs as a
tool for the effect-based strategy. The SSP became
the first ever whose reduction targets were derived
from the effect-based strategy using Target Loads
(TLs) instead of CLs. This introduction of TLs was
because the integrated assessments soon revealed that
attaining CLs was far from feasible, thus the diplomats
turned to TLs which was an arbitrary target
derived from modifying CLs taking technical, economic,
social and political factors into account using
the gap closure approach (in the case of SSP, closing
the gap between actual deposition of 1990 and critical
load deposition).
Critical Loads as boundary object
It is more or less argued by various scholars that CLs
well constitutes a boundary object (e.g. Ishii 2002a; Lidskog
and Sundqvist 2002; Sundqvist et al. 2002). CLs
obviously satisfies the interests of the diplomats with
its definition. For scientists, Ishii argues that its features
and the boundary work done by the advisory
scientists well addressed their two aforementioned
local concerns (Ishii 2002a). Regarding their concern
over scientific credibility, “they demarcated CLs from
being a political tool by arguing that CLs is an “intrinsic
property of nature” which fits the image of research
science very well”. 24 The clear dichotomy of
CLs as an “intrinsic property of nature”, and TLs as a
political tool supplemented this boundary work.
Additionally, arguing CLs as a value-free method 25
contributed to demarcate CLs by associating it with
‘universal’ research science. These two discursive
demarcations were crucial to scientists so that they
23
RAINS is not elaborated in this paper due to limited space.
24
Ishii 2002a. For example, see. Sverdrup and de Vries, 1994;
Warfvinge and Sverdrup, 1992; Warfvinge et al., 1992.
25
For an example of the ‘value-free method’ argument, see Kämäri
et al. 1992, 377-378.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 267
could stimulate the perception of them as not heavily
entangled in politics, and obtain advocating consensus
from the scientific community (Ishii 2002b).
Furthermore, the scientists were concerned about the
responsibility of the ensuing situation of the ‘effectbased’
strategy; what if the CLs-determined reduction
targets trigger off an economic turmoil? Because of
the inherent uncertainty of the CLs value, it was
necessary to relieve this immoderate responsibility
from the scientists’ shoulders to maintain motivations
and their moral grounds to participate in the advisory
process. However, the infeasibility of attaining CLs
and the remedial introduction of TLs as a buffer
device between CLs and politically sensitive reduction
targets relieved the scientific community from immoderate
responsibility; hence facilitated participation
of the scientific community and endorsement of CLs
with scientific consensus (Ishii 2002a).
Because boundary objects are robust enough to sustain
common identity among different social worlds,
CLs functioned as a ‘common currency’ which facilitated
well structured risk communication between
them, which is usually very difficult in the hybrid
domain of science and policy, by offering common
definition of acidification risks, standardized method
and data of detrimental effects of acidification (Ishii
2002a).
Methodologies addressing the context of
diplomacy
COST-EFFECTIVENESS VS. COST-BENEFIT
At first, diplomatic interests dominated the reason for
choosing cost-effectiveness approach as the guiding
principle. The other candidate was the cost-benefit
approach (CBA) which quantifies environmental
benefits by using a virtual market mechanism. This
quantification methodology had two difficulties to be
used in the diplomatic negotiations. Firstly, using
virtual market mechanism involved huge uncertainties
“often extending over an order of magnitude”. 26 Leen
Hordijk, the then project leader of Transboundary
Air Pollution project at the International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis (TAP/IIASA), decided,
according to his personal experiences with using
CBA, that this may cause detrimental and counterproductive
effects because huge uncertainties may
induce selective use of data by policy-makers (Patt
1999, 119). Secondly, using virtual market mechanism
was refused by the Soviet Union who perceived this
26 Patt 1999, 119.

268
assumption was enmeshed in capital ideology (Ishii
2001a,b). In other words, the Soviet Union perceived
CBA as less politically neutral than CEA. At that time,
one of the most important diplomatic objectives of
the LRTAP regime was to enhance cooperation between
the East and the West. Therefore, the Soviet
Union had enough leverage to reject CBA. It was not
primarily pure scientific considerations but these two
factors that led to the prioritization of CEA over
CBA. 27
DIPLOMACY-RELEVANT TIME- AND SPATIAL-SCALE
The spatial-scale of CLs, set identically to EMEP’s
150km – 150km grid, were not decided primarily
according to scientific considerations but to “make
the data comparable to actual deposition data of
EMEP, and to legitimize and authorize CLs as ICR
for use in the negotiations”. 28 The time-scale was set
as infinite. This was because the calculation methodology
was decided to be the Steady State Mass Balance
method (SSMB) which assumes steady state
ecosystem and “computes the maximum acid input to
the system that will not cause the soil to acidify to the
extent that a predefined critical alkalinity criterium is
violated”. 29 In other words, SSMB does not take
dynamic temporal changes, such as recovery of the
ecosystems, into account. This simplicity of calculation
eased data requirements for those do not have an
intensive database for calculating CLs and allowed to
calculate all CLs grid data on a European-wide area
(together with the European part of USSR) (Ishii
2001a,b). The infinite time-scale also contributed to
the boundary work to emphasize CLs as “an intrinsic
property of nature” as depicted above, because the
time-independence of CLs could easily be translated
as an intrinsic feature of ecosystems.
PRAGMATIC CHOICE OF METHODOLOGY
There are at least three choices which were intended
to retain the usefulness of CLs and thereby, address
the context of diplomacy. The first is the aforementioned
selection of SSMB. The second is the introduction
of the so-called ‘5-percentile CLs’, which
indicates “that 95% of the grid cell has a critical load
higher than that number, and is based on a cumulative
frequency distribution of critical loads for all soil
types in that cell”. 30 “In other words, in order to ease
CLs attainment, extremely vulnerable ecosystems
27 This paragraph owes largely to Patt 1999.
28
Ishii 2002a.
29
Kämäri 1992, 379-380.
30 Patt 1999, 120.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
were pragmatically cut off from the scope”. 31 This
enabled to avoid extremely low CLs which can easily
lead to 100% reduction requirement. The third is the
artificial adjustments to alleviate problematic calculations.
There were a few CLs values that were lower
than the estimated S deposition from natural sources,
which will never be realized. The pragmatic solution
was to artificially set the CLs value at the same level
as that of natural deposition with the assumption that
changes due to natural emissions are not controllable
and consequential changes therefore inevitable (Bull
1995, 207).
MODIFY METHODOLOGIES THROUGH SCIENCE-
DIPLOMACY COMMUNICATIONS
Main modifications were twofold: the so-called ‘Madrid
modifications’ and the exclusively focusing on
sulphur deposition in the SSP negotiations. The ‘Madrid
modifications’ was agreed during a workshop
held in Madrid, Spain and attended by both scientists
and policy-makers, to change the value of CLs for
certain grids because those were estimated unrealistically
low (Skeffington, 1995 quoted in Gough et al.,
1998, 24). Although this modification altered mere a
small proportion of grids, “[t]his can be interpreted as
re-negotiation of data as a result of the review process
or as an arbitrary allocation of values that would not
stand up to scientific validation, depending on the
view of how data should be used in a policy context”.
32 The second modification was required by the
diplomatic community because the SSP was intended
to focus merely on sulphur reductions. While the CLs
data were derived by the combination of nitrogen and
sulphur data inputs, the requirement of dividing the
CLs data into a nitrogen and sulphur components is
“difficult to justify scientifically”. 33 Sustaining policy
usefulness in the context of diplomacy, which is the
objective of diplomatory science, motivated these
alterations in methodologies (Ishii 2002b).
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY IN THE DIPLOMATIC
CONTEXT
The last element of methodological aspects to address
the diplomatic context is managing uncertainty. According
to Ishii, “[a]ll these data and methodology
selected to address the context of diplomacy incorporates
ignorance and considerable uncertainties into
CLs data. Because politics abounds with danger to
deploy uncertainties strategically with effect of reducing
credibility of scientific data, elements to manage
31
Ishii 2002b.
32
Gough et al. 1998, 24.
33 Bull 1995, 205.

these ignorance and uncertainties are crucial to maintain
policy usefulness”. 34 In the case of CLs, four
methods of uncertainty management can be identified.
Firstly, CLs data are legitimated by putting an
‘official stamp’ by the governments. This is done by
arranging procedures in which the national focal
centers (NFCs) designated by the governments calculate
the CLs according to the agreed basic methodology
–– SSMB. This arrangement also allows governments
to take particular local circumstances into
account in the calculations, which is the second
method of uncertainty management. This reduces the
chance to abuse scientific uncertainty legitimized
strategically by the need to incorporate peculiar local
circumstances. The third is backing SSMB with scientific
consensus. Actual detailed methodologies are
“adjusted through workshops and conferences under
the auspices of UNECE, and NFCs do not provide
data until scientific consensus among International
Cooperative Programme on Mapping (ICP/M),
NFCs and scientific community on methods are
reached”. 35 Fourthly, the dynamic scientific processes
make uncertainties and ignorance more acceptable
because dynamic processes pave the way for improving
the methodology and thus, make the anomalies
appear to be a temporal situation. As depicted above,
the definition of CLs is dynamic in nature indicating
constant revision of the CLs methodology. Moreover,
“[i]n order to tackle with criticism that SSMB method
does not take the dynamic nature of ecosystems into
account, scientists tend to argue for the need of incorporating
dynamic modeling. This argument has
the function of that it shows pertinent scientists are
very well cognizant of the shortfall and the scientific
process is dynamic” 36 enough to correct it.
Conclusion
There are no models which can account for advisory
science undertaken in the field of the hybrid domain
of scientific and diplomatic culture. Diplomatory
science was elaborated as a potential model to fill in
this knowledge gap, by comparing with regulatory
science, and further by using the LRTAP regime as a
sample case of successful utilization of advisory
knowledge in diplomatic scenes. Combining the example
of CLs with the case of the RAINS model 37 , it
is very important to note that the methodologies and
selection criteria is significantly different from those
34
Ishii 2002b.
35
Hettelingh et al. 2000.
36
Ishii 2002b.
37
See Ishii 2001b, 2002b.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 269
of research science (Ishii 2002b), because specifying
the differences will be some instructions useful to
diplomacy-advisory scientists to pursue productive
scientific work. The specific methodologies used in
diplomatory science in the case of LRTAP can be
summarized as below.
Table 1. Specified methodologies used in diplomatory science in
the case of LRTAP
• use database constructed as an ICR
• set the time scale and spatial scale according
to the context of diplomacy
• use pragmatic methodologies to accommodate
to inconsistencies and to incorporate
appropriate time- and spatial-scales
• modify methodologies through communications
between advisory scientists and policymakers
• manage uncertainties due to pragmatic and
modified methodologies
• pursue complementary scientific research
These were selected upon four criteria to fulfill the
objective of diplomatory science in the context of
LRTAP: transparency; political neutrality; scientific
consensus; user-friendliness. These criteria are stemming
from the adjustment of scientific and diplomatic
culture, which have different actors, norms, rules and
institutions, to pursue the agreed diplomatic objective.
In other words, the selection of methodologies is
the result of translating the norms, rules and institutions
of the hybrid domain of science and diplomacy
into methodological terms. Further elaboration of
diplomatory science requires analyzing relevant uncertainties
and ignorance in more detail, and adding
case studies to generalize the model.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Shohei Yonemoto, Axel Volkery, and
Dan Plafcan for valuable comments. This research is
partly funded by the Global Environment Research
Fund of Ministry of the Environment, Japan, “S-1:
Integrated Carbon Balance Research Project”.
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Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 271-284.
The Belgian Nuclear Phase-Out as a Strategy for Sustainable
Development: Unstructured Problems, Unstructured Answers?
Erik Laes ∗ , Gaston Meskens + , William D'Haeseleer ♦ , and
Raoul Weiler ♣
1. Introduction
The nuclear controversy just seems to go on and on,
flickering in and out of existence, adopting many
guises, but never reaching global closure. Lately, the
contribution of nuclear power to future energy systems
features again in the debate on global warming,
or, more generally, sustainable development. As the
stakes are high for some global players 1 , they felt the
need to raise their voices in the debate. Hence, a
number of reports on the future of nuclear energy
started to appear. Interestingly enough however,
these reports use widely diverging argumentations to
make their point. Seekers after enlightenment are
often left more confused than when they started their
enquiry. For instance, while a report by the NEA
(Nuclear Energy Agency 2000) emphasises the institutional
context of nuclear power utilisation, the
WWF (Worlwide Fund for Nature 2000) mixes up
egalitarian ethics with an integrated view on energy
production and consumption, and the U.S. DOE
(U.S. Department of Energy 2000) mainly addresses
the need for technological improvements – also related
to safety, waste and proliferation - in the context
of intensified global competition 2 .
∗ SCK•CEN (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre) and K.U.Leuven
(University of Leuven), Belgium. Contact: elaes@sckcen.be.
+ SCK•CEN (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre), Belgium. Contact::
gmeskens@sckcen.be.
♦ K.U.Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium. Contact:
William.Dhaeseleer@mech.kuleuven.ac.be.
♣ K.U.Leuven (University of Leuven, Belgium. Contact::
Raoul.Weiler@agr.kuleuven.ac.be.
1 For example, should nuclear energy be considered as an acceptable
technology under the UNFCCC clean development
mechanism (i.e. a mechanism whereby countries can meet
their greenhouse gas reduction targets by implementing projects
in other countries) ?
2 More recently, an agreement has been reached on six 'new generation'
reactor and fuel cycle technologies to be developed
before 2030 (Source:: The World's Nuclear News Agency (23
Sept. 2002) / News No. 303/02/A).
2. Theoretical concepts
2.1. RISK SOCIETY
The problems and risks associated with nuclear
power generation – or conversely, the economic and
ecological risks of phasing out the existing nuclear
power plants - belong to a class of often intractable
risks confronting society. The well-known German
sociologist and philosopher Beck has even coined a
new term to describe what he calls a 'society in a
permanent state of emergency' : the risk society (Beck
1992).
Beck's theoretical apparatus throws a new light on the
fundamental problems facing any policy for sustainable
development. We will briefly resume some of
the defining characteristics of a risk society, before
focussing on the resulting research questions. In
"Risk Society", Beck asserts that contemporary risks
can no longer be defined as 'undesired side-effects' of
the modernisation process, but rather, that these risks
are constitutive and essential for the survival of the
modern state. The focus of the societal debate has
slowly changed from the 'distribution of goods' (i.e.
the key problem of the welfare state) to the 'distribution
of bads' (i.e. the consequences of risky activities).
But although the temporal and spatial aspects of
contemporary risks such as nuclear power or human
induced climate change are indeed unprecedented in
history, it would be wrong to assert that these physical
parameters are solely responsible for the abovementioned
transition. Beck emphasizes that the
greatest danger confronting society is perhaps not the
physical danger, but rather the social consequences of
an explosive loss of trust3 in the institutions that
traditionally had to deal with these risks : advice
3 Trust should be distinguished from confidence. Confidence is
the belief that, based on experience or evidence, certain future
events will occur as expected It is based on information about
the performance of persons, organisations, or other aspects of
our physical or social environments. Loss of confidence leads
to an interest in, and a need for (social) trust. Whereas confidence
is based on performance information, trust is based on
morality information, i.e. information indicative of the values
that are salient in a context. Trust is thus only invested in persons
or other entities to which values can be attributed (e.g.
democratic institutions). Social trust has primacy and control
over confidence; restoration of confidence depends on the
prior establishment of trust (Deblonde 2002, Earle 2001, Offe
1999, Slovic 2000).

272
councils, experts, public administration offices, politicians,
etc. Through this dynamic process 4 , modern
institutions are confronted with their own limits and
thrown upon their own founding presuppositions 5 .
2.2. STRUCTURED VS. UNSTRUCTURED
PROBLEMS
What are the consequences of this evolution for
scientific support for policy-making ? Before answering
this question, a qualification is required. The
above is not meant to imply that all traditional solutions
(e.g. the appeal for more science, more stringent
control mechanisms, etc.) have completely lost their
significance. In the literature, a distinction is made
between structured and unstructured problems (Craye
et al. 2001, Grin et al. 1997, Hisschemöller 1993). If
there is no or very little disagreement over the problem
definition, that problem belongs to the 'structured'
class. In that case, there is a general agreement
on the relevant facts, on the value issues involved and
on the measures that have to be taken6 . This implies
that nearly all involved persons will agree on a scientific
methodology or discipline to tackle the problem.
Unstructured problems on the other hand are problems
where there exists not only dissent on the relevant
facts, but also on the values at stake. Different
actors regard 'reality' from different value systems or
worldviews. These worldviews direct the attention
towards certain facts or connections between facts,
and thus form the 'bounded rationality' of an actor.
Therefore, it is not clear which discipline(s) should be
involved in finding a solution7 .
New approaches to the production and utilisation of
scientific knowledge have been advocated. Whether
4 To be sure, Beck not only points at scientific uncertainty for the
explanation of this loss of trust, but also at social phenomena
such as the loss of tradition, individualising tendencies, and
sub-politics - a notion describing that society is increasingly
being transformed by powers that are not to be situated in the
traditional centres of political power. Beck mentions the actions
of multinationals, the press, scientists, courts and individual
citizens.
5 Beck's philosophical intuition has since then been confirmed by
numerous studies, see e.g. the research done by the TRUST-
NET framework (European Commission 1999).
6 However, in principle (as part of a strategy of systematic doubt),
from the 'meta' point of view of the analysts involved, every
problem is an unstructured problem. Structured problems are
in fact at the root unstructured problems which are made tractable
within a certain context and at a certain point in time
(Grin et al. 1997, 27). A 'fact' only becomes a fact by stabilising
the underlying ideology. This dominant position can always
be challenged in a different context, by different actors,
etc.
7 Of course, a whole spectrum of problems can be imagined in the
margin between 'structured' and 'unstructured'. For instance,
Grin et al. (1997) have developed a fourfold classification
scheme based on the two axes of 'dissent on values' and 'dissent
on facts'. It would be more precise to speak of 'relatively'
structured vs. 'relatively' unstructured problems.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
this plea for a new science goes under the name of
'mode 2 science' (Gibbons et al. 1994), 'precautionary
science' (Stirling 1999), 'reflexive science' (Beck et al.
1994) or 'post-normal science' (Funtowicz and Ravetz
1993), all these new currents share the insight that
scientific knowledge is, in essence, a social construct 8 .
This observation is particularly salient in a context
where scientific rationality is confronted with political
rationality 9 , as it is more difficult to reach closure –
or, in other words, to move a problem definition
from the 'unstructured' into the 'structured' class – in
these circumstances. Smits et al. (1984) conclude that
the provision of scientific information for decisionmaking
should be oriented at the inherently political
processes of conflict resolution and the formation of
consensus and compromise, without however losing
their scientific status. However, we believe that this
view is too narrow : scientific assessment may also
function as a forum of constitutional debate. Conflict
over technology can imply political demands which
simply are not processed by the established procedures
of decision making. For that matter, social
forms of communication are needed which can deal
convincingly with the interests, hopes, and fears
reflected in such demands, even if they cannot translate
them into effective regulation. Discursive forms
of technology assessment may be one example of
such a forum (Schreiber 2002).
2.3. PROBLEM DEFINITION
Smits and Leyten (1990) have introduced the notion
8 Scientific constructivism asserts that scientific knowledge is not
simply 'a mirror of nature'. The acceptance or rejection of scientific
knowledge depends in fact on objective, subjective and
intersubjective selection criteria. Objective criteria reflect on
the suitability of knowledge to represent the object of interest :
controllability, reproducibility and non-ambiguity (in other
words, the standard criteria of empirical research). Subjective
criteria reflect on the suitability of knowledge to be assimilated
or internalised by an individual : utility, simplicity, and coherence
with existing knowledge are all relevant knowledge selectors.
Intersubjective criteria point at the degree of acceptance
of an idea within a group of subjects (e.g. peers) : collective
utility, expressiveness, degree of formalisation, conformity
with existing beliefs and authority all belong to this category
(van Brakel 1998). A constructivist understanding of science
does not have to lead to relativism. The pursuit of intersubjective
accordance still implies a continuous touchstone and a
steering mechanism for scientific knowledge. It does imply a
greater sense of open-mindedness towards diverging insights
(Batens 1992).
9 Political rationality is essentially oriented towards the goal of
political survival. The building up of power and the maintenance
of positions of power are therefore 'rational' actions.
Important elements in the political game are differences in objectives,
in definitions of problems and in strategies for solution.
The aim of political survival does not necessarily serve
only egoistical purposes. More important is the conclusion
that political decisions must find support among parties actively
involved, both in the phases when the decision is being
formed and when it is being implemented (Smits et al. 1984).

of a 'preliminary technology assessment', defined as a
short preparatory study to determine which approach
to scientific support in a given policy context would
be most warranted. In particular, these authors formulated
the following questions, at three interlinked
levels of discourse in the decision-making process
(see also Renn and Klinke 2001, 31) :
1. At the cognitive discourse level : Which
knowledge is available at this moment ?
Which knowledge is used by which actor?
Cognitive discourse is used with the aim of
arriving at a consensual interdisciplinary understanding
of empirical 'facts' and theoretical models,
or, where necessary, a clear demarcation of
any disagreement. With regard to decisionmaking,
the cognitive discourse is used to
arrive at an interdisciplinary synthesis of existing
knowledge, with explicit reference to
uncertainty and ignorance at the disciplinary
level;
2. At the reflective discourse level : What are the
'gaps' in the existing information ? Can these
gaps be closed in principle ? Is there a dissensus
on the value perspective from which
the 'facts' are defined ? Reflective discourse
deals with the crucial issue of framing and
interpretation of science in a context of policy-making.
On this level, scientists try to
reach closure on relevant knowledge for decisionmaking
by actively trying to reduce the uncertainties
in the gaps between disciplinary
sciences, and thereby producing new, explicitly
policy-relevant or strategic, knowledge,
but also new uncertainties. Here also, the
limits to this transdisciplinary scientific understanding
should be stated clearly;
3. At the design or planning discourse level :
How is the decision frame shaped ? Does it
need to be changed ?The design or planning
discourse is focussed on the evaluation of
options for action. No amount of cognitive
or reflective discourse can relieve politicians
of their duty to make a decision in light of
the remaining uncertainties. Mediation procedures,
citizen participation and parliamentary
decision-making could all figure prominently
in the planning discourse.
With these theoretical propositions in the back of our
minds, we are now able to approach our research
topic. In Belgium, the federal government has
launched a proposal of law 10 to progressively phase
10 Wetsontwerp houdende de geleidelijke uitstap uit kernenergie
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 273
out nuclear power plants. The government also
positions this choice explicitly in a strategy for achieving
sustainable development (cf. infra). To assess the
scientific support for this decision, the theoretical
outline suggests that attention should be given to the
three distinct levels of discourse (cognitive, reflective and
design). In particular, the first and second discourse
level 11 (cognitive and reflective) could provide useful
insights on how to increase trust in the science /
policy interface. Our analysis was also guided by the
results of semi-structured interviews with members of
the Belgian Federal Council on Sustainable Development
(FRDO / CFDD) 12 . Before turning to the
results of this enquiry (§ 5), we briefly sketch the
relevant policy documents and scientific support for
the government proposal of law (§ 4). Although the
research questions focussed on the Belgian context,
the resulting conclusions and recommendations (§ 6)
could prove to be useful even when transferred to
other policy contexts.
3. Methodology
3.1. SELECTION OF PARTICIPANTS
In our selection of respondents, we chose not to limit
ourselves to the 'traditional' actors implied in energy
policy matters 13 . A number of problem-oriented
criteria (representativeness, interest in long-term
societal problems, insight in political decision-making,
distance from centres of power) led us to select
members of the Federal Council on Sustainable De-
voor industriële elektriciteitsproductie ('Proposal of law regarding
the progressive phase-out of nuclear energy for the
industrial production of electricity', our translation). So far,
the proposal of law has been presented to and approved by
the Council of Ministers on 1 March, 2002 and on 28 June,
2002, and has been submitted to Parliament on 8 July, 2002
(document 50 1910/1 – see also
http://www.dekamer.be/documents/1910/1.pdf ).
11 Scientific assessment alone can of course never resolve a political
discussion. Even participatory forms of technology assessment
operate at a distance from political decisions. Participation
ensures the inclusion of a plurality of visions in a
process of political communication, but it is not a democratic
transformation of political decision-making. The assessment
is an advice, not the decision-making itself. (Schreiber 2002).
12 Besides these procedural questions, the questionnaire also
enquired into more substantive (e.g. assessment of future energy
technology) or instrumental questions (e.g. policy measures
to achieve sustainable development). As such, this paper
provides details on only one aspect of the interview results.
The questionnaire as well as the entire report are available
from the authors upon request.
13 Mostly exponents from political parties, trade unions, business,
utilities, scientific community, public administration and
NGO's. Energy policy is a typical example of a highly institutionalised
domain : perceived problems usually have a high
economic and social importance and are dealt with in 'powerful'
commissions where these actors are represented (e.g. the
Commission for the Regulation of Electricity and Gas sector).

274
velopment (FRDO / CFDD) 14 for this exercise. In
the end, the people who chose to participate were
representatives15 of the following organisations :
labour unions (2), NGO's (3), advisory bodies (3),
public administration (1), universities (5), utilities (2),
consumers' organisations (1), employers' organisations
(1), business federations (1).
The interviews were conducted during the months of
April and May, 2002. This precision is necessary with
respect to the changing salience of some policy issues.
3.2. THE ANALYSIS GRID
There exists no standard methodology for the analysis
of semi-structured interviews. However, in view
of our research questions (§ 2), we chose to structure
the responses around the three discourse levels. With
respect to content, each discourse level defines a
cluster of arguments revealed by comparing and
contrasting different responses. We tried to construct
the most robust argumentation scheme possible
for each perspective. This implies that although
participants would certainly recognise parts of their
reasoning, our analytic reconstruction is certainly not
to be identified with the vision of a particular societal
actor.
4. Relevant policy documents in the advent
of the phase-out decision
The nuclear phase-out was first announced in the
government policy statement16 of 7 June 1999, together
with the intention to comply with the Kyoto
agreements. The phase-out scenario means that the
Belgian nuclear power plants would effectively be
taken out of business in the period 2015-2025,
whereas Belgium now provides for close to 60% of
its electricity needs by nuclear power generation.
14 The FRDO / CFDD was established in 1997. Its role is to give
advice to the government on policies for sustainable development.
Besides the advisory function, it also has provides a forum
for discussion and tries to sensitize a broad public for
sustainable development. The FRDO / CFDD is composed
of representatives of different social groups : environmental
organisations, development organisations, consumers' organisations,
labour unions, employers' organisations, energy producers
and the scientific world. Representatives of the federal
government, of the regional governments and of environmental
and socio-economic councils are members without a
right to vote.
15 However, participants in the interviews revealed their personal
opinions.
16 Government policy statement (July 7, 1999), De brug naar de
eenentwintigste eeuw – ontwerp van regeerakkoord ('The bridge to the
twenty-first century – a draft government agreement' - our
translation),
http://belgium.fgov.be/abtb/gov/regeerakkoord.htm . The
policy statement was confirmed again by prime minister Verhofstadt
in his declaration of federal policy to the parliament
on 9 October 2001.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
A strategic analysis of the Belgian electricity system
(AMPERE Commissie 2000) was first commissioned
by the predecessor of the current minister of Energy
& Sustainable Development. A group of experts (the
AMPERE commission) was appointed to contribute
to this analysis. Its mandate was to analyse the global
context with regard to the economy and energy, to
estimate the long-term electricity demand (set by the
commission towards the year 2020), to evaluate potential
energy technologies with regard to their economical,
ecological and social impacts, and to evaluate
future costs of nuclear reactor decommissioning
and management of nuclear waste. A few months
later, the new government was installed, and the
present minister of Energy & Sustainable Development
changed the assignment of the AMPERE
commission according to the new orientations in
energy policy. Hence, the commission was asked to
take into account the scenario to phase-out nuclear
power plants, the Kyoto agreements, and the best
international practice concerning demand-side management
(DSM). In October 2000, the commission
presented its results. It recommended keeping open
the nuclear option and a continuing participation in
mostly private sector R&D on new nuclear reactor
types. Publication of the AMPERE report was followed
by a peer review by experts of international
renown17 . Although the AMPERE commission does
not explicitly position its activities under the perspective
of sustainable development, the report remains a
focal point in the discussion, as it is the only recent
prospective analysis for the Belgian electricity sector.
All participants in the debate, be it proponents or
opponents of the nuclear option, have felt obliged to
refer to the AMPERE report.
In the Federal Plan for Sustainable Development
(2000-2004) 18 (Interdepartementale Commissie
Duurzame Ontwikkeling, 2000), approved by the
Council of Ministers on 20 July 2000, the nuclear
phase-out is also referred to briefly. The government
engages to draft a justification of this choice. This
justification would elaborate on the following elements
: the planetary impact of a widespread use of
nuclear power generation, a long-term vision on
nuclear energy, the integration of the dismantling of
17 The review group was asked to address the quality of the data
and methodology used and to express an opinion as to
whether the conclusions of the report were adequately supported
by the scientific evidence available and whether all
relevant hypotheses had been examined – in other words, the
review group was asked to evaluate the cognitive basis of the
AMPERE recommendations.
18 The excerpt is taken from section 4.1. ('Policies to promote
sustainable energy'), § 396.

nuclear power plants in a global strategy to reduce
CO2-emissions and to change consumption habits,
and the scientific uncertainties surrounding nuclear
energy. So far, the promised note has not been published.
The proposal of law (see note 10) (approved by the
Council of Ministers on 1 March 2002 and on 28
June 2002) is the provisional culmination of the political
decision-making process. Its main interest lies
in the fact that it is the only available official document
giving some indications on the rationale behind
the government decision. Apparently, the government
is not willing to organise a large societal debate
on the issue, as an emergency treatment of the proposal
of law by the parliament has been demanded 19 .
In Table 1, an overview is presented of the policy
development cycle so far, with the relevant policy
questions and the corresponding answers taken from
the above-mentioned official documents.
19 In accordance with Article 80 of the Constitution.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 275

276
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Function Typical policy question Policy answer
Problem structuring What is the nature of the problem?
What are the causes?
Assessment of risks What may happen?
How urgent is the problem?
What is at stake for whom?
Assessment of response What can be done to mitigate the problem?
Goal and strategy formulation
What are the costs to society?
Are there other benefits?
What should be the goals?
Who is involved?
How to enhance co-operation?
How are uncertainties dealt with?
What is the link with other policy issues?
Implementation Which policy instruments are most
effective?
What are side-effects?
Monitoring Are the policies really implemented?
Is there room for new scientific insights?
Not made explicit; supposedly catastrophic
risk, proliferation risks and problems of
HLW management caused by present-day
nuclear power generation (also on a global
and intergenerational scale).
Catastrophic and irreversible damage to
society as a whole; urgency of phase-out
takes precedence over enhanced risks of
anthropogenic climate change. No operational
solution for the back-end of the nuclear
fuel cycle.
Forty-year lifetime assures that enough
provisions present to dismantle power
plants.
Phase-out of nuclear power. Continuation
of R&D at national and European level.
Possible negative impacts on security of
energy supply, ability to meet international
climate change agreements and the preservation
of nuclear know-how.
Prime goal is to phase out nuclear power.
Parliament will vote on the proposal of law.
Law can only be revoked by the Council of
Ministers when security of energy supply is
put at risk.
Government depends on utilities (to implement
technological alternatives), grid operator
(to ensure sufficient exchange capacity)
and regional governments (rational use of
energy, permits for production units,...) for
the effective implementation of the phaseout.
Period considered long enough to develop
alternatives or to ensure capacity for electricity
import.
Relevant policy areas include climate and
energy policy.
Ban on industrial generation of electricity
based on nuclear fission.
No guarantee; very strong political signal
could ensure a de facto implementation of the
phase-out.
Dangers to security of energy supply are the
only recognised form of a 'force majeure' 20.
Nuclear option is kept open; it is unclear
which research lines will be favoured in the
future. Government spending on national
nuclear R&D remains high.
Evaluation Are the goals likely to be met? Monitoring of security of supply by CREG.
Table 1: The policy development cycle for the phase-out decision
20 A juridical notion meaning that the law can be revoked by unforeseeable and compelling circumstances beyond the will of the party invoking
the 'force majeure'.

5. Results
5.1. THE COGNITIVE LEVEL: THE DEBATE ON
SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY
As explained in § 4, the AMPERE report presents
itself as a synthesis of existing (mainly technical and
economical) knowledge relevant for future electricity
policy. A first group of participants (particularly
representatives of business and employers' organisa-
tions and some scientists) implicitly or explicitly 21
endorsed the methodology followed by the AM-
PERE commission. Conversely, this methodology
was heavily criticised by environmentalist groups.
While several participants noted a general lack of
attention for the demand side of the energy equation
or for an integrated view on energy issues, only one
of these groups effectively engaged in the cognitive
debate by ordering a critical and systematic review of
the AMPERE report by the Wuppertal Institute
(Thomas et al. 2001) 22 . By doing so, the political
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 277
AMPERE Wuppertal Institute
1 st step Collect and compare existing projections of electricity
demand.
Conduct a sensitivity analysis with regard to CO2emissions.
2 nd step Analyse how the projection of electricity demand
can be met with possible options for electricity
generation.
Focus on social cost (technical + external) and plausible
potential.
3 rd step Recommendations on future technologies, taking
into account policy orientations (e.g. nuclear phaseout,
promotion of renewables)
debate is transferred even to the most fundamental
level of peer-reviewed 'objective' science. Table 2
resumes the methodological differences between the
approaches used by the AMPERE Commission and
the Wuppertal Institute.
The authors of the Wuppertal review maintain that in
order to generate a reliable factual basis for informed
decisions on the future energy policy in Belgium, a
"policy and discourse oriented integrated demand
and supply side bottom-up scenario analysis" (p. 5)
Conduct a demand-side bottom-up sectoral analysis
of energy demand for different end-uses.
Derive different scenarios for a range of demandside
energy efficiency potentials, taking into account
barriers that could prevent the full implementation
of the identified potential, and policy measures to
address these barriers.
Estimate supply side potential.
Analyse share of potential that can be realised
through different policy instruments.
Calculate total primary energy consumption, emissions
and costs for different scenarios.
Table 2 : Methodological differences in the approaches used by the AMPERE Commission and the Wuppertal Institute
21 The participant showed his or her general agreement with the
results and recommendations of the AMPERE commission,
either without having made the effort to critically review the
methodology, or after a thorough review. Some participants
handed over leaflets with official statements, showing their
familiarity with the argumentation as developed by the AM-
PERE commission.
22 In this paragraph, we only present a brief and schematic account
of this methodology in order to highlight the different accents;
should be developed. In this definition, every word is
revealing of a certain perspective on the utility of
scientific knowledge for decision-making. Compared
to the AMPERE methodology, this approach puts an
emphasis on the modeling of concrete policy measures
that can help to quantify the magnitude of the
need for action (e.g. CO2 emission goals for each
sector) or identify specific areas were more action
would be needed. While the AMPERE approach
mainly concentrates on an educational discourse 23
about technological options for power generation, the
methodology advocated by the Wuppertal Institute
aims at facilitating a discourse on the planning or design
for a complete representation we refer to the original publication.
23 This educational vocation most clearly comes to the fore when
the AMPERE commission defines the problem with nuclear
energy as the public's irrational fear and lack of understanding,
and suggests that more information campaigns might be the
solution (Executive summary, pp. 80-81).

278
level by reserving a large role for an expert / stakeholder
dialogue.
Regarding the demand-side bottom-up aspect of
the analysis, the peer review group also notes a certain
lack of attention to issues of demand-side management
in the AMPERE report (in spite of the fact
that an implementation of an active DSM policy is
one of the main recommendations of the report) 24 .
They come to essentially the same conclusion as the
Wuppertal Institute25 . However, this conclusion is
immediately qualified by adding that the criticism is
more directed at the mandate of the AMPERE commission
than at the way it fulfilled that mandate (p. 4)
– the restriction to electricity in stead of energy in
general is a good example. The 'official' peer review
group thus comes to a more generous overall appraisal
of the AMPERE endeavour.
If anything, the above discussion shows that there is
no agreement on the so-called 'objectivity' of science,
and that this disagreement is not the result of a poor
understanding of science, but rather of different
criteria to assess the usefulness of scientific methods
within a policy context. In making certain methodological
choices, in stressing some aspects of the problem
(e.g. technological options) while downplaying
others (e.g. demand-side measures), researchers make
inherently political and value-oriented choices. The
methodological confusion heightens the danger of a
strategic use of scientific information by social actors,
i.e. results will only be used when they are in accordance
with the interests of the user. In the Belgian
debate on the future of nuclear power, we noted
several instances of this phenomenon.
24 AMPERE declares not to have studied if it was economically
more interesting to invest in demand compared to supply (in
power plants) to reach the Kyoto objective (Synthesis report,
p. 41). The peer review group observes that "...this is indeed
the key question, and therefore the interest of Section C (concerning
future power demand and DSM) for the decision
process remains limited." (p. 14). Furthermore, the realistic
potential for demand-side management estimated by AM-
PERE (8 %) is considered to be "very subjective" (p. 15).
25 E.g. "The exploration of future power generation systems
should be placed in the perspective of the whole Belgian energy
system, notably by examining contrasted scenarios corresponding
to different scales of end-use energy efficiency policies
and programmes. This would lead to the highlighting of
scenarios in which the whole of the future energy system –
production and consumption – would have been geared to respond
to the constraints of energy supply security and the
global environment." (p. 16), and, "Using in particular the examples
of DSM policies and programmes developed in other
countries and quoted in some length by the AMPERE report,
detailed alternative scenarios of future electricity demand in
Belgium could be established. This would provide a precise
evaluation of the potentials, both technical and economic, for
the various sectors of social and economic activities and for
the different electricity uses." (p. 16-17).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
5.2. THE REFLECTIVE LEVEL: THE DEBATE ON
STRATEGIC INFORMATION FOR DECISION-
MAKING
So far, we have restricted our attention to the methodological
underpinnings of the AMPERE report.
We have revealed some shortcomings and pointed at
the danger of a loss of trust in the political decisionmaking
process caused by an ill-considered use of the
AMPERE results. On the reflective level however, the
questioning goes deeper: even if the AMPERE report
were completed or adapted to the recommendations
of the peer review process, would it then address the
relevant policy questions (see Table 1) in the context
of the nuclear phase-out? Or, in other words, does it
sufficiently address the principles, objectives and
conditions for a sustainable energy policy?
On this level, a debate seems so be going on in the
scientific literature about the use of foresight techniques
(Anderson 2001, Dreborg 1996). Most criticism
amounts to the inherent uncertainty of any
forecast. While scenario techniques for forecasting
are generally considered to be useful in some contexts
(e.g. at the firm level for strategic planning), the usefulness
as a planning tool for society as a whole was
sometimes questioned. The problem can be formulated
as follows: in order to deal with the future, one
must invoke established quantitative relations between
components and assume that they stay valid in
the future. But there are fundamental objections:
• such trend forecasts cannot be expected to
retain their validity for very long periods, as
the measured coefficients describing relations
between components of the economy
vary with time;
• these economic models do not take into account
the changes in rules governing society
– e.g. these rules may (and some times have
to) be changed by deliberate policy choices.
The whole point is that options are available
to human choice (assuming of course that
human choice is still an important factor in
policy making) that are different from past
trends.
Therefore, according to this point of view26, longterm
scenarios should be constructed from a normative
point of view27 , not as predictions of the future:
26 Although several participants vaguely mentioned the need for
'structural' changes (i.e. fundamental changes in the way energy
is produced and consumed), only one participant effectively
identified a long-term scenario exercise as a desirable
(sustainable) scenario for Belgium. This scenario is published
in LTI-Research group (1998).
27 Of course, the long-term normative scenario ('where do we want

they are to be presented as 'futures' that can only
come true if a number of policy options are taken,
therefore also assuming that a sufficiently large level
of public support exists or can be gained for these
options. In any case, such scenarios explicitly involve
values, as opposed to econometric modelling, where
these values remain hidden. These scenarios are thus
meant to pave the way for an informed discussion at
the planning or design level. The proposed time horizon
should be situated in a distant future (e.g. 2050),
because the aim is to investigate options for the future
in which most of the current equipment will
have been replaced, leaving the possibility of politically
influencing the choice of this new equipment.
Hence the scenario should deal with systemic rather
than marginal changes. The 'traditional' approach is
criticised for its conservative pragmatism: the aim of
the scenario technique should be to mould technology
and the governing rules according to an 'ideal' or
'desired' state, in stead of adapting society and policymaking
to 'inevitable' economic or technological laws.
Since nobody can really oppose the elaboration of
these long-term scenarios as a basis for an informed
debate, one nagging question remains: why have these
long-term scenarios not been developed for the Belgian
context? It turns out that obstacles to this development
of long-term visions were often very opaque
and had both cultural and institutional roots.
5.3. THE DESIGN OR PLANNING LEVEL: THE
DEBATE ON WHO TO INVOLVE AND HOW
On this level, we are interested in the following question:
what is, for the different actors, a good institutional
arrangement – i.e. an arrangement that, in their
view, furthers the cause of sustainable energy?
5.3.1. The role of government
A first group of respondents (mainly representatives
of business, utilities, employer's organisations and
some scientists) is mostly interested in achieving
accountable decisions, based on 'objective' data, thus
combining an internal focus (a small group should
decide) combined with an emphasis on stability once
the political decision has been taken. Correspondingly,
it was hoped that the conclusions of the AM-
PERE report would be adhered to when discussing
the future of nuclear power in parliament. The fact
that politicians do not take up the responsibility for
to go ?') is to be complemented by more small-scale policy oriented
studies ('how do we get there ?'). Long-term scenarios
should of course also be submitted to the standard procedures
of scientific review (systematic approach, technical consistency,
transparency, scepticism, control by peer review, etc.) .
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 279
their decisions (since the implications are only felt in
a far future) is perceived as a major problem. Hence,
the proposal of law to phase-out nuclear power was
often referred to by this group as a 'purely political'
(i.e. emotional, irrational) decision.
Another group (mainly representatives of labour
unions) was more interested in achieving legitimate
decisions. Enough time should be reserved for the
decision-makers to collect the advice of the different
social partners. It was not clear whether also the
public should be included in the decision: of course it
is useful to know the public opinion, but there are
some practical reservations (large investment of time
and money, perhaps with limited results). The general
suggestion was that it should suffice to know the
opinion of the 'traditional' social partners, after all,
they were considered to be representative of a great
part of the population. This group believes in an
open debate about the advantages and the costs of
different alternative scenarios for the future28 . In the
words of one of the participants: "In the future, the
feasibility of the phase-out will depend on the social
environment at the time: if the phase-out decision
entails big losses for important societal actors, then
the debate will no doubt be polarised, and a lot of
time and money will be lost. The phase-out must be
supported by society at large, and this already supposes
that an open debate has been staged – for the
time being, there are too many 'grey areas'."
Although this perspective already shows a greater
sensitivity to issues of trust, the appeal to a greater
involvement of stakeholders should be evaluated
carefully. It is not guaranteed that the interests of
stakeholder groups coincide with the interests of
society at large. Although stakeholders may pursue
their own specific interests, their activities can only be
tolerated as long as they are perceived as being compatible
with the general interests and values of society.
By this remarks, we already anticipate a third
perspective to the problem.
This third group (mainly representatives of environmental
NGO's and some scientists) holds that central
government should decide on the basis of (strictly
interpreted) internationally agreed upon principles, in
order to identify desirable options for the future.
These principles include transparency, strict liability,
the precautionary principle, the polluter pays, etc29 .
28 Questions considered to be relevant were e.g. "What will be the
costs of high-level waste management if we continue with nuclear
energy ?", or, "What will be the costs of decommissioning
?", and "Can these costs be met in a context of increasing
competition in liberalised energy markets ?".
29 The reliance on nuclear power is considered to be an infraction
of many of these principles, e.g. liability for the catastrophic

280
This group welcomes a principal stance on the nuclear
phase-out, although some criticism was aimed at
the arbitrary nature of the 40-year lifetime.
Again, we witness here one of the consequences of a
lack of trust between different groups : some stakeholders
are simply not willing to accept or to enter
into a debate about trading off the problems and
advantages of the reliance on nuclear power. In a
climate of distrust in political channels, they resort to
the strongest weapons available to them.
The view on the government's role also impacts on
the view of expert functioning in decision-making.
5.3.2. The role of experts
The first perspective fully endorses any attempt to
'objectify' the reflection on energy options for the
future based on a pluridisciplinary scientific analysis
by experts from different research institutes, as was
performed by the AMPERE commission. Furthermore,
it was recommended that the conclusions of
such an analysis should be distributed as widely as
possible, i.e. to different decision makers (including
political parties, syndicates, European Commission,
etc.), the media, NGO's, or even through inclusion in
relevant educational initiatives (e.g. at universities).
Elsewhere, this perspective is referred to as 'technocratic'
(Deblonde 2002, 19) : political decisions
should be cleared of irrational and emotional elements
to the largest extent possible. This is exactly
the point of view we considered to be problematic
from the onset of our research. Seen from the viewpoint
of increasing trust in decision-making, insisting
on absolute objectivity of political decisions or striving
to equate political decisions with scientific decisions
is part of the problem, rather than contributing
to the solution. Such reference to science seeks to
avoid explanation of the actual policy basis for decisions.
From the second perspective (mainly labour unions),
the role of experts is seen as somewhat more problematic.
This group also likes to rely on a sound
scientific basis for knowing effects and side effects of
energy options. From this perspective, the interface
between science and decision making is considered to
be crucial: "a good functioning of expert groups is
essential for the democratic functioning of a country".
Nevertheless, we collected the following propositions
for a better organisation of scientific expertise
in society:
accident consequences is limited, generation of HLW is considered
to be ethically unacceptable towards future generations,
the nuclear power sector is perceived as very intransparent,
...
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
• Transparency of expertise should be clearly
defined by policy: experts should clearly
highlight agreement and differences of facts
and values, and should encourage relevant
societal actors to pass judgement on at least
the values involved in the issue. Important
values include employment targets, social
acceptability of nuclear energy, and protection
of small consumers in the open energy
market and energy independence.
• Clear rules about expert consensus positions
should also be defined: can expert commissions
formulate minority points alongside
the comments most experts agree upon? If
a consensus is desirable, how should this be
achieved - e.g. one of the participants gave
the example of the International Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) procedures, where
draft texts are sent to all scientists in order
to ensure that there is a real consensus
amongst them.
• Experts should also try to popularise their
knowledge on important societal issues such
as the role of nuclear power in a sustainable
energy perspective, e.g. by the large-scale
distribution of a clear summary of their
findings. This was also considered to be a
weak point in the procedure followed by
AMPERE30 .
Deblonde (2002, 19) characterises this position as a
decisionistic perspective : scientists are supposed to
inform decision-makers on the possible choices and
the consequences of their choices. They provide
decision-makers with the necessary scientific base
materials to take well-considered, albeit still irrational
(i.e. value-based), policy choices.
From the third perspective (mainly environmental
NGO's), the role of experts, and certainly experts
who enter a public debate where social polarisation
prevails, is considered to be problematic. It may be
useful to outline the possible reasons we collected
during the interviews. First of all, this perspective is
very sceptical about the claimed objectivity of scientific
expertise : scientists are either perceived to be
beholden, directly or indirectly, to government or
industry interests31 ; or, which is more frequently the
30 The commission organised only one open hearing for stakeholders
(24 June 2000, Brussels).
31 E.g. the national equipment plan 1995-2005 was drafted by the
electricity sector BCEO, which unites both producers (Electrabel
/ SPE) and the distribution sector (80 % Electrabel /
municipalities and 20 % pure intermunicipalities or distribution
companies). Formally, it is then submitted to the gov-

case, they adhere to scientific paradigms, focussing on
narrow technical problems and promoting the belief
that scientific knowledge is separate from its applications.
Often, experts have gained their degree and
their experience within one particular field of expertise
(e.g. nuclear engineering) and have developed a
certain 'professional pride', which has become firmly
entrenched in their value system and which makes it
harder to respond to criticisms from other perspectives.
This fact makes it easier to predict which position
a particular expert will take, or which information
he or she will include in a scientific argument,
especially in a polarised debate. Appointing experts
in a scientific commission thus becomes a very precarious
undertaking. To be clear, adherents of this
perspective add that experts do not conceive their
role in these terms; it is not the integrity of experts
that is questioned. It seems that experts sincerely
believe in the causes they support ("all persons believe
in their own virtue"). Neither would this group
argue that science should play no role in policymaking.
Rather, at the core of the arguments lies
dissatisfaction with the way scientific expertise has
been brought in the policy process up till now (cf.
supra).
5.3.3. Citizen participation in decision-making
Citizen participation in (technological) decisionmaking
is often advanced as a panacea to the problems
of public trust in democratic institutions. It
turned out that our respondents showed a rather
more pessimistic view.
For one group (mainly environmental NGO's and
some scientists), citizen participation in decisionmaking
is one of the cornerstones of sustainable
development. They see the amount of support for a
given policy as the determining factor in the success
of that policy. One participant added that "this
means that every policy measure should enjoy the
active and conscious support of at least fifty percent
of the population". The suitability of the liberal democratic
model as a reference framework to fundamentally
alter patterns of development is implicitly
questioned. From this perspective, ecological problems
are fundamentally about economic or technological
system dynamics that have evolved separately
from the day-to-day life world of ordinary citizens.
In principle then, this diagnosis leads to only one
ernment which can make some comments. So in fact the estimation
of the realistic potential to reduce electricity demand
is coming from the electricity sector itself. The point is that
such a procedure is unlikely to engender a great deal of trust.
Furthermore, this 'realistic' estimate was used by the AM-
PERE commission (Synthesis report, p. 49-50).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 281
solution : a 'dialogical form of democracy'32 . Public
spaces must be created where debates concerning the
'common good' can be initiated without having to
rely on technocratic decision making as the default
option. This group of respondents realised that this
broadly defined strategy will be very difficult to realise.
A decisive factor will be the scale of technological
systems. Small-scale technologies will be an enabling
factor for this 'local and basic democracy'. One
participant gave the example of Denmark, where a
large percentage of the taxes are levied by local authorities;
thus, the spending of tax money will be
much more transparent and interested citizens will
enjoy a much larger degree of control. He referred to
"the current practice of financing projects from an
enormous government budget so that the total costs
to society remain obscure." Similarly, small-scale
energy production technologies (solar panels, wind
energy, etc.), owned by the consumers themselves, or
local communities, will make energy use and its effects
more transparent and accessible for debate on a
local level33 . Such participation is difficult to achieve
in a national and strategic discussion, the nuclear
power question being an example par excellence. It
turns out that involving citizens in an abstract, strategic
problem concerning the whole of society is very
difficult, because an important element for participation
is clarity concerning what is at stake. Overall,
people are inclined to become involved in decisionmaking
issues only when they think that the issue is in
their immediate interest.
While some participants agreed with public participation
on issues of national importance in principle, a
lot of objections to public participation in general
were also phrased.
We must not forget however, that our enquiry was
directed at the stakeholders (in a large sense) in the
debate. These results thus only indicate that citizen
participation to decision-making will most likely not
contribute to a greater level of trust in the political
decision and between stakeholders from the viewpoint
of the stakeholders themselves. Nevertheless,
many of the above objections are shared by the
scientific trust-related literature (OECD 2002, European
Commission 1999).
32 For a more thorough discussion on this subject, see Holemans
(1999).
33 This observation also throws an interesting light on the reasons
for a nuclear phase-out. In fact, two participants in the interviews
maintained that their view was principally inspired by
political reasons and that "...nuclear power is inherently undemocratic."

282
4. Conclusions and recommendations
In this article, we have summarised the results of an
enquiry concerning the quality of the science / policy
interface in the advent of the Belgian government
proposal of law to phase-out nuclear energy. Based
on a conceptual framework which analyses technological
decision-making on three discourse levels
(cognitive, reflective and design or planning), we have
shown causes for a lack of trust in the decisionmaking
process so far :
1. The complexity of the issues at hand makes that
researchers often have to limit themselves. In
doing so, they make implicit normative choices.
However, with regard to trust-building, reaching
consensus on the categories and perspectives to
be covered may be more important than the substance
of the information produced.
2. By trying to reduce uncertainties through a focus
on economic predictions and technological development
potentials, and more particularly, a
focus on the short term (2020), the complete
scope of policy actions has not been addressed.
3. Related to point 1 & 2, the research questions
really relevant for policy-making should have
been formulated more clearly.
4. An unsubstantiated demand for more 'scientific'
decision-making, or an exaggerated emphasis on
the ethical dimensions of decision-making (without
even allowing a consideration of alternatives)
is counterproductive.
Stemming from this research, and with the purpose
of enhancing trust in democratic decision-making, we
recommend that due consideration should be given
to the following observations (see Table 1) :
1. Problem structuring / Assessment of risks : At
the most fundamental level of the discussion lays
the assessment whether it is ethically justified to
continue the reliance on nuclear power in a sustainable
development perspective. This is an essentially
political discussion. However, successful
consideration of justification entails building
shared values and common goals across stakeholders
with conflicting views. The promised
explanatory note (see § 2.3.) could be an important
element in this strategy. The narrative of
technological progress no longer guarantees an
automatic social consensus. Consequently, the
questions that would be addressed in this note
seem to be going in the right direction: what is at
stake here is the fulfilment of overriding sustainability
objectives, such as respect for the autonomy
of future generations, equity in world de-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
velopment, a safe world environment, etc.
2. Defining the possible options / Assessment of
response:
• Care should be taken in defining the possible
options for action. The AMPERE
commission mostly focussed on tutorial material
about technological options for electricity
generation, while it seems that detailed
information about strategies for demand-side
management in the whole energy
sector might have been more policyrelevant.
This observation points at the absolute
necessity of efficient communication
between the policy-makers (who define the
scientific themes and who select the scientists)
and the researchers (who provide the
scientific information). Such a process
would have allowed the detection of 'white
spots' in the scientific knowledge on DSM
in an earlier research stage, and in a more
timely demand for additional research (not
necessarily by the AMPERE commission,
since its task was to provide a synthesis of
the existing knowledge). In defining the research
questions, we suggest a broader involvement
of stakeholders (perhaps in the
framework of the FRDO / CFDD). By this
procedure, it would be guaranteed that the
range of policy options under consideration
would be broad enough to address all relevant
needs and concerns.
• Decision-makers should also ensure that all
relevant disciplines are included in the option
assessment. In particular, framing the
risks of nuclear power generation within a
purely economical, technical or regulatory
paradigm is too narrow from a societal point
of view. The issue of trust in regulatory organisms
is at least equally important and
begs the input of socio-psychological insights
on risk perception (Bourdeau et al.
2001 , 24-25).
• Also, the selection of a timeframe for the
assessment of options seems particularly
relevant. Being a decision with long-term
consequences, the nuclear phase-out should
be considered in the context of long-term
energy scenarios (e.g. horizon 2050). Whilst
inevitably involving a high level of uncertainty,
these scenarios open up possibilities
for policy beyond those shown by purely
econometric modelling and thus have the
added advantage of making possible a de-

ate on the normative level ('where do we
want to go ?'). These scenarios should
therefore not be regarded as predictions
(and have to be complemented by more
precise, short-term prospection), but should
investigate widely ranging consequences, reflecting
a plurality of societal interests and
values. As such, they could provide a platform
for a better 'aggregation' of societal actors.
We recommend setting up the structures
needed to elaborate and periodically
review these scenarios. They could for example
be developed by the Federal Planning
Bureau 34 (an advisory organism generally regarded
with trust), and discussed by the
FRDO / CFDD (or any other advisory
board deemed necessary, but in any case involving
a broad representation by stakeholders)
before being communicated to policy-makers
for approval.
3. Goal and strategy formulation / Making the
decision.
• Expert involvement: experts of course have
to be competent and experienced. Personal
involvement in the issues at stake should
not be (and generally are not) interpreted as
a lack of integrity. Policy-makers should
however ensure that a sufficient plurality of
disciplines and societal interests is represented
in the expert group (see recommendation
2). Also, in cases where social polarisation
prevails (such as the nuclear energy
controversy), it might be useful to allow the
presentation of substantiated minority
•
points of view next to a generally accepted
consensus position. Expert commissions
should also make sure that their methodologies
are sufficiently understood by stakeholders.
Role of government: Policy-makers in general
should be involved in providing the
necessary political and financial basis to
build the required consultation structures
(see recommendations under point 1 & 2).
34 The Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) is a governmental institution
under the authority of the prime minister and the minister
of economic affairs. Its general mission is to elaborate
macro-economic prognoses, to evaluate the consequences of
economic and social policy choices and to make structural
analyses on the economic, social and environmental level.
Since 1997, the FPB also drafts the Federal Report on Sustainable
Development and a project for the Federal Plan on
Sustainable Development. Within the context of the Federal
Report on Sustainable Development, the FPB already uses
long-term scenario explorations of selected policy issues.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 283
•
As regards the decision-makers: it is evident
that political representatives are the ultimate
source of legitimacy. However, it is important
that the decision can be justified at all
times. The considerations that have led to
the decision should be made public and
should address the concerns of stakeholders
and internationally recognised ethical principles.
Particularly, the long-term scenarios
mentioned under recommendation 2 could
serve to structure such reasoning.
Broad citizen participation: for the time being
(in a climate of distrust between stakeholders
and between stakeholders and government),
measures involving a broader participation
by citizens do not seem to have
the potential to increase trust in decisionmaking.
This issue should be re-evaluated
once the other recommendations for trustbuilding
have been fulfilled.
4. Monitoring: The above-mentioned long-term
scenarios would be useful as a point of reference
for a continuous monitoring of the policy goals
(including, but not restricted to energy security).
They could give an indication along which path
society is evolving, and consequently, which
measures have to be taken. Thus, research is
continuously alternated with discussions
amongst parties involved. In part, the results of
these discussions will influence further decisionmaking
(e.g. why is policy x not meeting its target?),
but they will also lead to problem definitions
for further research (e.g. why is technology
y not meeting the desired level of production capacity
?). The continuous nature of decisionmaking
on issues impacting on the phase-out decision
(climate policy, liberalisation of energy
markets, etc.) makes it necessary for the production
of knowledge to be similarly organised in a
more continuous way too.
It is our contention that a profound structural change
such as the nuclear phase-out would require a sustained
leadership defending clear-cut goals and procedures
for the production of scientific knowledge
with respect to sustainable development. Only under
these conditions can a sufficient level of trust be built
up between the involved players for a concerted
action. If not, the discussion runs the risk of getting
bogged down in endlessly repetitious arguing, as
appears to be the case for the time being.

284
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank all the participants of the
FRDO / CFDD (or their representatives) in the
interview sessions for their valuable time and insights.
Many thanks also to Lieve Goorden, Hans Keune
and Matthieu Craye (STEM / University of Antwerp)
for their part in this research effort; and to Michel
Bovy and Gilbert Eggermont (SCK•CEN) for their
critical reviews of this paper. However, the interpretations
and views presented here are those of the
authors alone.
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 285-291.
How to Design Interfaces Between Science and Society: Lessons From
Platforms for Knowledge Communication in Switzerland
Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn, Ingrid Kissling-Näf and Christian
Pohl ∗
Introduction
How does scientific knowledge become effective in
the context of action in society, in general, and policy
for the sustainability transition, in particular? Often,
more knowledge and an increasing understanding of
scientific relation has not resulted in the corresponding
information being taken into account in sectoral
policies and other policy areas such as sustainability
transition or in increased support for research policy
issues.
As an umbrella organization for the natural sciences
in Switzerland, in the past year, the Swiss Academy of
Sciences has made various efforts to bring its expertise
to bear on social and political processes: for example,
it monitored and contributed to the development
of legislation in Switzerland on genetically
modified organisms (Genlex), expressed its opinion
on the reduction in the tax on oil in Switzerland and
commented on regulatory mechanisms for access to
genetic resources. Based on various experiences,
SANW came to the conclusion, that the pure transfer
of knowledge from the scientific to the political
sphere is simply inadequate.
It should instead be assumed that knowledge in the
scientific system must satisfy the needs of cognitive
progress in specialist fields and the standards of scientificity,
whereas, in the context of parliamentary
politics, the expertise must also be capable of being
applied in matters intended, not least, to increase a
politician’s chance of re-election. Moreover, the time
frame for decision-making by politicians is short,
whereas that available for the exploration of scientist’s
research concerns tends to be longer. These
systematic differences necessitate the reshaping and
transformation of knowledge so that it becomes more
effective in the context of action. What is involved
here is not only a process of transmission, but also a
process involving the reshaping of scientific knowl-
∗ Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland and Swiss
Academy of Sciences, Switzerland. Contact:
pohl@ito.umnw.ethz.ch, hirsch@umnw.ethz.ch,
kissling@sanw.unibe.ch.
edge in the political space. The question arises, therefore
as to whether specialized units – so-called interfaces
– are required to monitor and improve this process.
1. Interfaces as the link between science and
society
Demands for science to provide knowledge that is
actively effective in different areas of society are
generally made in the context of major and socially
controversial challenges. Recent examples of such
challenges include issues such as global change, biodiversity
and genetically modified organisms. In this
confrontation between science and society, society is
represented by various target groups. In our study, we
make a distinction between the administration (i.e.
the administrative system), parliament, the economy
and civil society (i.e. the general public), thus adapting
a concept developed by Elzinga, who describes science
policy as the interaction of four policy cultures,
i.e. an academic, a civic, a bureaucratic and an economic
policy culture (Elzinga 1996, 227ff). For the
study of interfaces however, it makes sense to compare
science and the other policy cultures and to
make a distinction between the administration and
parliament. Furthermore we use the generally more
comprehensible expression “target groups” instead of
“policy cultures”.
Based on their experience in the context of the FAO
(Food and Agriculture Organization), Norse and
Tschirley adopt the classical policy cycle as the starting
point in their analysis of the importance of scientific
input for politics, and discuss the relationship
between science and policy and as society as a whole
in the approach to socially-relevant issues (Norse &
Tschirley 2000, 18). The term “policy cycle” is a basic
concept used in policy analysis (Parsons 1995; Bussmann
et al. 1997). The typical phases of a policy cycle
have been identified as:
• problem identification;
• strategy formulation;
• selection of policy options;
• policy implementation;
• setting of regulatory standards;
• monitoring and evaluation.

286
Norse and Tschirley explain the involvement of science
in detail using the example of the global nitrogen
cycle: science provides an inventory of the global
nitrogen cycle, quantifies sources, sinks and corresponding
fluxes for the purpose of problem identification.
Strategies are then formulated on this basis:
“Science can determine the scientific pros and cons
of strategies to mitigate N cycle disruption and
thereby help policymakers set priorities for action"
(Norse & Tschirley 2000, 19). The next step involves
the selection of possible policy options that promise
to exert a quantitatively relevant influence on the
nitrogen cycle. This is followed by the modelling of
possible policy implementations which involves the
combining of bio-physical models with economic
models: the economic models simulate, for example,
how economic incentives influence the way farmers
use mineral fertilizer or manure, while the scientific
models can be used to calculate the maximum flows
that remain unproblematic, i.e. so-called critical loads.
Finally, science also provides the network needed for
the monitoring and evaluation of the policy measures.
What is important about Norse and Tschirley’s presentation
is that they describe the interaction between
science and policy as a single process by posing a
series of questions that can be resolved: What is the
problem? What are the possible approaches? What
are their advantages and disadvantages? How can they
be implemented? etc. They do not, however, refer to
any need for interfaces. Norse and Tschirley assume
that the transfer of knowledge between science and
policy does not involve any particular problems.
Experience would contradict this, especially in the
area of global change.
As opposed to this, recent utilization research works
on the assumption that the impetus provided by
science is generally not directly absorbed in other
areas of society. Thus, sub-units that are specialized
in the area of knowledge transfer have emerged so to
facilitate exchange and communication between different
systems. Based on two case studies in Switzerland
(Freiburghaus 1989; 1985), Freiburghaus examined
the forms of knowledge transfer that result in
scientific knowledge being taken up by authorities
and utilized in instrumental functions (Freiburghaus
1989, 268). His ideas are based on Luhmann’s theory
of functional differentiation. Luhmann works on the
assumption that different societal subsystems such as
science and politics exist that speak their own “languages”:
science in terms of truth and politics in
terms of power (Luhmann 1987). Thus, it is impossible
to transmit knowledge from science to politics
without carrying out an actual translation from the
terms of truth into the terms of power. Based on his
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
two case studies, Freiburghaus identified two stages
in this process of translation. In the first phase, scientific
knowledge accesses the political system when
scientifically educated officials employed in the corresponding
problem fields become aware of it. The
next step involves “the second part of the transmission,
the re-shaping of this knowledge, the fusion
with political means of action” (Freiburghaus 1989,
275).
According to Freiburghaus et al., specialized units, i.e.
so-called interfaces, are required to perform this
translation task. “The term interface denotes subsystems
or institutions that are able to reproduce identically
information from another system and then
translate it into their own system’s codes.” (Lehmann
& Rieder 2002, 34). SANW has experience with platforms
for knowledge communication that have been
created in SANW (in part jointly with other Swiss
scientific academies): Forum for Climate and Global
Change, Swiss Biodiversity Forum, Geoforum Geosciences
Switzerland, Forum for Genetic Research,
Interacademic Commission for Alpine Research,
Research Commission for the National Park, Swiss
Scientific Research Centre in the Ivory Coast and
Transdisciplinarity-Net. These platforms were developed
by scientists in recent years and differ from the
above mentioned definition in two aspects. As interfaces
of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, in organizational
terms they are located within a scientific organisation
and thus on the side of the producers of
scientific knowledge. However, they are co-financed
by the administrative system and are, therefore, hybrid
organizations. Second, they address various
target groups, not only the administrative system.
In their study, Freiburghaus et al. identify the features
of successful knowledge communication which support
the establishment of specialized interfaces. The
transmission of knowledge does not merely involve
the simple transfer of knowledge and it is not a trivial
process. The transmission must be carried out on a
system-specific or target-group-specific basis and
accommodate two-way communication, i.e. not only
from science to the target groups but also from the
target groups to science. A qualitative analysis of
SANW’s experiences with interfaces shows several
additional factors that play an important role in the
successful communication of knowledge and which
must be taken into account in the design of such
institutions.

2. The Swiss interface concept: the Forum for
Climate and Global Change and Forum for
Biodiversity
The Forum for Climate and Global Change
(www.proclim.ch) and the Forum for Biodiversity
(www.biodiversity.ch) are interesting examples of
SANW platforms for the transfer of knowledge to
other systems. This section provides an account of
both organizations, i.e. how they were designed as
institutions, what their mandate is and what form
their outputs and effects have taken up to now. The
examples we have chosen for our study include an
established platform and a platform that is in the
process of being developed.
PROCLIM: FORUM FOR CLIMATE AND GLOBAL
CHANGE
Background and history
SANW established the Commission for Climate and
Atmospheric Research (Kommission für Klima- und
Atmosphärenforschung) in 1981 in response to the world
climate conference in Geneva. In 1986, the International
Council of Scientific Unions founded the International
Geosphere and Biosphere Programme,
which was initiated by Swiss researchers among others.
Two years later, SANW reacted in turn with the
creation of the Swiss Climate Programme (Schweizer
Klimaprogramm), which has been officially known as
the Forum for Climate and Global Change since
1993.
Mandate
ProClim was founded as the “focal point within the
global change sector for contact between the research
community, the institutions that finance research, the
administration, decision-makers from economic and
political circles, the non-governmental organizations,
the media and the public”, (regulations ProClim-
Kuratorium of 11.12.1992, paragraph 2). The aims of
the platform were defined as the integration of Swiss
research into international programmes, interdisciplinary
and intersectoral co-operation and the exchange
of information between scientists, national and international
research, commissions, the administration,
politics, the economy and the public.
The forum has a professional head office; its top
management body is the Kuratorium which takes decisions
relating to the platform’s strategy and programme
of activities. The authority to which the
platform reports is the central committee of SANW.
The latter finances ProClim to the tune of around
CHF 400,000 annually.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 287
Activities and outputs
ProClim’s wide-ranging activities include the following
focus areas:
The networking of researchers in Switzerland: ProClim has
succeeded in establishing a network of contacts between
members of the Swiss scientific community
working in the area of climate and as a result has
made a major contribution to its development and
consolidation. The information system on climate
and global change research, which provides interested
parties with information on experts, projects, programmes,
institutes, organizations and publications, is
an important instrument in this context. The annual
“Swiss Global Change Day” is also an important
event that fosters the network’s identity.
Knowledge transfer between the disciplines: the networking
of the researchers and provision of information have
emerged as a key prerequisite for the transfer of
knowledge between the scientific disciplines.
Co-ordination tasks in research: ProClim is also involved
in the promotion of scientific co-ordination within
climate and global change research, both in the context
of national research programmes (e.g. National
Research Programme 31 (NFP 31), the six-years
Priority Programme Environment (SPP E) and the
ten-years National Centre of Competence in Research
(NCCR) on Climate Change) and between individual
projects.
Development of the co-operation between ProClim and the
administration: co-operation between the administration
and ProClim increased in the course of the
1990s: ProClim assumed co-ordinating and expert
tasks in the context of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change and the implementation of the
Convention on Climate Change for Switzerland.
These tasks also included the production of publications
with popularized content based on the IPCC’s
assessment reports.
Point of contact for international climate programmes: Pro-
Clim provides a point of contact in Switzerland for
international climate programmes.
Climate Change Parliamentary Group: The Climate
Change Parliamentary Group was founded as an
additional wing of ProClim in 1996. It meets once per
session and discusses climate issues and their relevance
for the economy in a broad way.
Consultative Body for Questions on Climate Change (organe
consultatif sur le changement climatique – OcCC): the OcCC
represents an official instrument that enables research
to make unsolicited recommendations on political
and economic developments in the area of climate. It
also has resources for the issuing of external man-

288
dates. The OcCC is, therefore, the political arm of
ProClim.
Point of contact for the media: thanks to the publication of
the OcCC assessment reports with press conferences
and the regular publication of fact sheets on selective
topics, ProClim has been well received by the media
and is often approached as a broker for experts on
topics of current relevance.
Evaluation
ProClim’s development can be seen as a success
story. It has succeeded in bringing about the networking
of national and international research, promoting
knowledge transfer between disciplines and positioning
climate research in Switzerland. The development
of a powerful community is also reflected in the creation
of a National Centre of Competence in Research
in the area of climate. The establishment of interfaces
with politics through meetings with parliamentarians
and the OcCC was also successful. The assumption
of some of the administration’s tasks and the provision
of consultancy services in matters of a scientific
nature works well. The above account shows, however,
that it is difficult for platforms to serve several
target groups and systems. ProClim is currently working
on the establishment of a dialogue with the private
sector. The same applies to transdisciplinary
research and the integration of the social sciences and
humanities. The integration of individual projects into
the forum is not conceivable, however, from the
perspective of neutrality. An attempt of this nature
almost led to the collapse of the forum in the initial
phase of ProClim prior to 1992.
THE FORUM FOR BIODIVERSITY
Background and history
SANW created a national biodiversity forum in 1999.
The establishment of such a forum was seen as desirable
from the perspective of researchers working in
the area of biodiversity and as significant in the context
of the scientific monitoring of the implementation
of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The
Forum for Biodiversity grew out of the six-years
Priority Programme Environment which brought
together researchers working on biodiversity in Switzerland
in one module.
Mandate
The aim of the Forum is to develop a Swiss network
of researchers in the area of biodiversity, to promote
research on biodiversity and to transmit knowledge
about biodiversity to a broader public. Based on this,
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
the Forum has three main tasks: firstly, to serve the
purposes of the exchange of scientific information
and interdisciplinary cooperation; secondly, to transmit
the results of research to political and administrative
circles and to the public; and, thirdly, to maintain
the co-operation and exchange between research and
practice in the area of nature conservation. In May
2002, the Senate of the SANW changed the Forum
into a long-term undertaking by the academy. The
Forum’s structures are similar to those of ProClim.
However, SANW’s financial support of the forum is
limited to around CHF 100,000 per annum.
Activities and outputs
So as to fulfil the above-mentioned tasks, the Forum
publishes a colour information bulletin in Switzerland’s
two main languages: German and French. In
the bulletin, insights from research are related to
topical questions and attractively presented in a way
that makes them inviting to read, comprehensible and
accessible to nature conservation and administrative
practitioners. The forum’s information system, which
includes a WebCalendar, news und project data, is
accessible via the internet. This year, the Forum
compiled a basic document stating the areas in which
the focus in biodiversity research should lie in the
future and explaining what is meant by integrative
biodiversity research. The Forum also formulates
positions on topical issues and provides contact with
experts. It provides support in the form of scientific
input to the instances in Switzerland responsible for
the implementation of the Convention on Biological
Diversity. Thus, the Forum on Biodiversity is currently
developing the scientific principles for a biodiversity
strategy for Switzerland.
Evaluation
Within a relatively short period, the Forum for Biodiversity
has managed to establish a large network of
biodiversity experts including researchers, nature
conservationists and specialists from the administration.
The Forum has also become the Swiss Committee
for the Diversitas international research programme.
In addition, the Forum advises the Swiss
Agency for the Environment, Forest and Landscape
on matters concerning the implementation of the
Convention on Biological Diversity.
3. Interfaces as a prerequisite for successful
knowledge communication
What do these two examples show in relation to the
task of the communication of knowledge?

In the case of ProClim, it should be noted that the
forum is primarily a platform for climate researchers.
ProClim is furthermore characterized by the intensive
and successful pooling of knowledge between researchers,
and this activity has placed it in a leading
position as a highly credible source of information on
questions concerning global change and climate. The
platform’s high-quality synthesis work and resulting
reputation would not have been possible without the
broad support of the subject-specific research community.
Previously, the task of translation for society, the
characteristic of interfaces mainly focussed on by
Freiburghaus et al. (Freiburghaus et al. 1985;
Freiburghaus et al. 1989), has been carried out within
ProClim in relatively close contact with the administrative
system and parliament. The link to politics is
established through specific interfaces, such as the
parliamentary group and the OcCC, which is financed
by the authorities. Communication with the private
sector is currently been developed (climate talks).
Thus, ProClim has realized target-group-specific
communication and has established the corresponding
channels for two-way communication. However,
this raises the question as to the number of different
target groups with which an interface can successfully
enter into contact.
The more basic question is, whether interfaces can
interact with target groups without relinquishing its
intermediate position and independence. The role of
the policy broker (Sabatier et al. 1993, 18) appears to
play an important role. An independent study on the
role of scientific knowledge (Lehmann & Rieder
2002) has shown that ProClim has also assumed the
function of a policy broker and is distinguished by its
neutrality with respect to politically controversial
issues and value conflicts and, thanks to the availability
of knowledge, can present as a neutral policy
mediator. This function was also successfully fulfilled
by SANW’s Forum for Genetic Research, which is
not presented in this paper, during parliamentary
debates on the legislative regulation of research on
and use of genetically modified organisms. In this
case, it was crucially important that the expertise
presented was independent of the private sector but
supported by the research community, and its
credibility for the parliament as the target group was
considerably reinforced by the communicating
institution.
The Forum for Biodiversity should undoubtedly be
understood as a network of researchers on biodiversity
that primarily seeks to maintain contact with
nature conservation practice. This platform also
achieves the successful pooling of knowledge among
the researchers and as a result has gained credibility in
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 289
scientific circles. Its base in the research community
is very solid, although being comparatively younger, it
is not as well known as ProClim. The task of translation
for society is carried out primarily on behalf of
the administrative system, from national to local
authority level and includes nature conservation practice.
The Forum for Biodiversity also addresses interested
members of the public (hotspot). As a result,
the Forum sets a slightly different emphasis than
ProClim. As a large part of its ongoing budget is
financed through project mandates, the Forum considerably
depends on the administrative system. In
addition, the Forum is increasingly active as an advisory
body for the implementation of the Convention
on Biological Diversity.
Our comparison of the two interfaces highlights the
complexity of the task of knowledge transfer between
science and society. It goes without saying that this
task necessitates a professional approach, hence the
need for specialized units – i.e. interfaces – that fulfil
a variety of tasks. To summarize, the two presented
examples show, that successful knowledge communication
requires interfaces that:
• identify and address the relevant target
groups (administrative system, parliament,
private sector, the public);
• are responsible for knowledge pooling on
the part of research in relation to decision
problems in society;
• perform the necessary translation task;
• support two-way communication, i.e. between
society and the scientific system and
vice versa;
• are responsible for knowledge pooling on
the part of research in relation to action
problems in society;
• guarantee credible and scientifically independent
information;
• introduce scientific expertise into politically
controversial issues by acting as policy brokers/mediators.
4. Conclusions on design principles
However, interfaces cannot be expected to do complete
justice to this complexity of knowledge communication.
Instead, they must set focus points and
accept imbalances, which are influenced not least by
their location and the nature of main target group of
the communication. This has prompted us to formulate
three principles on the design of interfaces and
explain why although interfaces may be necessary,

290
they are not necessarily completely adequate to the
task in hand.
FIRST PRINCIPLE: INTERFACES AS HYBRIDS
LOCALIZED AMONG THE PRODUCERS OF
KNOWLEDGE
Given that the credibility of interfaces depends on
the fact that they are supported by reputable scientists
and, furthermore, are not associated with biased
interests, unlike Lehmann & Rieder (Lehmann &
Rieder 2002), we approve the fact that they are localized
as close as possible to the producers of knowledge
and not with the target groups, i.e. in the administrative
system. However, it is equally important that
the interaction and two-way communication with the
different target groups be guaranteed. This means
that interfaces should be understood as hybrids, a fact
reflected not least in the way they are financed.
SECOND PRINCIPLE: TARGET-GROUP-SPECIFIC
COMMUNICATION AND INTERACTION
The involvement of non-scientific actors from parliament,
the private sector, the administrative system
and the public, which facilitates the contact with
these target groups, is important. The “intermediary
space” between science and society can be organized
in different ways and the co-operation with the different
target groups can thus result in a change in the
orientation of the interface (Pohl in press): thus, an
authority may be seeking scientific justification for
state control, the public is interested, for example, in
the risks associated with a technology, a company
takes direction from the marketability of scientific
solutions and science would like more money for
research.
In this context, interfaces do not function either in
instrumentalizing science for the aims of the different
target groups or in making parliament an implementing
body for scientific interests. Instead, they must be
able to communicate in both directions, be able to
see things from the perspective of the other side and
be able to change the direction of communication.
This can result in the research agenda being influenced
by the knowledge requirement of society.
We would like to demonstrate the implications of this
by referring to a study by Agrawala which examined
the development of the IPCC (Intergovernmental
panel on Climate Change). With the setting in motion
of the political apparatus in the area of climate change
and the – ongoing – production of an international
agreement, i.e. the Kyoto Protocol, the relationship
between science and politics with regard to agendasetting
was reversed: i.e. instead of science setting
issues on the political agenda, politics is now dictating
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
certain tasks to research. Agrawala takes up this point
in his reconstruction of the emergence of the IPCC
and adopts the term “Frankenstein Syndrome” in his
description of the process: “In his remarks to the
Royal Geographical Society in London on 31 May
1994, INC Chairman Raul Estrada-Oyela said that for
the time being the Convention process was ‘waiting
for (scientific) inputs from the IPCC but I wonder if
they will come in time. Almost one year ago, explaining
the needs of the Convention to the IPCC Bureau,
I had the feeling that the IPCC was suffering (some)
kind of ‘Dr. Frankenstein Syndrome’. After all, the
idea of a Convention was nourished by the IPCC, but
now the Convention starts to walk and begins to
demand additional food, the IPCC answered that it
had its own program of work and could not de-liver
products by client’s requests. . . . We hoped, for instance
that the Convention would profit from an
IPCC workshop on the objectives of the Climate
Convention in Fortaleza, Brazil, in April (1994).
However, the workshop was postponed for October
(1994), most probably for very scientifically sound
motives. The point is that the INC shall meet next
August and we are not going to have that input then’
(Estrada-Oyela 1994). London based New Scientist
took these comments to make a news story entitled
‘Frankenstein Syndrome Hits Climate Treaty’ marking
the first public criticism of the IPCC by an INC
official (New Scientist 1994)” (Agrawala 1998)
The term “Frankenstein Syndrome” refers to tasks,
which in the case in point arose in the course of the
development of the Kyoto Protocol, and for which
science is requested to provide a response. Examples
of this include, for example, the study of forest and
landscape management in their function as CO2 sinks.
However, the above-described process of mutual
agenda-setting is just one of the aspects indicating
that the strict division between scientific production
and subsequent knowledge transfer is not effective.
Another important issue is that socially robust
knowledge, like that produced by the global change
debate, necessitates that stakeholders from the private
sector and the public, as well as the administration
and parliament, periodically request debate and
should participate in this way in the generation of
knowledge (Nowotny et al. 2001).
THIRD PRINCIPLE: PROBLEM-RELATED
NETWORKING OF RESEARCH AND THE NEED FOR
TRANSDISCIPLINARY EXPERTISE
The central task of interfaces is the networking of
scientific competencies in an area of scientific and
societal relevance (e.g. climate, biodiversity etc.).
Interfaces must pool knowledge on a problem-related

ase and convey clear messages that are tailored to a
clearly-defined target group. In cases in which this
knowledge is not restricted to the general description
and explanation of processes, but is intended to deal
with specific contexts and incorporate target and
value questions and transformation knowledge, it
cannot be simply obtained from the research and
pooled. Problem-related transdisciplinary research is
required in such contexts.
Thus, in order for interfaces to be able to fulfil competently
their communication task in relation to action
problems in society, it is necessary for something
to happen within science itself: transdisciplinary projects
are needed to complement the research carried
out in the various subject areas. Central to such projects
is the context-relevance of the research and cooperation
in an extended group of experts from a
range of subject areas and different policy cultures.
Gibbons et al. (Gibbons et al. 2001) refer to Mode-2knowledge
production in this context.
Transdisciplinary research is a very recent phenomenon
and it has already become an ambiguous catchword.
It lacks the very qualities that underlie the
strengths and performance of disciplinary research:
transdisciplinary research has no common core of
research issues, theories, models and methods that
are shared by a community of researchers whose
identities are confirmed by training, career structures,
cognitive progress and the quality assurance carried
out by corresponding institutions. Qualification takes
place “on the job” and remains linked with personal
experience which is transmitted and systematized as a
result of professional mobility. For this reason,
SANW has taken the initiative of acting jointly with
its sister academies in the context of a
TRANSDISCIPLINARITY-NET platform in the
area of science policy which aims to improve transdisciplinary
research.
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the comments of Daniela
Pauli und Christoph Ritz.
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Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 292-301.
The Right to Know: Environmental Information Disclosure by
Government and Industry
Peter H. Sand ∗
Environmental governance is plagued by uncertainty,
with regard both to bio-geophysical processes and to
socio-economic costs and benefits (Arrow & Fisher
1974; Iida 1993; Harremoës 2000; Stewart 2002).
Some of those uncertainties are exogenous, often
incalculable, and we simply have to cope with them as
risks and unknowns (Knight 1921, 19; Jaeger et al.
2001; Funtowicz & Ravetz 2001; Engel et al. 2002). 1
Other information deficits, however, are manifestly
endogenous, home-made – “manufactured uncertainty”
(Beck 1998, 9) or “smokescreen uncertainty”
(Lewis 1998). The sad reality is that we are all too
often kept in the dark – through neglect or by design,
by public officials or private stakeholders (Stiglitz
1999; Eigen 2003). The purpose of this paper is to
take a closer look at instruments which different legal
systems have developed to cope with the problem of
undisclosed or concealed risk information; i.e., citizen
access to publicly-held and privately-held data on
environmental risks, the knowledge or ignorance of
which may be decisive for precautionary action.
I. Public Data Disclosure
Historically, there have been significant differences
between and among national administrative laws with
regard to government-held information. While most
European countries (including Britain, France, and
Germany) have had a notorious tradition of secrecy
with regard to a broad range of data kept by public
authorities (Rowat 1966, 1979; Schwan 1984; Rose-
Ackerman 1995, 114; Vahle 1999) – partly out of a
legitimate concern with effective governance (Dahl
1994; Rowan-Robinson et al. 1996), – the one major
exception was Sweden: Starting with the Freedom of
the Press Act of 1766, Swedish citizens have had a right
of access to public data, unmatched in any other legal
system (Andersen 1973; Holstad 1979; Petrén 1987).
Other Nordic countries followed much later:
Finland’s Publicity of Documents Act in 1951; Den-
∗ University of Munich, Germany. Contact:: p.sand@jura.unimuenchen.de.
1 Paradoxically, the ‘veil of uncertainty’ (Brennan & Buchanan
1985, 30) may even facilitate collective response and decisionmaking
(Helm 1998; Kolstad 2002)
mark’s Public Access Act in 1970 (Offentlighedslov 1970;
Holm 1975). Even so, the Scandinavian approach to
government-held information remained unusual
among the prevailing pattern of ‘arcane administration’
in Europe, where access to files by citizens was
long viewed as incompatible with the principle of
representative – as distinct from ‘direct’ – democracy
(Bullinger 1979, 217).
Against that background, the US Freedom of Information
Act of 1966 (FOIA 1966; Foerstel 1999) – already
foreshadowed by the Federal Administrative Procedure
Act (APA 1946, §3; Cross 1953), and at the state level
by California’s 1952 ‘Brown Act’ (Singer 1979, 310) –
and the avalanche of ‘sunshine statutes’ 2 following in
their wake all over North America and in other
common law countries (GSA 1976; Duncan 1999;
McDonagh 2000; Smyth 2000; Roberts 2002) radically
changed the global map of comparative administrative
law, and may actually have changed the universal
catalogue of constitutional rights (South Africa
1996, §32/1/b; South Africa 2000, §3; Calland &
Tilley 2002; Banisar 2002; Bullinger 1985, 106).
Initially, European countries other than those in
Scandinavia were slow to follow suit. Among the first
examples in continental Europe was the Dutch Administrative
Transparency Act of 1978 (Netherlands
1978; Luebbe-Wolff 1980; Rutteman 2001). More
than ten years later, after considerable debate in the
European Commission and Parliament, Council
Directive No. 313 of 1990 on Freedom of Access to
Information on the Environment mandated the enactment
of transparency legislation in all EU member countries
(EU 1990; Winter 1990; Krämer 1991; Pallemaerts
1991; von Schwanenflügel 1991; Engel 1993;
Fluck 1993; Fluck & Theuer 1994; Prieur 1997).
Even though ‘green’ politicians and academics in
Europe had long hailed FOIA as “the new Magna
Carta of ecological democracy” (Fischer 1989, 152)
and as evidence of a new “structural pluralism” (Giddens
2000, 55; Roberts 2001), reactions at the governmental
level were anything but enthusiastic. Several
member states missed the prescribed deadline for
the new statutory enactments and administrative
2 The term goes back to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D.
Brandeis, who recommended “publicity … as a remedy for
social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of
disinfectants” (Brandeis 1932, 92).

eforms required, and the Commission had to resort
to judicial actions to make Germany comply (ECJ
1999; EU 2000b; Schoch 2002). Implementation of
the 1990 Directive – now superseded by EU Parliament/Council
Directive 2003/4/EC (Wilsher 2001;
Jahnke 2003; EU 2003) – is still far from perfect
(Hallo 1996; Kimber & Ekardt 1999; EU 2000a). It
seems as though old administrative habits, and especially
the entrenched reluctance of civil service departments
to conduct their business in the open, are
hard to break indeed.
Things began to change in the wake of the 1992 Rio
Conference – starting with the Convention for the
Protection of the Marine Environment in the North-
East Atlantic (OSPAR 1992, article 9; Sands 1995,
619), opening public access to government-held information
regarding that particular maritime subregion,
which extends beyond the EU. Next was the
Council of Europe, with the Convention on Environmental
Liability (Lugano 1993, article 15; Ebbeson
1997, 90) providing access to information held not
only by governments, but also by “bodies with public
responsibilities for the environment and under the
control of a public authority”. Finally, the process of
reform reached the still wider geographical framework
of the United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe (UN/ECE), which includes not only the
Nordic countries but also the United States and Canada,
and especially the countries of Central and Eastern
Europe. Freedom of access to environmental
information – under the catchword of glasnost – had
long been one of the political demands of civilsociety
opposition groups in the former socialist
countries, preceding and indeed precipitating the fall
of the Berlin Wall (Stec 1998). Not surprisingly therefore,
it was an alliance of Northern and Eastern
European NGOs which played a key role in the
preparation and negotiation of the 1995 UN/ECE
Sofia Guidelines on access to information and public
participation in environmental decision-making
(Wates 1996). They led to the adoption of the Aarhus
Convention on 25 June 1998 (UN/ECE 1998; Scheyli
2000; Petkova & Veit 2000; Zschiesche 2001; Rose-
Ackerman & Halpaap 2002; Bruch & Czebiniak
2002), one of whose ‘three pillars’ now is public access
to environmental information – including socalled
‘passive access’ (the right to seek information
from public authorities, under article 4); and the duty
of governments to collect, disclose and disseminate
such information regardless of specific requests (‘active
access’, under article 5; Stec et al. 2000, 6).
From a comparative perspective, it is probably fair to
say that Europe has begun to catch up with North
America, but still has a lot to learn in this regard
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 293
(Coliver et al. 1999; Öberg 2000; Wilcox 2001). It
would certainly be worthwhile to study both the
trans-cultural and psychological implications of that
learning process, and its impact on civic and administrative
attitudes towards environmental risks (Wiener
& Rogers 2002) and on the perceived balance of
openness versus security (Geiger 2000; Gassner &
Pisani 2001). Even though some information-based
policies – such as environmental impact assessments,
and ‘prior informed consent’ procedures – are now
globally accepted (Sand 1990, 25; Kern et al. 1999;
Farber & Morrison 2000; Wiener 2001), ‘contextrelated’
instruments for information rights and duties
are still far from mainstream in EU environmental
governance (Burkert 1998; Holzinger et al. 2002). One
of the most difficult sub-tasks was to persuade the
European Union itself (i.e., the bureaucracy in Brussels)
that it, too, had a problem with information
disclosure: It took years of litigation (ECFI 1997,
1998, 1999; ECJ 2001) to establish public access to
EU Parliament, Council and Commission documents
(Kunzlik 1997; O’Neill 1998; Monediaire 1999;
Travers 2000; Wägenbaur 2001; Broberg 2002), now
guaranteed by the ‘Transparency Regulation’ of 30
May 2001 (EU 2001). 3 If that is any consolation –
some other inter-governmental bureaucracies like the
World Bank had to go through a similar learning
curve as regards information disclosure to the public
(Shihata 1994, 28; Udall 1998, 404). 4
II. Private Data Disclosure
The Atlantic divide looms larger still when it comes
to questions of access to privately-held environmental
data, especially information on environmental and
health-related risks. The turning point for North
American regulatory history was the Bhopal accident
in December 1984, which occurred at the local affiliate
of a US chemical company in India and killed
more than 2,400 people (Desai 1993; Lapierre &
3 Given that the EU is a signatory to the 1998 Aarhus Convention,
its own institutions will, upon ratification, become ‘public authorities’
subject to the convention’s disclosure requirements
(Davies 2001; Rodenhoff 2002, 350). See also art. 42 (access to
documents), EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (Nice 2000;
Goldsmith 2001)
4 See World Bank Procedures 17.50 on Disclosure of Operational
Information (September 1993, revised in June 2002
). On similar initiatives in the African, Asian and Inter-
American Development Banks, the European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, the International Finance
Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency, see Yearbook of International Environmental Law 5, 296
(1994); 7, 262 (1996); 9, 340 (1998); Handl 2001, 47; Saul
2002; and the website of the NGO Bank Information Center,

294
Moro 2001). In the face of the magnitude of that
tragedy – and also because it was followed in 1985 by
another, albeit less catastrophic, accident in West
Virginia (in a plant owned by the same corporation;
Abrams & Ward 1990, 143) which illustrated the risk
of similar disasters at home – legislative reaction in
the United States was swift, and truly innovative.
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) established in 1986
by the federal Emergency Planning and Community Rightto-Know
Act (EPCRA 1986; Weeks 1998; Greenwood
& Sachdev 1999) requires mandatory reporting of
toxic industrial emissions. The information is then
made publicly available (on-line) via a computerized
database operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) , and
also via nation-wide non-governmental networks and
special NGO websites, such as the “Chemical Scorecard”
kept by Environmental
Defense and the “Right-to-Know Network”
operated by OMB Watch
(Bass & MacLean 1993). As a result, anybody can
download standardized, site-specific, up-to-date and
user-friendly data on specified toxic emissions from
all facilities covered by TRI. At the state level, California’s
1986 Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement
Act (known as ‘Proposition 65’,
) imposed
additional warning and disclosure requirements for
toxic chemicals – as interpreted and applied by the
courts (Lungren case 1996; Rechtschaffen 1996, 1999;
Freund 1997) – unless emitters can show that the
level of exposure is low enough to pose ‘no significant
risk’ (§25249.10.c).
Although there had been earlier toxic-emission disclosure
laws at the state and local level since the
1970s – mainly in response to demands by labour
leaders to alert employees to workplace risks
(McGarity & Shapiro 1980; Chess 1984; Hadden
1989) – the near-instant success of TRI and Proposition
65 seems to have taken everyone by surprise (Wolf
1996; Konar & Cohen 1997; Stephan 2002). Both
statutes began taking effect in 1988. The most recent
data available – for the 10-year period from 1988 to
1997 – show that atmospheric emissions of some 260
known carcinogens and reproductive toxins from
TRI-reporting facilities have been reduced by approximately
85% in the state of California, and by
some 42% in the rest of the country (i.e., for all
chemicals listed in California as known to cause either
cancer or reproductive toxicity and reported as air
emissions under TRI; Roe 2002, 10233/figure 1).
Attempts at explaining this “accidental success story”
(Fung & O’Rourke 2000, 116) variously emphasize
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
the innovative use made of (a) electronic communications
via the Internet, by TRI (Jobe 1999); (b) reversal
of the burden of proof for exemptions, by Proposition
65 (Barsa 1997); (c) enforcement by citizen suits,
under both schemes (Grant 1997; Green 1999; Graf
2001, 669); (d) standardized data, facilitating comparison
and ‘performance benchmarking’ (Karkkainen
2001); and (e) the ‘reputational’ effects of such competitive
ranking on a firm’s behaviour (Graham 2001,
8; Graham & Miller 2001). While it will, of course, be
important to learn the right lessons from all of this,
the outcome is unlikely to be attributable to a set of
isolated causes, let alone mono-causal. There certainly
are a number of plausible external driving forces, and
‘success’ more often than not rests on the right combination
of information and regulation. Be that as it
may, a number of observers view the advent of ‘informational
regulation’ (Magat & Viscusi 1992;
Kleindorfer & Orts 1998; Sage 1999; Sunstein 1999;
Stewart 2001; Case 2001), ‘smart regulation’ (Gunningham
et al. 1998, 63), or ‘regulation by revelation’
(Florini 1998), as a viable alternative to the stalemate
of traditional environmental law-making and the kind
of regulatory fatigue it seems to have spread (Lyndon
1989; Pedersen 2001; Cohen 2001). Scientists advocate
“mutual transparency as a useful means to ensure
accountability” (Brin 1998, 149); international lawyers
and political scientists refer to ‘sunshine methods’ as
effective new strategies to induce compliance with
environmental treaties (Weiss & Jacobson 2000, 549);
and economists hail disclosure strategies as the ‘third
wave’ in pollution control (Tietenberg 1998), after
command-and-control (emission standards and fines)
and market-based approaches (emission charges,
tradable permits).
‘Right-to-know’ laws have since been enacted in at
least 25 U.S. states and in Canada (Zimmermann et
al. 1995; Duncan 1998, 188; CEC 2001; Harrison &
Antweiler 2003). Not surprisingly, the North American
pilot experience had its ripple effects elsewhere,
the new buzz-word being Pollutant Release and Transfer
Registers (PRTR): in Australia and Japan, prompted
in part by guidelines developed in the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD 1996, 1998,
)
in response to a recommendation of the 1992 Rio
Conference on Environment and Development
(Agenda 21, §19.61.c); in Brazil, Indonesia, and a
number of other developing countries, through technical
assistance projects organized by the World Bank
(Wheeler 1997; Afsah et al. 2000; World Bank 2000).
Further initiatives for worldwide dissemination of the
concept have been launched by the UN Environment

Programme (UNEP,
); the UN Institute
for Training and Research (UNITAR 2000); the
Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of
Chemicals (IOMC 2001); and private-sector networks
such as the International Right-to-Know Campaign,
(Casey-Lefkowitz 2001), and
the Global Reporting Initiative,
(GRI 2002).
The European Union decided, in July 2000, to establish
a mandatory European Pollutant Emission Register
(EPER 2000), to be operated by the European Environment
Agency (EEA) ‘on top’ of national inventories
currently under preparation in several member
countries, with the first national data to be delivered
to the EEA by 2003. The first operational system in
Europe was introduced in 1974 by the Netherlands
Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment
(VROM), on a voluntary basis. A mandatory
system followed in Norway, with data accessible to
the public though not actively disseminated. Sweden
has started mandatory reporting (after voluntary pilot
studies since 1994) under a new PRTR system operated
by the Environmental Protection Agency in
cooperation with the Chemical Inspectorate. The
United Kingdom currently has a multi-register system
operating in England and Wales only. Other
countries planning to have integrated national systems
in operation by 2003 include Austria, Belgium,
the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany,
Hungary, and Ireland (UN/ECE 2000,
Annex I).
Perhaps the most promising regional activity currently
underway in Europe is the new Protocol on Pollutant
Release and Transfer Registers, to be signed in the
framework of the Aarhus Convention at the forthcoming
Ministerial Conference on ‘Environment for
Europe’ in Kiev, 21-23 May 2003 (UN/ECE 2002,
decision I/3). Once adopted and ratified in the legal
context of the convention, public access to emission
data along TRI lines may become an actionable right
– hence potentially subject to supranational judicial
review by the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg (Guerra case 1998, McGinley case 1998;
Weber 1990; Gavouneli 2000; Fievet 2001, 173) –
well beyond the EU, and especially in the countries of
Central and Eastern Europe. As mentioned before,
people in those countries are acutely sensitive to
information on environmental risks, which was denied
to them in the past, and which they do not wish
to see monopolized again, whether by public or by
private knowledge-holders and “knowledge brokers”
(Litfin 1994, 4).
The PRTR Task Force/Working Group has held
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 295
eight meetings to date, and a draft text has been finalized
for adoption at the Kiev Conference (UN/ECE
2003). 5 The main purpose of the Protocol is to require
all member countries to establish “publicly
accessible national pollutant release and transfer
registers” for pollutants and source categories to be
listed in annexes and expected to be expanded over
time, possibly also including ‘diffuse sources’ such as
agriculture and traffic (draft article 2/11). A net effect
therefore will be to bring important environmental
data held by the private sector into the public domain.
III. Outlook
Let us remember, however, that this is only the tip of
the iceberg. There is a huge mass of privately-held
environmental and health risk information that is
woefully ‘asymmetric’ – to use a somewhat euphemistic
term coined by Kenneth Arrow (Arrow 1963;
Cranor 1999) – yet is not covered by the Aarhus Convention
at all, and where Europe still lags years behind
North America in terms of public access rules. A
striking illustration is disclosure of the tobacco industry’s
‘privileged’ documents under the 1998 Minnesota
settlement (Humphrey case 1998; Ciresi et al.
1999; Little 2001): It is only now, after courtenforced
electronic access to those corporate files,
that a research team from the University of California
was able to document the multinationals’ wellplanned
and highly successful sabotage of EU tobacco
advertising legislation (Bitton et al. 2002; Neuman
et al. 2002), culminating in the annulment of a
1998 Council Directive (EU 1998; Simma et al. 1999)
by the European Court of Justice in October 2000
(ECJ 2000; Schroeder 2001; Tridimas & Tridimas
2002). 6 The documentation shows, in gruesome detail
and transparency, how ‘captured’ governments and
5 Note that the protocol will be open to all UN member states
(draft article 26) regardless of their membership in the
UN/ECE or the Aarhus Convention. At the November 2002
session, however, the US delegation declared that it would not
participate in a negotiating capacity but would “continue to
follow this and other international processes dealing with the
issue of PRTRs” (UN/ECE Doc. MP.PP/AC.1/2002/2,
paragraph 19)
6 The EU Commission has since proposed a new Directive on the
approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of
the Member States relating to the advertising and sponsorship of tobacco
products (30 May 2001). The EU Council, at its meeting on 2
December 2002, agreed (against German opposition) to adopt
the draft directive as amended by the European Parliament on
20 November 2002. The German Government, under pressure
from economic lobbyists and the conservative opposition
party, now plans to take the new directive to the European
Court in Luxembourg once again (Lechner 2002; Didzoleit
2002)

296
top politicians (with Germany up-front) 7 were used
and – to put it bluntly – corrupted in a game that will
have massive and measurable negative effects on
environmental health for years to come. 8
More transparency might also help in some of the
academic analysis concerned. For example, a recent
collection of legal opinions on the EU ban on tobacco
advertising, by a respectable German publisher
(Schneider & Stein 1999), demonstrated – according
to the editors’ preface – “striking conformity and
unanimity” among the experts, to the effect that the
ban had indeed been ultra vires. However, readers had
to proceed as far as page 55 to discover (Kleine 2000)
that the learned book had been solicited and sponsored
by the Confederation of European Community Cigarette
Manufacturers (CECCM). Given this abundance of
‘manufactured uncertainty’ (and a good deal of
pseudo-certainty, too), there clearly is a need for new
disclosure rules – to be applied not only to government
and industry, but also to scientific writers and
law professors. Pending that, all I can recommend is a
high degree of precaution when approaching German
legal publications on this topic.
Far more serious, however, are recent developments
triggered by the tragic events of September 11, 2001.
In the face of terrorist bombing threats against the
most vulnerable targets – for example, major chemical
factories, – a large part of industrial risk data in
the United States is now in the process of being reclassified
as ‘critical infrastructure information’ (Bennett
& Kyl 2001; Cha 2002; Davis 2002; Cohen
2002). Not surprisingly, economic pressure groups
which had always resisted the disclosure of environmental
risks to the public – such as the American
Chemistry Council (ACC, formerly the Chemical Manufacturers
Association, CMA), the Coalition for Effective Environmental
Information (CEEI), and the Center for Regulatory
Effectiveness (CRE) – are lending enthusiastic support
to the Bush Administration’s efforts at restricting
access to such information (Greenwood 1999).
They scored a first tactical victory with the ‘data
7 Simpson 2002. On 17 October 2002, Germany also earned the
infamous ‘Marlboro Man Award’ from the NGO Network for
Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals
, for the country’s
stalwart diplomatic efforts – in coalition with the USA and Japan
– to block a global ban on tobacco advertising, promotion
and sponsorship under draft article 13 of the World Health
Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, finalized
in Geneva on 1 March 2003 for adoption by the 56 th World
Health Assembly in May 2003 (FCTC 2003). Germany has
announced her refusal to accept the treaty
8 Stochastic mortality estimates in the EU Commission’s ‘Explanatory
Memorandum’ to its proposed new Directive of 30 May
2001, COM (2001) 283/final, p. 9 (§7.3.2). For legislative and
economic background see Kevekordes 1994; Donner 1999;
Chaloupka & Warner 2000
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
quality rider’ attached to the U.S. Treasury Department’s
annual appropriation bill in December 2001
(FY 2001), which directed the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) to develop new “Guidelines for
Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility,
and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies”
(Adler 2001; OMB 2002; EPA 2002). Further
setbacks for public disclosure of toxic pollutant sites
may be expected in the wake of the Homeland Security
Act of 25 November 2002 (HSA 2002; Logomasini
2002; Gidiere & Forrester 2002; Echeverria & Kaplan
2002; Blanton 2002).
Right up to the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on
Sustainable Development, the United States – no matter
how much fault critics may have found with its environmental
record in other areas – had remained the
undisputed champion of citizen access to environmental
data, public or private. Indeed, in his message
to the summit, Secretary of State Colin Powell highlighted
the ‘access initiative’ by 26 civil society organizations
in nine countries to assess how well governments
are providing access to risk information
(Powell 2002, 10; Petkova et al. 2002; WRI 2002).
Starting from Principle 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration,
the ‘Plan of Implementation’ adopted by the summit
re-affirmed the need “to ensure access, at the national
level, to environmental information”, and in particular,
“to encourage development of coherent and
integrated information on chemicals, such as through
national pollutant release and transfer registers” (Johannesburg
Report 2002; Gray 2003). 9 However, at
the Nairobi session of the UNEP Governing Council
in February 2003, a follow-up proposal for global
guidelines on the application of Rio Principle 10 –
including more specific rules on information access –
ran into opposition from the United States in coalition
with the Group of 77/China, and was deferred
to the next (2005) session. 10
Are we about to come full circle, then? The very
principle of transparency, alas, will risk a severe backlash
as the public’s hard-won ‘right to know’ suddenly
9 Sections 23(f) and 128. See also the Johannesburg Declaration’s
call on private sector corporations “to enforce corporate accountability,
which should take place within a transparent and
stable regulatory environment” (Report p. 4, article 29); and
the call for „public access to relevant information“ in the work
programme to implement the ‘Johannesburg Principles on the
Role of Law and Sustainable Development’, adopted by the
Global Judges Symposium on 20 August 2002; Environmental
Policy and Law 32, 236-238 (Rehbinder 2003)
10 “Enhancing the Application of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development”, UN Doc.
UNEP/GC.22/3/Add.2/B (2002), and decision
UNEP/GC.22/L.3/Add.1 (2003) directing the Executive Director
to submit a report for review in 2005; Earth Negotiations
Bulletin 16:30, 9 (10 February 2003); see also the U.S. State Department’s
current position on PRTRs, note 5 above

confronts the ugly claw of a zombie, resurrected from
the dark ages of European administrative law: Government’s
‘hiding hand’.
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Coevolution of the Political and Conceptual Frameworks for Climate
Change Vulnerability Assessments
Hans-Martin Füssel ∗
1. Introduction
The last two decades have witnessed extensive research
on potential and observed impacts of climate
change on all kinds of natural and social systems (see
McCarthy et al., 2001 for a recent review of the literature).
The ultimate goal of this research is to support
the formulation and implementation of policies that
limit adverse impacts of anthropogenic climate
change. In the absence of a consensus definition of
the term climate change vulnerability assessment, it shall be
understood rather broadly in this paper as “any assessment
of how projected changes in the Earth’s climate could
influence natural and human systems or activities, and/or how
human actions could reduce adverse effects of climate change on
those systems or activities, with the aim of assisting policy–
makers to adequately respond to the challenge of climate
change”.
This paper discusses the interplay between the political
framework, the conceptual framework and the
practice of climate change vulnerability assessment.
Figure 1 illustrates the main links. On the one hand,
the political framework (e.g. the international legal
framework and the financial provisions for aided
country studies) and the conceptual framework
(e.g. the formulation of the assessment goals) determine
the practice of vulnerability assessments (a, b).
On the other hand, the results of and experiences
with actual vulnerability assessments are used to
further develop the relevant political and conceptual
frameworks (c, d). Furthermore, the political framework
influences the development of the conceptual
framework (e.g. by directing financial resources to
specific types of vulnerability assessments; e).
‘Vulnerability’ is a central concept in this paper.
However, this term is used in many different ways by
various research communities, such as those dealing
with global climate change, natural hazards and disasters,
secure livelihoods, and famine. The conceptualization
of vulnerability adopted by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is applied in
this paper. Other conceptualizations are briefly discussed
in Section 4.2.
Figure 1. Interplay between the political framework, the conceptual framework, and the practice of climate change vulnerability assessment
∗ Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. Con-
tact: fuessel@pik-potsdam.de.
Figure 2 shows a generic framework for vulnerability
and its assessment, which is applicable beyond the
climate change topic. Its development has been motivated
by the adaptation frameworks presented in
Smithers & Smit (1997) and Smit et al. (2000). The
framework presents a vulnerable system that is exposed
to various stressors, which cause a variety of
effects on that system (depicted by solid arrows with
full heads). The stressors to the system can be associated
with certain root causes, which are attributable

either to human activities or to natural variability.
Purposeful human actions can affect all components
of this causal chain (depicted by dashed arrows).
Cross–cutting issues are the temporal and spatial scale
of the assessment, the treatment of various kinds of
The framework in Figure 2 can be used to frame,
describe, and distinguish various categories of vulnerability
assessments. Table 1 shows an application to
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 303
Figure 2. Generic framework for vulnerability and its assessment
uncertainty, and the availability of resources. The thin
arrows with open heads illustrate that the set of response
actions considered in an assessment is largely
determined by the root causes, stressors, systems and
effects addressed.
the climate change topic. The last column lists examples
for each component of the generic framework,
whereby only those elements shown in boldface are
Dimension Question Potential choices
System Who or what is vulnerable? A community,
a geographic region,
an economic sector,
a natural system
Root causes What causes the vulnerability? Greenhouse gas emissions,
other anthropogenic driving forces
Stressors Vulnerable to what? Anthropogenic climate change,
natural climate variability,
atmospheric composition,
other non-climatic factors
Effects What is at risk? Ecosystem viability,
food security,
human health,
economic assets,
other valued goods and services
Actions What can be done? Mitigation of climate change,
adaptation to climate change
Time scale Which time horizon? Few decades,
many centuries
Spatial scale Which region? River catchment,
coastal strip,
country, continent
Uncertainty How to treat uncertainties? Single best guess,
multiple scenarios,
sensitivity analysis,
probabilistic assessment
Resources Which resources are available? Scoping study,
detailed vulnerability assessment
Table 1. Application of the framework from Figure 2 to climate change vulnerability assessments

304
common to all climate change vulnerability assessments.
Obviously, the differences are more numerous
than the commonalities.
The fundamental distinction of actions that reduce
the vulnerability to climate change is between mitigation
and adaptation. Mitigation refers to limiting
global climate change through constraining the emissions
of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and enhancing
their sinks. Adaptation aims at moderating the adverse
effects of climate change through a wide range
of actions that are targeted at the vulnerable system.
Table 2 gives an overview of many relevant aspects in
which mitigation and adaptation differ from each
other.
Mitigation has traditionally received much greater
attention than adaptation in the climate change community,
both from a scientific and from a policy
perspective. Important reasons for the focus on mitigation
are, first of all, that mitigating climate change
helps to reduce impacts on all climate-sensitive systems
whereas the potential of adaptation measures is
limited for many systems. It is, for instance, difficult
to conceive how the population of certain Pacific
coral atolls could ‘successfully’ adapt to substantial
levels of sea–level rise. Second, the beneficial effects
of mitigating climate change are certain, since they
inevitable reduce the root cause of the climate change
problem. The effectiveness of an adaptation measure,
in contrast, may depend on other factors, which
introduces additional uncertainties. Third, reducing
GHG emissions applies the polluter–pays principle
whereas the need for adaptation measures will be
greatest in developing countries, which have contributed
relatively little to climate change. Fourth, GHG
emission reductions are relatively easy to monitor
quantitatively, both in terms of their absolute amount
and as deviation from an established baseline. It is
much more difficult to measure the effectiveness of
adaptation in terms of impacts avoided, or to ensure
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Mitigation
of climate change
that international assistance to facilitate adaptation
would be fully additional to existing development aid
budgets.
In spite of the urgent need for mitigation there are
also convincing arguments for a more comprehensive
consideration of adaptation as a response measure to
climate change. First of all, given the amount of past
GHG emissions and the inertia of the climate system,
we are already bound to some degree of climate
change that can no longer be prevented even by the
most ambitious emission reductions. Second, the
effect of emission reductions takes several decades to
fully manifest whereas most adaptation measures
become effective immediately. Third, adaptations can
Adaptation
to climate change
Target systems All systems Selected systems
Effectiveness Certain Less certain
Scale of effect Global Local to regional
Time until effect Decades Immediate
Duration of effect Centuries Years to centuries
Secondary benefits Sometimes Often
Polluter pays? Yes Not necessarily
Monitoring Relatively easy More difficult
Table 2. Characteristics of mitigation and adaptation
be implemented on a local or regional scale, and their
efficacy is less dependent on the actions of others.
Fourth, adaptation to climate change typically also
reduces the risks associated with current climate
variability. Climate–related hazards constitute a significant
threat in many parts of the world already
today.
The increasing interest in adaptation to climate
change is reflected in the recent development of the
theory and practice of climate change vulnerability
assessments as well as in the related political, legal,
financial, and scientific frameworks. This paper
sketches this evolution by presenting four stages of
vulnerability assessments, which are described by
means of a conceptual framework that defines key
concepts of the assessment and their analytical relationships.
A central objective of climate vulnerability assessments
is to estimate climate impacts subject to certain
assumptions. The comparability of these estimates is
often hampered because different studies have used
different assumptions on adaptation. Figure 3 explains
key terms that are important in this context.
The diagram depicts hypothetical trajectories for the
level of climate–related impacts over time (due to

anthropogenic climate change as well as natural climate
variability) on a climate–sensitive system. The
lowest trajectory denotes the reference case of an
undisturbed climate where variations in the level of
impacts are solely caused by changes in non–climatic
factors such as demographic and economic development.
The other trajectories present the impacts
associated with the same climate change scenario but
for four different assumed scenarios of adaptation.
They include (in order of descending impact levels)
the ‘dumb farmer’, who does not react to changing
climate conditions at all; the ‘typical farmer’, who
adjusts their practice in reaction to persistent climate
changes only; the ‘smart farmer’, who uses available
information on expected climate conditions to adjust
to them proactively; and the ‘clairvoyant farmer’, who
Level of impacts
high
low
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 305
present future
Time
has perfect foresight of future climate conditions and
faces no restrictions in implementing adaptation
measures. Clearly the metaphorical names used to
characterize the different assumptions on adaptive
behaviour can be applied to any impacted agent. They
are employed here due to their frequent use in the
adaptation literature (Smit & Pilifosova, 2001). The
bars on the right–hand side of Figure 3 illustrate
various interpretations of the term ’climate impacts’.
The different assumptions on adaptation and the
associated concept of ‘climate impacts’ can be related
to the different stages of vulnerability assessment
presented in Section 4.
"Dumb farmer": Changing climate, no adaptation
"Typical farmer": Changing climate, autonomous adaptation
"Smart farmer": Changing climate, feasible adaptation
"Clairvoyant farmer": Changing climate, unrealistic adaptation
"Reference case": Unchanged climate
This section presented a generic model for vulnerability
assessment; it introduced mitigation and adaptation
as the basic response strategies to global climate
change; and it explained several terms that are important
in later sections. Section 2 sketches the development
of the political framework for climate change
vulnerability assessments that is being established in
the context of the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Section 3
reviews key developments in the practice of climate
impact and vulnerability assessments identified in the
IPCC assessment reports. Section 4 delineates the
evolution of the theory of vulnerability assessment by
presenting conceptual frameworks for four different
Figure 3. Different concepts for impacts and vulnerability
Potential impacts
(assuming no adaptation)
Expected impacts
(assum. autonomous adapt.)
Avoidable impacts
(through planned adapt.)
Residual impacts
(assuming autonomous
and planned adapt.)
Theoretically
avoidable impacts
(through perfect adapt.)
Unavoidable impacts
assessment stages, in line with the evolution of the
political framework. Section 5 concludes this paper.
2. Political framework for vulnerability
assessment
Climate change vulnerability assessments, as defined
in Section 1, comprise a broad set of activities: from
purely scientific analyses of the relationship between
specific climate variables and certain ecosystem properties
to policy–driven assessments of how a climate–
sensitive economic sector in a country can be made
more resilient to all kinds of climate variations, regardless
of their attribution. Consequently, climate

306
change vulnerability assessments are conducted in a
variety of contexts, and for a diverse group of orderers
motivated by rather different concerns.
The brief review in this chapter focusses on the development
of the political, legal, and financial provisions
for vulnerability assessments under the
UNFCCC. The UNFCCC is the main body for international
decision–making on the climate change
problem, and its role for framing vulnerability assessments
is two–fold. First, it has established a
framework for conducting and financing vulnerability
assessments in developing countries. This framework
reflects the specific needs of developing countries,
thus focussing on current climate-related vulnerabilities
and how they may change in the future. Second,
the UNFCCC serves to highlight key issues of the
international policy community that are likely to
influence the funding practice of other public entities.
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to the analysis
of selected clauses from the text of the UNFCCC
and from the decisions of the Conference of the
Parties (CP) to the UNFCCC as to their relevance for
the conceptualization and practice of vulnerability
assessment. Whenever possible, pertinent political
decisions are related to the categorization of vulnerability
assessments that will be presented in Section 4,
which distinguishes climate impact assessments, first–
generation vulnerability assessments, second–
generation vulnerability assessments, and adaptation
policy assessments.
UNFCCC Article 2: Objective (1992)
The ultimate objective of this Convention ... is to
achieve ... stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations
in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent
dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system. Such a level should be achieved within a time–
frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally
to climate change, to ensure that food production is not
threatened and to enable economic development to
proceed in a sustainable manner.
The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC, as stated in
Article 2, is the prevention of ‘dangerous anthropogenic
interference’ with the climate system through
the ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in
the atmosphere’. An operational understanding of
Article 2 requires a broad range of research on the
vulnerability of natural and human systems across the
world to climate change. Assessments of potential
adaptations can be an important component of these
vulnerability assessments, but only insofar they assist
the decision–making on the level and time–frame for
GHG stabilization. Applying the categorization of
vulnerability assessments proposed in Section 4, the
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
respective assessments are most likely to fall into the
categories impact assessment or first–generation vulnerability
assessment.
UNFCCC Article 4: Commitments (1992)
All Parties ... shall: ...
1. (b) Formulate, implement, publish and regularly update
... programmes containing measures to mitigate
climate change ..., and measures to facilitate adequate
adaptation to climate change. ...
(e) Cooperate in preparing for adaptation to the impacts
of climate change; develop and elaborate appropriate
and integrated plans for coastal zone management,
water resources and agriculture, and for the protection
and rehabilitation of areas, particularly in Africa,
affected by drought and desertification, as well as
floods. ...
3. The developed country Parties ... shall also provide
such financial resources, including for the transfer of
technology, needed by the developing country Parties
to meet the agreed full incremental costs of implementing
measures that are covered by paragraph 1 of this
Article ....
4. ... The developed country Parties ... shall also assist
the developing country Parties that are particularly vulnerable
to the adverse effects of climate change in
meeting costs of adaptation to those adverse effects. ...
Article 4 of the UNFCCC mentions (planned)
adaptation to climate change as an important
response option to the climate change problem, in
addition to mitigation. All Parties are called to
formulate and implement programmes for adaptation,
and to cooperate in preparing for adaptation.
Developed countries shall provide financial resources,
among others, for mitigation and adaptation
assessments in developing countries. They shall also
assist ‘particularly vulnerable’ developing countries in
meeting the costs of adaptation.
The implementation of these commitments poses
significant challenges for vulnerability research. Article
4.4, if fully implemented, would put ‘particularly
vulnerable’ (developing) countries in a preferential
position with respect to financial aid under the
UNFCCC. The decision which countries should be
considered ‘particularly vulnerable’ requires comprehensive
vulnerability assessments that are comparable
across countries if it is to be based on scientific rather
than on political arguments. Such assessments are
described as second–generation vulnerability assessments in
Section 4. In addition to biophysical determinants of
vulnerability, they also consider the socioeconomic
capacity of countries to formulate and implement
adequate adaptation to climate change.
The formulation of national programmes of action
and of integrated plans for the management of selected
climate–sensitive sectors, as called for in Arti-

cle 4.1(b) and 4.1(e), respectively, requires adaptation
assessments to proceed from positively assessing
which adaptations are likely or feasible to normatively
assessing which adaptations are recommended. In the
terminology of the present paper, Article 4.1 calls for
adaptation policy assessments.
Decision 11/CP.1: Initial guidance on policies, programme
priorities and eligibility criteria to the operating
entity or entities of the financial mechanism (1995)
1. ... (d) Regarding adaptation, the following policies,
programme priorities and eligibility criteria should apply:
Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate
change, as defined by the Convention, will require
short, medium and long term strategies which ... should
be implemented on a stage–by–stage basis in developing
countries ...:
- Stage I: Planning, which includes studies of possible
impacts of climate change, to identify particularly vulnerable
countries or regions and policy options for adaptation
and appropriate capacity-building;
- Stage II: Measures, including further capacity–
building, which may be taken to prepare for adaptation,
as envisaged by Article 4.1(e);
- Stage III: Measures to facilitate adequate adaptation,
including insurance, and other adaptation measures as
envisaged by Article 4.1(b) and 4.4. ...
Decision 11/CP.1 establishes a staged approach to
adaptation in developing countries. Broadly speaking,
Stage I involves first–generation or second–
generation vulnerability assessments whereas Stage II
requires adaptation policy assessments. Stage III
eventually facilitates the implementation of the adaptations
recommended in Stage II.
Decision 5/CP.7: Additional guidance to an operating
entity of the financial mechanism (2001)
The Conference of the Parties ...
7. Decides that the implementation of the following activities
shall be supported through the Global Environment
Facility ... and other bilateral and multilateral
sources: ...
(b) Vulnerability and adaptation: ...
(v) Establishing pilot or demonstration projects to
show how adaptation planning and assessment can be
practically translated into projects that will provide real
benefits, and may be integrated into national policy and
sustainable development planning, on the basis of ...
the staged approach endorsed by the Conference of the
Parties in its decision 11/CP.1; ...
(vii) Strengthening existing and, where needed, establishing
early warning systems for extreme weather
events in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner to
assist developing country Parties, in particular those
most vulnerable to climate change;
8. Decides that the implementation of the following activities
shall be supported through the special climate
change fund (in accordance with decision 7/CP.7)
and/or the adaptation fund (in accordance with deci-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 307
sion 10/CP.7), and other bilateral and multilateral
sources:
(a) Starting to implement adaptation activities promptly
where sufficient information is available to warrant
such activities, inter alia, in the areas of water resources
management, land management, agriculture, health, infrastructure
development, fragile ecosystems, including
mountainous ecosystems, and integrated coastal zone
management; ...
Decision 5/CP.7 provides further guidance for the
funding of adaptation activities in developing countries.
Particularly relevant in the context of this paper
is the call for the integration of adaptation planning
and assessment into national policy and sustainable
development planning. This decision also acknowledges
the link between the vulnerability to future
climate change and the vulnerability to current climate
variability and extremes, by explicitly mentioning
early warning systems for extreme weather events
as eligible for funding. Both issues are reflected in the
conceptualization of adaptation policy assessments in
Section 4.4.
Decision 28/CP.7 (Annex): Guidelines for the preparation
of national adaptation programmes of action
(2001)
A. Introduction
1. National adaptation programmes of action (NAPAs)
will communicate priority activities addressing the urgent
and immediate needs and concerns of the least developed
countries (LDCs), relating to adaptation to the
adverse effects of climate change. ...
D. Guiding elements
The preparation of NAPAs will be guided by the following:
(a) A participatory process involving stakeholders, particularly
local communities;
(b) A multidisciplinary approach; ...
E. Process
8. (b) The NAPA team will assemble a multidisciplinary
team: ...
(ii) To conduct a participatory assessment of vulnerability
to current climate variability and extreme weather
events, and to assess where climate change is causing
increases in associated risks; ...
Decision 28/CP.7 establishes guidelines for the
preparation of national adaptation programmes of
action (NAPAs) in the least developed countries. Key
characteristics of the vulnerability and adaptation
assessments on which the NAPAs are based are a
participatory approach involving stakeholders, a multidisciplinary
approach, and assessments of the vulnerability
to current climate variability and extreme
weather events. These issues, some of which were
already raised in Decision 5/CP.7, are also reflected

308
in the evolution of the conceptual framework in
Section 4.
Summarizing the development of the political framework
for vulnerability assessment under the
UNFCCC, we observe a clear tendency towards emphasizing
adaptation as an important response option
to climate change, in particular in highly vulnerable
developing countries; towards assessing vulnerability
to future climate change in connection with vulnerability
to current climate variability and extremes; and
towards the integration of climate change issues with
other policy objectives, which is done in a participatory
process involving stakeholders. These developments
are in line with the observations about the
practice of vulnerability assessment reported in Section
3. They are also reflected in the evolution of the
conceptual framework for vulnerability assessment
presented in Section 4.
3. Practice of vulnerability assessment
Assessments of the potential or likely impacts of
climate change, of the vulnerability of nations, social
groups and economic sectors, and of potential response
actions apply a variety of methodological
approaches. The suitability of a specific approach
depends, among others, on the sector or system analyzed,
on the specific climatic and non–climatic
stressors that this system is exposed to, on the degree
of uncertainty about future changes in these stressors,
on the biophysical and social effects potentially
caused by these stressors, on the societal response
actions considered, on the time scale and spatial scale
of the assessment, and on the resources available for
the assessment (cf. Figure 2).
The author does not suggest that the development of
climate change assessments has followed a single
trajectory in the past. However, certain trends can be
clearly observed. The detection of these trends is
facilitated by the exceptional circumstance that the
complete body of scientific knowledge on climate
change, associated impacts, and potential response
mechanisms is regularly synthesized in the reports of
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Assessment Year WG I WG II WG III
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). The IPCC was jointly established in 1988 by
the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the World Meteorological Union
(WMO). The IPCC unites the various academic
communities that are dealing with climate–change
related problems. Membership is open to qualified
specialists named by governments from any country.
For an overview of its history and mission, see
Bruce (2001).
The primary task of the IPCC is to assess and synthesize
the policy–relevant results of peer–reviewed
published research. Even though the IPCC does not
conduct research itself, its prominent position at the
science–policy interface gives it an important role for
identifying important research gaps, for channelling
requests from the policy community to the scientific
community, and for shaping the research agenda.
The IPCC has produced three comprehensive assessment
reports so far. The three working groups
(WGs) of the IPCC contributed one volume each to
these reports. Some important developments in the
practice of climate change assessments can already be
derived from changes in the thematic structure of the
WGs II and III, as shown in Table 3.
First 1990 Science Impacts Response Strategies
Second 1995 Science
Impacts, Adaptations, and Mitigation
(Scientific–Technical Analyses)
Third 2001 Science Impacts, Adaptations, and Vulnerability Mitigation
Table 3. Scope of the IPCC working groups in the major IPCC assessments
Economic and Social Dimensions
Since the inception of the IPCC, WG II has focussed
on the impacts of projected climate change. In the
First Assessment, climate impacts were exclusively
addressed by WG II, with a clear focus on biophysical
impacts. In the preparation of the Second Assessment,
the need for an assessment of the economic
and social dimensions of climate change was
clearly recognized. The scientific–technical analysis of
impacts, adaptation, and mitigation was assigned
again to WG II, whereas WG III focussed on the
economic and social dimensions. Despite the explicit
integration of socioeconomic aspects into the IPCC
assessment, WG II and WG III were still partitioned
along disciplinary boundaries. For the Third Assessment,
the WGs were rearranged in a problem–
oriented manner rather than by disciplinary tradition.
WG II assessed the environmental, social, and economic
dimensions of climate impacts, the vulnerabil-

ity to climate change across systems, sectors, and
regions, as well as potential adaptations to reduce
adverse impacts. WG III addressed the technical and
economic dimensions of mitigation actions, which
can be analyzed largely independent of adaptation.
The preface of the WG II contribution to the IPCC
Third Assessment Report highlights the main differences
compared to earlier WG II assessments,
namely:
• efforts to address a number of cross–cutting
issues, such as sustainable development, equity,
and scientific uncertainties;
• the emergence of changes in climate extremes
and in climate variability as key determinants
of future impacts and vulnerability;
• increasing emphasis on the many interactions
of climate change with other stresses
on the environment and human populations;
and
• the expanded analysis on the value of adaptation
measures to diminish the risk of damage
from future climate change and from
present climate variability alike.
Summarizing the development of vulnerability assessments
presented in the IPCC reports, a clear
trend can be recognized towards interdisciplinary
assessments of the potential consequences of climate
change; towards the integration of impacts and adaptation
assessments; and towards the integration of
climate change with other stresses and concerns.
4. Conceptual framework for vulnerability
assessment
Section 2 sketched the evolution of the political
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 309
Impact assessment First–generation
vulnerability
assessment
framework for climate change vulnerability assessments.
in response to changing stakeholder needs.
Section 3 reviewed the most important developments
of the assessment practice, which were also based on
scientific advances in a range of relevant disciplines.
Building on this analysis, a conceptual framework for
four different stages of climate change vulnerability
assessment is presented in this section.
For the sake of clarity, each of the four assessment
stages is described in contrast to the previous one.
However, the development of vulnerability assessments
rarely proceeds in a linear way, and actual
assessments often combine features from more than
one stage. The presented classification should therefore
not be interpreted to the effect that all but the
final stage have become obsolete. For instance, as
long as there are important gaps in the scientific
knowledge, research on the links between climatic
changes and certain biophysical processes remains
important. However, stakeholders have increasingly
expressed their need for assessments that incorporate
uncertain knowledge about past and future climate
change to support decisions that have to be made
today. This gradual shift from science–driven assessments
that estimate potential climate impacts to policy–driven
assessments that recommend specific
adaptation measures has important consequences for:
• the degree to which non–climatic factors are
included,
• the consideration of the effects of current
climate variability and extremes,
• the temporal and spatial scales of analysis,
• the treatment of uncertainty,
• the integration with other policy goals,
• the relative importance of positive versus
normative elements, and
Second– generation
vulnerability assessment
Adaptation
policy
assessment
Analytical approach Positive Positive Positive Normative
Main result Potential
impacts
Consideration of adaptation
Integration of natural
and social sciences
Illustrative research
question
Pre–adaptation
vulnerability
Post–adaptation vulnerability
Little Partial Full Full
Low Low – medium Medium – high High
Which biophysical
impacts are expected
from climate
change?
Which socioeconomic
impacts are
expected from
climate change?
What is the vulnerability
to climate change,
considering feasible
adaptations?
Table 4. Characteristic properties of different stages of vulnerability assessment
Recommended adaptations
Which adaptations are
recommended to
reduce the vulnerability
to climate change

310
• the degree of stakeholder involvement.
Table 4 summarizes key characteristics of the four
different assessment stages distinguished in this paper.
For a more detailed discussion of these issues,
the reader is referred to Rothman & Robinson (1997),
Smith (1997), Klein & MacIver (1999),
Klein et al.. (1999), and Smit et al. (1999).
In the sequel of this paper a conceptual framework is
presented to illustrate the approach towards each of
the four stages of vulnerability assessment. The purpose
of this conceptual framework is twofold. First, it
conveys the prevailing understanding of the climate
change community in general, and as presented in the
IPCC in particular, on key concepts related to vulnerability
and adaptation to climate change, and on their
analytical relationships. The framework is widely
applicable, although some adjustments may have to
be made when applying it to particular impact sectors.
Second, the four stages of vulnerability assessment
sketch the development of the underlying theory over
time, in line with the observations presented in Section
2 and 3.
Natural and social sciences follow rather different
approaches in the study of human-nature system
interactions. The natural sciences focus on the physical
flow of matter and energy between system components.
The social sciences, in contrast, emphasize
the flow of information between different actors that
determines social decision-making. Obviously, considering
the decision process of relevant actors is
central for any attempt to influence the `physical' part
X 1 X 2 X 3
Y 1
Z
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Y 2
of the system through purposeful policy decisions.
The adoption of either view has important implications
for the visual representation of the considered
system. The primary goal of system-dynamics diagrams, as
applied in the natural sciences, is to clarify the behaviour
of complex systems whereas influence diagrams
(and the social science models based upon them) are
developed for helping people to make decisions.
The staged `box-and-arrows' diagram that illustrates
our conceptual framework is a hybrid of a systemdynamics
diagram and an influence diagram. Its elements
include climate change, climate variability,
exposure, sensitivity, impacts, adaptive capacity, vulnerability,
mitigation, and adaptation. These terms
refer to rather different types of concepts, such as
flow variables (e.g. emissions) and state variables
(e.g. concentrations) at different spatial and temporal
scales, complex probabilistic properties of a system
(e.g. climate variability), spatiotemporal events
(e.g. exposure), functional relationships between
other elements (e.g. sensitivity), and human actions
(e.g. adaptation). The diversity within the elements of
the framework gives rise to a substantial diversity in
the relationships between them. Figure 4 explains the
main elements of the conceptual framework and their
relationships. Whilst distinguishing between the different
types of boxes and arrows enables a closer
examination of the analytical relationships in the
framework, the main features of each stage of vulnerability
assessment are still comprehensible without
doing so.
Important concept from the IPCC TAR
applicable at the global level (X 1 ),
at the regional level (X 2 ),
and at diverse levels (X 3 )
Key input (Y 1 ) and key output (Y 2 )
of the assessment, respectively
Response action
Physical cause-effect relationship
(“A causes B“)
Effect of human actions
Functional relationship
(“A partly determines B“)
Perception and interpretation
of information
Figure 4. Symbols used in the conceptual framework

Any mental model highlights some aspects of the
considered system at the expense of others. The most
important topics that are not explicitly addressed in
our framework are the dynamical aspects of the considered
processes, the spatial scales of the considered
systems and cross-scale relationships, the uncertainty
associated with different elements of the framework,
and the actual process of policymaking.
4.1. Impact assessment
The climate change community, in large part because
of its intensive co–operation within the IPCC, is
developing a common terminology, although definitions
are still being debated. Since a number of important
terms are used differently in other scientific
communities, the definitions from the latest IPCC
glossary (McCarthy et al., 2001; Hough-
The assessment starts from scenarios of either emissions
or atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse
gases and radiatively active particles, such as the often-assumed
2xCO2 case.
Climate change: A statistically significant
variation in either the mean state of
the climate or in its variability, persisting
for an extended period (typically decades
or longer). Climate change may be due to
natural internal processes or external
forcing, or to persistent anthropogenic
changes in the composition of the atmosphere
or in land use. [...]
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 311
Figure 5. Conceptual framework for a climate impact assessment
ton et al., 2001), are provided in separate boxes,
whenever available.
(Climate) impact assessment: The practice
of identifying and evaluating the detrimental
and beneficial consequences of
climate change on natural and human
systems.
Impact assessments evaluate the potential effects of
several climate change scenarios, compared to a (hypothetical)
constant climate scenario, on one or more
impact domains. In so doing, they contribute to the
identification of “[levels of] greenhouse gas concentrations
[...] that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference
with the climate system” as called for in Article 2 of the
UNFCCC. The main concepts considered in a climate
impact assessment and their relationships are
depicted in Figure 5.
Projections for the magnitude of anthropogenic climate
change and for its spatial and temporal variability
are then determined through the application of
appropriate climate models. Climate is a multi–
dimensional phenomenon that exhibits variations on
different time scales. Burton (1997) suggests a hierarchy
of weather and climate phenomena (denoted as
type 1, 2, and 3 variables) to distinguish single climate
variables (such as local temperature), specific weather
events (such as a convective storm), and long–term
processes (such as anthropogenic climate change).
Impact assessments often focus on long–term

312
changes in average climate conditions (such as annual
mean temperature, precipitation, and sea–level rise)
because these results are most readily available from
climate models.
Exposure: The nature and degree to
which a system is exposed to significant
climatic variations.
The exposure of a system to climate stimuli depends
on the level of global climate change and on the location
of the exposure unit. The link from concentrations to
exposure in the conceptual framework indicates that
some exposure units are directly affected by the level
of radiatively active gases. Well–known examples
include the direct effect of carbon dioxide on plant
physiology and the combination of local air pollution
and high temperatures in causing respiratory diseases
in humans. It should be noted that this extended
conceptualization of exposure is not fully consistent
with the IPCC definition, which includes only climatic
factors.
Sensitivity: The degree to which a system
is affected, either adversely or beneficially,
by climate–related stimuli. [...]
The effect may be direct [...] or indirect
[...].
The sensitivity of a system denotes the — generally
multi–dimensional and dynamic — dose–response
relationship between its exposure to climatic stimuli
and the resulting effects.
(Climate) Impacts: Consequences of climate
change on natural and human systems.
Depending on the consideration of
adaptation, one can distinguish between
potential and residual impacts. [...]
Climate impacts are a function of (the change in) the
system’s exposure to climatic stimuli and of its sensitivity
to these stimuli. Potential impacts are determined in
assessments where the exposure of a system changes
but its sensitivity is assumed to be unaffected by climate
change. The determination of residual impacts
requires assessments that explicitly consider adaptation
measures (see Figure 3 for a graphical illustration).
It is interesting to note that the IPCC definitions for
‘exposure’ and ‘impacts’ are not fully consistent.
Whereas the former includes all climatic variations,
the latter only considers those aspects that are due to
anthropogenic climate change. Climate science does
not presently provide tools that can clearly separate
(regional) climate variability according to natural and
anthropogenic causes. However, this distinction has
major policy consequences, especially because only
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
adaptations to anthropogenic climate change are
currently eligible for funding through the mechanisms
of the UNFCCC and the KP (Klein, 2002).
Mitigation: An anthropogenic intervention
to reduce the sources or enhance the
sinks of greenhouse gases.
Mitigation refers to actions that limit the level and
rate of climate change. The two basic mitigation
options are the reduction of gross GHG emissions (e.g.
through fuel switching in the energy sector) and the
reduction of their concentrations through enhancing the
sink capacity of biological and other systems.
The bold borders around the boxes for emissions and
concentrations of greenhouse gases and for the level of
climate change in Figure 5 indicate that these concepts
are applicable at the global level. The exposure and the
sensitivity to climatic stimuli as well as the resulting
impacts can only be analyzed for specific exposure
units, as indicated by the thin borders around the
respective boxes. Mitigation is implemented at the
regional level whereas its effects on greenhouse gas
concentrations can be aggregated to the global level.
The double border around the respective box indicates
that this concept is relevant at different spatial
scales.
The main policy response addressed in impact assessments,
as understood here, is mitigation. They do
not explicitly address adaptation, thereby implementing
the ‘dumb farmer’ assumption (see Figure 3).
Their use for policy formulation is limited to longer–
term climate impacts and, in particular, to raising
awareness of the potential scale and magnitude of
climate change impacts. Examples include many
ecological studies as well as country studies conducted
within, for instance, the United States Country
Studies Program (USCSP). Selected references are
Monserud et al. (1993), Leemans
& van den Born (1994),
Kwadijk & Middelkoop (1994),
Nicholls & Leatherman (1995),
Rosenzweig & Parry (1994), Martens et al. (1995), and
Martens et al. (1997). This approach is also typical for
many integrated assessment models of global climate
change, e.g. IMAGE (Alcamo et al., 1998), ICLIPS
(Toth et al., 2002; Füssel & van Minnen, 2001),
CLIMPACTS (Kenny et al., 1995), and MIASMA
(Martens, 1998). These models present spatially referenced
projections for (mainly biogeophysical) impacts
of different emission scenarios on various impact
sectors.

4.2. First–generation vulnerability
assessment
A vulnerability assessment constitutes an extension of
a (climate) impact assessment. Major differences
between the two assessment types will be discussed
later when the concept of ‘vulnerability’ as understood
by the IPCC is introduced. Interestingly, the
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 313
term ‘vulnerability assessment’ itself is not defined in
the IPCC glossary. Two generations of vulnerability
assessments are distinguished in this paper. Figure 6
depicts the framework for a first–generation vulnerability
assessment. Compared to Figure 5, a number
of components have been added.
Figure 6. Conceptual framework for a first–generation vulnerability assessment
Climate variability: Variations in the
mean state and other statistics (such as
standard deviations, the occurrence of extremes,
etc.) of the climate on all temporal
and spatial scales beyond that of individual
weather events. Variability may be
due to natural internal processes within
the climate system (internal variability),
or to variations in natural or anthropogenic
external forcing (external variability).
Climate variability constitutes an important component
of a system’s exposure, and it is generally accepted
that climate change, understood as changes in
the mean climate on a global scale, will affect regional
climate variability, including the frequency, intensity,
and location of extreme events. However, consideration
of climate variability and its future changes in
model–based impact assessments is hampered by the
often substantial disagreement between different
climate models. A notable exception concerns the
intensity of precipitation events where the majority of
climate simulations suggest that heavy rains will increase
in a warming world (Cubasch et al., 2001).
Non–climatic factors denote a wide range of factors
that affect the vulnerability of a system or society to
climate change. They include ecological, economic,
social, demographic, technological and political conditions.
Non–climatic factors may be affected by mitigation
activities. For instance, improved building designs
aimed at minimizing energy consumption may also
influence the ability of buildings to protect people
from heat waves and other extreme weather events.
In the conceptual framework, non–climatic factors can
affect the sensitivity as well as the exposure of a system
to climatic stimuli. The latter link is particularly relevant
for mobile exposure units. For instance, if a person
or a community relocates due to some external stress,
their exposure to climatic variations obviously will
change.
Definitions of vulnerability vary considerably among
different analysts. One school of thought, which
prevails in social geography and political ecology,
regards (social) vulnerability as the response capacity
of a household or a community to external stresses,
as determined by socioeconomic and political factors
(Blaikie et al., 1994; Bohle et al., 1994). Pertinent stud-

314
ies suggest a causal structure that concentrates on the
differential abilities of communities to cope with
external stress. Vulnerability according to this view,
seen as the socioeconomic causes of differential sensitivity
and exposure, corresponds closely to the non–
climatic factors in our framework. A second school,
which is characteristic for the risk, hazards, and disasters
literature, conceptualizes vulnerability as the
dose–response relationship between an exogenous
hazard to a system and the associated risk of adverse
effects (UNDHA, 1993; Dilley & Boudreau, 2001). A
third school, which is predominant in global change
and climate change research, uses vulnerability as an
integrated measure of the expected adverse effects to
a system that originate from certain external stressors
(McCarthy et al., 2001; Cutter, 1993; Boughton
et al., 1999). For a comprehensive review of alternative
conceptualizations of vulnerability, the reader
is referred to Cutter (1996), Kelly & Adger (2000),
and Dilley & Boudreau (2001).
Vulnerability: The degree to which a system
is susceptible to, or unable to cope
with, adverse effects of climate change,
including climate variability and extremes.
Vulnerability is a function of the
character, magnitude, and rate of climate
variation to which a system is exposed, its
sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.
The IPCC definition of vulnerability is shaped by the
third school. In this conceptualization, the vulnerability
of a system to climate change includes both an external
dimension, which is represented by its exposure to
climate variations, and an internal dimension, which
comprises its sensitivity to them and its adaptive capacity
(Bohle, 2001). However, the inclusion of ‘or’ in the
first part of that definition seems to indicate a lingering
persistence of the view that external shocks and
inherent coping ability are alternative definitions of
vulnerability rather than co–factors (Brooks, 2002).
Connecting these co–factors with ‘and’ would thus be
more appropriate. The distinction between an external
and an internal dimension of vulnerability is similar
to the one between biophysical and social vulnerability,
as applied in the ‘hazards of place’ model of
vulnerability developed by Cutter (1996).
Vulnerability is a broader concept than potential
impacts, although the two are closely related. The
double border of the ‘vulnerability box’ indicates that
this concept is applicable at, and may differ between,
different scales. For isntance, even if the overall vulnerability
of a country to climate change is low, certain
subgroups of the population may still be strongly
affected. The arrow that points from impacts to vulnerability
differs from the arrows used in the conceptual
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
framework for an impact assessment (cf. Figure 5).
This thin arrow depicts that the impact potential is an
important determinant for the vulnerability of a system.
However, it does not suggest that impacts cause vulnerability.
The main distinctions between impacts and vulnerability,
as understood by the IPCC, can be explained
using the framework for vulnerability shown in Figure
2:
Stressors: The concept of vulnerability relies on a
realistic representation of the main stressors to a
system, which often means to include threats in addition
to climate change, and to explicitly consider the
uncertainty of climatic and non–climatic scenarios.
Reilly & Schimmelpfennig (1999) emphasize the
stochastic nature of vulnerability by defining it as the
“probability–weighted mean of damages and benefits”.
System: Most importantly, the concept of vulnerability
to gradual changes, such as anthropogenic climate
change, considers the dynamic nature of a vulnerable
system or society, in particular its ability to adapt to
changing conditions over time. Vulnerability assessments
often pay attention to socioeconomic factors
that determine the differential vulnerability of communities
to external stresses.
Effects: The concept of vulnerability relies on a —
partly normative — evaluation of projected impacts.
A system is only considered vulnerable if goods and
services are adversely affected that are valuable to
society as a whole or to certain subgroups. Vulnerability
assessments thus link natural with socioeconomic
analysis.
Actions: Vulnerability assessments are often framed
with a specific set of potential response actions in
mind. Those determinants of vulnerability that cannot
be affected by actions from the portfolio of the
orderer of the assessment thus tend to receive limited
attention.
Not all these differences between impacts and vulnerability
are already relevant for first–generation vulnerability
assessments, and some of them cannot be
adequately shown in the conceptual framework. Another
difference between impacts and vulnerability
relates to their quantifiability. Climate impacts can
often be described by changes in biophysical indicators,
such as the primary productivity of an ecosystem,
or in socioeconomic indicators, such as the
revenues from ski–tourists. However, no agreed
metric exists to describe the vulnerability of an ecosystem
or a ski resort to global climate change.
Recognition of the vulnerability of valued systems to

climate change is likely to trigger policy responses at
different levels. This potential for human agency is
indicated by the thin dashed arrows in the framework
diagram from vulnerability to mitigation and adaptation.
Adaptation: Adjustment in natural or
human systems in response to actual or
expected climatic stimuli or their effects,
which moderates harm or exploits beneficial
opportunities. Various types of adaptation
can be distinguished, including anticipatory
and reactive adaptation, private
and public adaptation, and autonomous
and planned adaptation. [...]
Adaptation, as defined by the IPCC, comprises a
broad range of activities. Alternative definitions have
sometimes restricted the use of this term to adjustments
in social systems, to deliberate changes, to
major structural changes in a system, or to a subset of
climatic stimuli (Smit et al., 2000).
The conceptual framework distinguishes adaptation
measures between those that are targeted directly at
the vulnerable system and those that affect non–
climatic factors influencing the system. The various links
from adaptation to other components of the conceptual
framework are illustrated here by examples referring
to climate impacts on human health. Vaccination
against climate–sensitive vector–borne diseases and
early–warning systems for heat waves and floods are
examples for adaptations that aim at reducing the sensitivity
and exposure of people to climate-related health
hazards, respectively. The treatment of persons who
already fell ill (denoted as ‘reactive adaptation’ or
‘tertiary intervention’ by the climate change and public
health communities, respectively) directly alleviates
the impacts of climate change. An improvement of the
nutritional conditions of children to enhance their
immune status illustrates how adaptation can reduce
stressful non–climatic factors that, in turn, affect their
sensitivity or exposure to climate change.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 315
First–generation vulnerability assessments raise
awareness of the (potential) vulnerability of sensitive
systems to climate change. They may also assess the
relative importance of various non–climatic factors.
In so doing they help to prioritize further research
and determine the need for mitigation and adaptation
measures to reduce adverse effects. Depending on
the level of adaptation assumed, assessment results
may fall anywhere in the range spanned by the ‘dumb
farmer’ and the ‘clairvoyant farmer’ trajectories in
Figure 3. However, as long as the feasibility of implementing
adaptations is not analyzed, the assessment
does not provide a full picture of the vulnerability
of the considered system. For a more detailed
discussion of unrealistic adaptation assumptions and
for examples of studies that would be regarded as
first–generation vulnerability assessments in our
classification, see Smithers & Smit (1997) and
Smit & Pilifosova (2001). Most initial national communications
to the UNFCCC produced by developing
countries are also first–generation vulnerability
assessments (Lim, 2001).
4.3. Second–generation vulnerability
assessment
The step from climate impact assessments to first–
generation vulnerability assessments is characterized
by the inclusion of non–climatic determinants of
vulnerability and by the evaluation of potential impacts
in terms of their relevance to goods and services
that are important to society. The resulting
broader view on the potential consequences of climate
change also helps to assess adaptation needs.
The requirements for, and limitations to, implementing
adaptation measures are more thoroughly assessed
in second–generation vulnerability assessments.
The corresponding conceptual framework in Figure 7
includes a few new elements.

316
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Figure 7. Conceptual framework for a second–generation vulnerability assessment
Adaptive capacity (or adaptability): The
ability of a system to adjust to climate
change (including climate variability and
extremes) to moderate potential damages,
to take advantage of opportunities, or to
cope with the consequences.
The adaptive capacity of a system or society determines
its potential to reduce or cope with adverse
effects of climate change. Under ceteris paribus conditions,
adaptive capacity and vulnerability are therefore
negatively correlated. It should be noted that the
IPCC definitions for adaptive capacity (as well as of
adaptation and vulnerability) refer to social and natural
systems alike. The adaptive capacity of social systems is
determined by many non-climatic factors such as economic
resources, technology, information and skills,
infrastructure, institutions, and equity
(Smit & Pilifosova, 2001; Yohe & Tol, 2002). Since
the ability of a system to cope with current climate
variability is an important indicator for its capacity to
adapt to future climate change, analyses of vulnerability
across systems or regions to current climate variability
can provide important lessons for adaptation
science.
Vulnerability assessments often focus on the multiple
stresses to a valued system property rather than the
multiple effects of a particular stress such as climate
change (Ribot, 1995). An important element in many
second–generation vulnerability assessments is therefore
the explicit consideration of non–climatic driving
forces affecting a system, in particular of large–scale
processes that are associated with global change.
Assessments may include demographic, economic,
sociopolitical, technological, biophysical, and other
drivers that affect a system or society by impacting,
for instance, on the degree of economic diversification,
the level of education, the strength of social
networks, and the overall health status of a population.
The possibility of simultaneously assessing the
effects of multiple driving forces (e.g. climate change
and economic globalization) is reflected in the conceptual
framework by the addition of non–climatic
drivers, which influence non–climatic factors. Further
distinctions between different types of non–climatic
drivers (e.g. into primary and proximate drivers) are
omitted here because this framework focuses on
vulnerability to climate change.
Multi–factorial vulnerability analyzes rely heavily on
the availability of consistent scenarios for all stressors
considered, in particular when the different stressors
are causally related to each other. An important contribution
to this end is the development of the latest
set of IPCC emission scenarios (Nakicenovic
& Swart, 2000). These so–called SRES scenarios
aim at being consistent in terms of emissions and
non–climate drivers (mainly economic and demographic
development). The SRES scenarios are often
used, and sometimes even elaborated, in second–
generation vulnerability assessments and in adaptation
policy assessments. The importance of consistent
multi–dimensional scenarios is also acknowledged in
other advanced vulnerability assessments. The most

prominent example is the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment (MA), a global effort to analyze on a
global, regional, and local scale the state of ecosystems,
their capacity to provide goods and services, the
multiple stresses that they are facing, and the potential
for human actions to protect ecosystem goods
and services by moderating these stresses (Gewin,
2002; Ahmed & Reid, 2002). The assessment
team of the MA is divided into four working groups,
one of which exclusively addresses the development
of consistent scenarios for a comprehensive set of
driving forces.
Second–generation vulnerability assessments are
conducted to estimate realistically the vulnerability of
different regions or sectors, and to assess the potential
of adaptations to reduce the adverse impacts of
climate variability and change. In so doing they help
to prioritize the allocation of resources for adaptation
measures. The identification of limits of adaptation
for valued systems would provide important information
for the determination of critical levels of climate
change. The results of assessments that consider the
implementation of feasible adaptations correspond to
the ‘smart farmer’ trajectory in Figure 3.
Second–generation vulnerability assessments are not
yet commonplace, in absence of a clear methodology.
More than first–generation assessments they require
the involvement of social scientists in a multidisciplinary
research group. In addition, second–generation
assessments require a stronger involvement of stakeholders
and, focusing more on adaptive capacity, rely
more heavily on qualitative data. The project “Assessments
of Impacts of and Adaptation to Climate Change in
Multiple Regions and Sectors” (AIACC), which is implemented
by the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and supports the development of
scientific and technical capacity amongst developing
country scientists to address gaps in knowledge about
climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation,
includes a number of subprojects that could be con-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 317
sidered second–generation vulnerability assessments.
4.4. Adaptation policy assessment
The ultimate purpose of any climate change vulnerability
assessment is to improve the knowledge base
for climate policy, which includes mitigation as well as
adaptation measures. Owing to major differences in
the characteristic temporal and spatial scales and in
the relevant actors (see Table 2), mitigation and adaptation
policies are formulated largely independent of
each other. This separation is also reflected in the
structure of the IPCC Third Assessment Report,
where mitigation and adaptation are addressed by
different working groups (cf. Section 3).
Adaptation assessment: The practice of
identifying options to adapt to climate
change and evaluating them in terms of
criteria such as availability, benefits,
costs, effectiveness, efficiency, and feasibility.
Figure 8 depicts the conceptual framework for an
adaptation policy assessment. This term is preferred over
the term ‘adaptation assessment’ from the IPCC
glossary to emphasize that its main purpose is to
contribute to policymaking by providing specific
recommendations to planners and policymakers on
the enhancement of adaptive capacity and on the
implementation of anticipatory adaptation measures.
Employing the language introduced in Figure 3, adaptation
policy assessments are about preventing
‘avoidable impacts’ by turning ‘typical farmers’ into
‘smart’ ones. Achieving this objective requires a
closer look at the available response options. This
includes considerations as to the feasibility of their
implementation and to their integration with existing
policies and practices on resource management, disaster
reduction, economic development, public health,
etc.

318
Figure 8 distinguishes two types of adaptation. Facilitation
refers to activities that enhance adaptive capacity,
thereby improving the conditions for the implementation
of adaptation measures. Such activities include
awareness raising, capacity building, and the establishment
of institutions, information networks and
legal frameworks. Implementation refers to actually
avoiding adverse climate impacts, either directly by
reducing a system’s exposure or sensitivity to climatic
hazards or indirectly by moderating relevant non–
climatic factors (for examples see Section 4.2). The
relationship between adaptive capacity and adaptation is
twofold. On the one hand, the adaptive capacity of a
community determines the feasibility of adaptation of
the implementation type. On the other hand, the adaptive
capacity can be influenced by adaptation of the facilitation
type.
Even though the focus of Figure 8 is on adaptation,
mitigation actions are also included for the sake of
completeness. The same classification is used for
mitigation as for adaptation. The establishment of a
carbon-trading scheme, for instance, constitutes a
facilitation measure that enhances the mitigative capacity
of a region. The possibility for trading carbon
permits may make the replacement of an old power
plant by a less carbon–intensive one economically
viable, which would be regarded as an implementation
measure. The concept of mitigative capacity, which is
also affected by non–climatic factors, has been introduced
into the literature only very recently
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Figure 8. Conceptual framework for an adaptation policy assessment
(Yohe, 2001).
It is generally more efficient to develop response
strategies that reduce the vulnerability of a system to
multiple stressors simultaneously than to formulate
independent adaptation strategies for each of them.
Hence, adaptation to climate change and variability
needs to be embedded in the existing policy context.
The development of feasible adaptation strategies
requires an intensive dialog with relevant stakeholders
throughout the assessment process. Key objectives of
such a dialogue are to identify the needs and priorities
of stakeholders, to establish trust in the assessment
team and methodology, to facilitate mutual learning,
and to ensure that suggested policies are compatible
with other policy goals such as sustainable development,
economic diversification, and biodiversity
conservation. Existing uncertainties about future
climate change should be an important topic in the
stakeholder dialogue and in the formulation of robust
adaptation strategies. This topic is explored further in
Pittock & Jones (2000).
To date, there is little guidance for full–blown adaptation
policy assessments. An important initiative to
advance the state of the art is the development of an
Adaptation Policy Framework for Stage II adaptation
under decision 11/CP.1 of the UNFCCC under the
guidance of UNDP–GEF (Lim, 2001). One example
of an adaptation policy assessment is the project
Climate Change and Adaptation Strategies for Human
Health in Europe (cCASHh), which aims to assess the

status and to facilitate the enhancement of adaptation
possibilities of communities to climate–related impacts
on human health in Europe. cCASHh is implemented
within the Fifth Framework Programme
of the European Union and executed by an international
and interdisciplinary team of researchers directed
by the World Health Organization (WHO).
5. Summary
This paper started by presenting a scheme for characterizing
and classifying climate change vulnerability
assessments. Based on that scheme, the evolution of
the political and conceptual frameworks for climate
change vulnerability assessment and of the assessment
practice was investigated. The analysis was
largely based on the history of decision–making by
the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC and
on the reviews of the assessment literature in the
pertinent IPCC reports.
The key developments identified in this analysis lead
to the formulation of a hierarchy of climate change
vulnerability assessments, which distinguishes four
assessment stages. The evolution of vulnerability
assessments is reflected by an increasing vertical
integration (along the chain of causation) and horizontal
integration (involving interactions across different
sectors and disciplines), a shift in the analytical
purpose from science–driven to policy–driven assessments,
and a shift in focus from the effects of
climate change alone to the multiple stresses that
threaten a particular system or society. Each assessment
stage was illustrated by an influence diagram
that provides a visual glossary to the key concepts
considered and their analytical relationships.
The first stage is represented by impact assessments that
superimpose the results of climate models for specific
emission scenarios on an otherwise constant world to
estimate the (predominantly biogeophysical) impacts
of anthropogenic climate change on various climate–
sensitive systems. First–generation vulnerability assessments
account for important non–climatic determinants of
vulnerability, including current climate variability, and
they acknowledge the potential of adaptation measures
to reduce adverse impacts. Second–generation vulnerability
assessments pay particular attention to the
capacity of a system or society to adapt to climate
change. Even though second–generation vulnerability
assessments consider climate change and the potential
response options in a wider context, their analytical
purpose is still a positive one, namely to estimate
the vulnerability of a system or community to climate
variability and change. A fundamental shift occurs in
the fourth stage, represented by adaptation policy assess-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 319
ments. They contribute to policymaking by recommending
specific anticipatory adaptation measures.
This goal requires a more detailed analysis of the
process and the actors of adaptation, and of the integration
of adaptation measures with existing policies.
Characteristic features of such policy–oriented assessments
are an intensive involvement of stakeholders,
an emphasis on the link between current and
future vulnerability to climatic variations, and the
formulation and evaluation of response strategies that
are robust against uncertain future developments.
Compared to impact assessments that focus on long–
term climate impacts, sometimes with a global scope,
adaptation policy assessments tend to have a shorter
time horizon and a more restricted geographical
focus.
The climate change problem is a highly politicized
topic that is characterized by strong interactions
between the scientific and the policy communities at
all levels. This paper shows that the international
political framework, the conceptual framework, and
the practice of climate change vulnerability assessment
have evolved in a coevolutionary manner. In a
nutshell, the political framework has influenced the
conceptual framework and the assessment practice.
The outcomes of the assessments have been used, in
turn, to further develop the political and conceptual
frameworks.
Acknowledgements
Part of this work was carried out within the project
Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Human Health in
Europe (cCASHh), funded by the European Union
under contract EVK 2–2000–00070.
Richard J. T. Klein has contributed to the development
of an earlier version of the conceptual framework
for vulnerability assessment. Discussions with
him and the other members of the Environmental
Vulnerability Assessment (EVA) group at the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research have
improved the clarity of the presentation. Of course,
any remaining deficiencies are the responsibility of
the author.
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Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 321
Part III
New Conceptual Frontiers: Sustainability Science, Earth System Analysis
and the Challenge for the Social Sciences

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 322-336.
Options & Restrictions: A Heuristic Tool in Transdisciplinary Research
for an Effective Implementation of Sustainable Practices
Simone Maier Begré and Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn ∗
Introduction
Special challenges in research for the sustainability
transition call for transdisciplinary approaches. These
challenges originate in the kind of problems that have
to be addressed. The issues of sustainability transitions
with regard to global change and its impacts are
complex empirical problems, where harms and benefits
of social groups are at stake, and which are influenced
by human actions.
Therefore the knowledge requested for sustainability
transitions encompasses three types:
• Empirical knowledge about the processes
taking place now, having taken place in the
past and possibly will occur in the future.
• Normative (ethical) knowledge to evaluate
benefits and harms as well as their distribution
within and between generations, that is:
what are the right things to do from a sustainability
view.
• Pragmatic knowledge about how patterns of
human agency can be changed in direction
of more sustainable practices.
A common view says that knowledge about empirical
processes is delivered from research in natural and
social sciences. Knowledge about aims and values is
influenced by societal choices, with the help of humanities;
and knowledge about effective strategies to
support sustainable practices can be developed by
practitioners with the help of applied sciences – if we
know about the empirical processes and if norms and
aims are not too controversial.
This view is rather simplistic because it does not take
the complexity of the empirical processes into account
which disciplinary approaches alone cannot
grasp. It also ignores the fact that empirical processes,
targets, and practices are interrelated and therefore
research has to take these interdependencies into
account. And finally, it fails to take into account how
actors in society are related and affected by the more
sustainable options they are expected to adopt.
∗ Schweizer Verband der Raiffeisenbanken, Switzerland, and Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland. Contact::
hirsch@env.ethz.ch.
In our project on sustainable development in the
need-field of nutrition in the Swiss Priority Program
Environment we came to the conclusion, that the
difficulties in implementation cannot be overcome
just by better ways of knowledge transfer to societal
actors but is itself an issue for research, that has to be
addressed properly. For this purpose a transdisciplinary
approach is needed (Hirsch Hadorn 2002),
which takes into account that pragmatic knowledge
about how things can be changed – sustainability
transitions – has to rely on empirical and normative
knowledge as well as the positions of societal actors
related to the more sustainable options. The term
actor encompasses individuals as well as groups engaged
in social processes.
The following general questions have to be addressed:
• What are the conditions, that might keep actors
from adopting more sustainable practices
as well as what are conditions that
might support them in adopting such practices?
• Are there effective strategies to overcome
these restrictions?
This is a way of reasoning familiar to practitioners.
But addressing these questions in a scientific, i.e.
systematic way enables researchers to reveal the biases
of the actors involved. The heuristic tool we
developed can be used in research with different
theoretical concepts and different empirical methods.
In the following we describe the five steps of our
heuristic tool “Options & Restrictions” and then
present two research examples from our project
(Hirsch Hadorn et al. 2002a, Hirsch Hadorn et al.
2002b).
1. The heuristic “Options & Restrictions”
The heuristic “Options & Restrictions” is a research
tool that helps to discover the relevant structural
conditions of actions, to systemize them along a
functional perspective and to develop ways of influencing
them accordingly. The specific proceeding in
research is not fixed by the heuristic, it can be designed
in different ways according to different theoretical
and methodological concepts. The five steps of
the heuristic can be differentiated and modified in an

iterative research process as will be shown in the
research examples.
Table 1: The five steps of the heuristic “Options & Restrictions”
Step 1: Define more sustainable ways of action (options) of actors
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 323
Step 2: Identify and structure the network of direct and indirect actors involved
Step 3: Develop a concept for analyzing the conditions of action and their underlying functional logic
Step 4: An empirical analysis of the conditions of action in order to discover the restricting and supporting
influence factors regarding the options from step 1
Step 5: Identify strategies in order to overcome the restrictions by reflecting the empirically found conditions
of actions and their underlying functional logic
The five steps can be taken one after another or can be developed in a more comprehensive way. Retaking
steps in an iterative process can provide further in-depth results.
Both research examples were part of the Swiss Priority
Program Environment 1996-1999. The heuristic
was used in different ways in each project. Nevertheless
both projects were related to one another by their
different perspectives on the same network of actors
involved in the “need field of nutrition”, actors that
are interrelated by the issue “need for food”. The idea
of the need field was necessary because transdisciplinary
research needs a comprehensive idea independent
of specific disciplines, how the actors are related
to one another. Inspired by Lewin’s channel theory
(Lewin 1982/1943) the different groups of actors’
relationships were described as being connected to
one another by channels that transport flows of material
and information. The actors can influence those
flows, depicted in the figure by the valves at each
channel’s entry and exit. The actors’ network in this
case is conceptualized along a product life cycle. But
this is by far not the only possibility to conceptualize
an actors’ network, only one that was found to be
convenient for the analysis of a research question that
tackled both social and material contexts, how more
sustainable ways of providing and consuming food
can be supported.

324
Figure 1: The network of actors in the need-field of nutrition
Indirect Actors
Suppliers
Social Network, Media, Education, State
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Supply Side
Farming
Wholesale
Food Processing
Retail Trade / Catering
Consumers
Demand Side
= Material flows (Quality, quantity and ecological effects of products)
= Information flows
= Control on quality and quantitiy of material and information that are
directed into a channel or are taken from it. The tuning the valves on the
one side of the channel hinders or supports the actor on the other side of
the channel.
2. Example 1: Of anti-ecologists and
would-be model-ecologists
The first example shows how the heuristic was applied
in an empirical standardized research design.
The research dealt with the question which restrictions
keep consumers from buying environmentally
friendly food (further called “ecological food purchases”).
It was performed by two psychologists in
co-operation with an engineer who contributed the
target knowledge of what can be judged ecological
food purchases by means of a life cycle analysis
(LCA).
Applying Step 1 of the heuristic in this research con-
text meant to understand the act of ecological food
purchases as an option of sustainable action. Step 2
reconstructed the act of buying food as a manifestation
of material, social, and intra-individual structures.
Step 3 developed the theoretical framework for the
empirical analysis of the structural conditions of
action (step 4), applying psychological models. The
research design comprised a questionnaire study
followed by an in-depth diary study. Using a diary
study helped to avoid the well-known gap between
proclaimed actions and actually performed actions. In
Step 5 the restrictions against ecological food purchases
were identified and the strategies for overcoming
those restrictions were developed.

2.1 A FIRST LOOP: IDENTIFYING OPTIONS
AND RESTRICTIONS OF ECOLOGICAL FOOD
PURCHASES
The material, social, and intra-individual structures of
food shopping were reconstructed in three modules
that were used for both the questionnaire and the
diary study. First, an approximation of ecological
food purchases was developed in co-operation with
the LCA specialist (Jungbluth & Frischknecht 2001).
The result was a ranked list of selected food items,
rating regional, seasonal, fresh, unpackaged food with
high grades and items imported by plane, deep frozen
and heavily packaged food with low grades of environmental
friendliness (Step 1). This list was used for
analyzing the material structures of the studied food
purchases. Second, the “objective” extra-individual
structures were covered by the socio-demographical
data and the used purchase channels (supermarkets,
whole-food markets, small corner-shops, farm outlets,
etc.). The purchase channels were used as an
indicator for a more or less environmentally friendly
product range being available to the customers using
Table 2: Intra-individual aspects that influence the decision on ecological food purchases
Willingness
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 325
those channels (Step 2). The intra-individual aspects
were systemized according to the ipsative theory of
action (Tanner 1999, Tanner 1998, Frey & Foppa
1986). The ipsative theory of action addresses actions
from the perspective of the acting individual. It postulates
three types of restrictions. Objective restrictions
prevent an individual from doing something
even if he or she is motivated to act (e.g. missing
financial means). Ipsative restrictions prevent certain
options of actions from being activated in the mind
(e.g. missing incentives prevent a certain option to
come to one’s mind). Subjective restrictions influence
the individual valuation and thus preference of an
option (e.g. missing values or negative attitudes towards
an option).
The findings were systemized into four categories of
influence factors to individual action: willingness,
duty / norm, knowledge, and ability (Step 3). The
items of influence factors were developed in cooperation
with the LCA specialist.
Environmental protection Importance of ecological aspects for shopping decisions
Fair Trade Importance of buying fair trade products
Locally produced food Importance of supporting local farming and production
Health Importance of healthy food
Taste Importance of tasty food
Genetic engineering Importance of genetically unmodified food products
Duty / Norm
Ecologically relevant norms Perceived duty to contribute to environmental protection
Knowledge
Actionable knowledge Knowledge about where and how to buy ecological food
Knowledge about facts Knowledge about energy consumption
Confidence in eco-labels Estimated credibility of eco-labels
Ability
Time Perceived lack of time
Costs Perceived lack of money
The first results of the empirical analysis (Step 4)
showed the most important supporting factors as well
as restrictions for ecological food purchases. A posi-
tive attitude towards the environment supports ecological
food purchases to the strongest degree. Furthermore
the use of supermarkets can be interpreted

326
as the strongest restriction. This is due to the fact that
the product range being available in a supermarket
still mainly consists of less environmentally friendly
products, even if the percentage of ecological products
in the product range is rising. The preference of
ecological food is mainly supported by aspects of
willingness, whereas aspects of knowledge and ability
are less important. Another particularly interesting
point is a strongly negative correlation of cost sensitivity
and the positive attitude towards the environ-
Figure 2: Influence factors on ecological food purchases
Willingness:
Environmental protection
Willingness:
Support of fair trade
Willingness:
Support of locally
produced food
Knowledge:
Where and how to make
ecological food purchases
Perceived Ability:
Lack of time
Objective Ability:
Use of supermarkets
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
β = .45
β = .24
β = .16
β = .12
β = -.16
β = -.33
Those first results already delivered some hints for
strategies in order to overcome restrictions against
ecological food purchases (Step 5). Complementing
the protection of the environment with reasons like
the support of local production or fair trade could be
used as additional arguments for ecological food
purchases. Creating organic convenience products –
within an ecological sensible range – could help to
convince people with little time to buy more environmentally
friendly food.
ment. This hints to a competing influence where
either a cost sensitive person ignores ecological factors
or an environmentally sensitive person is ready
to neglect cost aspects. Surprisingly, cost sensitivity as
a single intra-individual factor could not be found
among the primary influence factors of ecological
food purchases. This was confirmed by various cross
checks. (See the following figure.)
Ecological
food purchases
2.2 RETAKING STEPS 3 AND 4 IN ORDER TO
IMPROVE THE RESULTS OF STEP 5:
REFINING THE STRATEGIES BY APPLYING A
CONSUMER TYPOLOGY AND ANALYZING
THE ACTUAL ECOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF
THEIR PURCHASE PATTERNS
The findings of various values in correlation with
ecological food purchases led to the idea of different
consumer types. A typology was developed for better
understanding the different consumers’ patterns of
thinking and acting from which different strategies
for supporting the option of ecological food purchases
could be derived accordingly.
Six types were constructed: Type I – the timesensitive
anti-ecologist, Type II – the animal rightssensitive
supermarket customer, Type III – the label-

sensitive supermarket customer, Type IV – the regiofan,
Type V – the ecological cherry picker, and Type
VI – the model ecologist. An overview of the differ-
Table 3: Expressions of the influence factors for the six consumer types
Environmental
protection
Support of
fair trade
Support of
locally
produced
food
Actionable
knowledge
about ecological
food
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 327
ent expressions of the influence factors for the six
types is given in the following table.
Type I Type II Type III Type IV Type V Type VI
Unimportant Unimportant Important Unimportant Important Important
Unimportant Unimportant Important Unimportant Important Important
Unimportant Important Important Important Important Important
Low Low Middle Middle High High
Saving time Necessary Unnecessary Necessary Unnecessary Unnecessary Unnecessary
Use of
channel
Ecological
food purchases
Mainly Supermarkets
Supermarkets
and
small specialized
shops
Mainly supermarkets
Supermarkets
and
specialized
shops
Small corner
shops,
whole-food
shops, farm
outlets
Small corner
shops,
wholefood
shops,
farm outlets
Low Low Middle Middle High High
To that stage of the research, the ecological performance
of the six types had been mapped against a
rough approximation of the ecological effects of
modeled consumption patterns. The next step of
research tested the actual ecological effects by means
of a diary study that was designed in co-operation of
the psychologists and the LCA specialist. The participants
had to protocol their food purchases in a standardized
diary. The information gathered comprised
the number, weight, price, origin, packing material,
conservation method, and production type of the
purchased meat and vegetable products. The study
was limited to meat and vegetable products in order
to limit the amount of LCA data to be processed
(Jungbluth & Tietje 2002). The data was linked to
results from the LCA in order to check the environmental
effects caused by the types of products actually
bought.

328
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Figure 3: Average environmental effect of purchase of vegetables (left-hand scale) and meat products (right-hand scale) by the six consumer
types (source: Jungbluth 2000)
0.009
Eco-indicator 95+ 10
0.030
-9
Points per Purchase
0.008
0.007
0.025
0.006
0.005
0.004
Type I Type II
Type III Type IV
Type V Type VI
0.020
0.015
0.003
0.010
0.002
0.001
-
2.3 STEP 5: USING THE INSIGHTS ON
RESTRICTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF
STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME THEM
The analysis revealed that the model ecologists indeed
caused less environmental effects by their food purchases
than types 1 to 4, although the difference was
very small. In addition, the model ecologists (Type
VI) turned out to cause a higher ecological effect
because of higher meat consumption than the ecological
cherry picker (Type V). In regard to meat
consumption, Type VI therefore was found to be
rather a “would-be model-ecologist”.
Other selected results were:
• The results of the six types in rising order
(Type I to VI) were better for those product
characteristics which can be judged as obviously
relevant for the ecological effect and
which are easily observed. Examples are the
purchase of organic vegetables and regional
products as well as heavily packaged products.
• Even the more environmentally sensitive
types failed to evaluate more complex contexts
correctly (according to the results from
the LCA). They seemed to have difficulties
in taking all relevant influence factors into
account. This could serve as one explanation
for the higher consumption of
meat by Type VI, although this meat originated
mainly from organic production. The
persons belonging to Type VI probably
rated the origin from an environmentally
relatively friendly production method higher
than the damaging effect of meat production
in comparison to the cultivation of
Vegetables Meat Products
vegetables.
0.005
0.000
• Probably the complexity problem was supported
by the fact that approximately 39%
of all product purchases are performed routinely,
without actively assessing the possible
influence factors and consequences (Kroeber-Riel
1992).
The findings from the diary study allowed to further
refine the strategies for overcoming restrictions
against more ecological food purchases.
• Tackling comparatively high amounts of
meat consumption could be done by taking
not only ecological, but also health aspects
into account, as e.g. the model ecologists
showed a high interest in this topic.
• As the change of old habits proves to fail
because most consumers do not keep all aspects
of ecological food purchases actively
in their minds, measures should be considered
that provide a signaling effect in the
shops.
• Such signaling effects could be provided by
more comprehensive labels, which not only
cover the cultivation method (organic labels)
but also the packaging or the transportation
aspect. It is clear though, that such a
label would be difficult to put into practice,
because many stakeholders would have to
co-operate. Another, more visionary idea
would be a portable mini-computer that
could do a sort of instant LCA of the chosen
products. Such approaches are already
partially realized in modular internet-tests of
individual consumption patterns.
• Types I to III are probably more difficult to

motivate towards more ecological food purchases.
Type I, the time sensitive antiecologist
might be pliable to the perspectives
of superior taste, although first the
prejudice of ecological food always being
prepared in healthy thus not tasty ways
might have to be overcome. Another approach
can be the provision of ecological
convenience food. Reducing non-ecological
options by means of changing the available
product range will probably be the most effective
way of changing this type’s consumption
patterns.
3. Example 2: The introduction of organic
products to the Swiss catering industry
The second example shows how the heuristic was
applied to an exploratory qualitative research design.
The heuristic in this case was used to analyze two
case studies (Maier 2002). One case studied the introduction
of organic products to a food processing
company that produced convenience products for
restaurants. The second case studied the introduction
of organic meals to the largest Swiss catering company.
The studies used in-depth qualitative interviews
(Eisenhardt 1989). The research questions were first,
which restricting and supporting factors can be found
regarding the option of introducing organic products
to the Swiss catering industry, and second, which
strategies the involved actors can apply in order to
overcome the restrictions.
Because of the explorative research design, the five
steps of the heuristic were not taken separately. Also,
several loops of analysis followed after another. A
first more deductive approach towards the field of
action combined Steps 1, 2, 3 and 4. The option
“organic products in restaurants” was critically reviewed
regarding it’s ecological consequences, the
field of action and the participating actors were reconstructed,
and finally the structural conditions of
action were analyzed regarding the factors that influenced
the restaurant guests in their demand patterns.
All three parts of the analysis were performed in
order to develop a theory based independent position
from which the interviews could be reflected. Then,
Steps 3 and 4 were combined because in the explorative
case studies the conceptual base (Step 3) was
developed according to the restricting or supporting
influence factors of action (Step 4). In the presentation
of the results, Steps 4 (defining the restricting
and supporting factors of action) and 5 (reflexive
identification of strategies for overcoming the restrictions)
were combined. This was also due to the ex-
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 329
plorative design because the strategies were derived
directly from the restrictions found. The focus of this
research was on Step 5 and on developing transformation
knowledge.
3.1 A FIRST DEDUCTIVE LOOP THROUGH STEPS
1, 3 AND 4: THE OPTION IN QUESTION, THE
FIELD OF ACTION AND FIRST INSIGHTS INTO
THE CONDITIONS OF ACTION
A rough LCA of vegetable and meat products was
used to check the ecological contribution of introducing
organic products to restaurants (Step 1). It was
assumed that organic convenience products would
replace convenience products from conventional
farming. The results showed that the replacement of
conventional by organic products indeed has a positive
effect, but only to a minor degree. A far more
effective measure would be to replace meat dishes
with vegetarian ones and to replace fresh products
imported by plane with products from local or regional
origin (Jungbluth 2000, Jungbluth &
Frischknecht 2001). Those findings concern the eating
habits of the restaurant guests. This drew attention
to the question, how restaurants can attract their
guests to the ecological offers and how the situation
of consumption stimulates the guests’ choices. Another
deductive analysis based on consumer theory
therefore dealt with the restrictions that could be
derived from the specific situation in the restaurant
(Step 3).
One general factor was identified to be relevant for
the choice of organic meals. Already raw products do
hardly ever reveal their origin from organic or conventional
production just by their outward appearance.
The organic quality is a “confidence quality”,
one has to trust in the origin, a circumstance that
usually is responded to by attaching a label to the
product in order to signal its’ special quality. The
special quality can be traced even less in processed
food or meals. Here, the quality of the ingredients is
hidden behind the recipe – the smell and taste – of
the dish that is served. So, most people don’t choose
their meal from the menu list according to the raw
materials’ quality, but according to their appetite for a
certain dish. A circumstance that limits the chances of
promoting organic meals with reference to the raw
material’s production method.
According to the companies that were studied, the
field of action could be limited to the situation of
food consumption during lunch breaks. For this
specific situation the following factors could be found
to influence the guests choice.
The meal during lunch breaks is a classical low involvement
situation (Kroeber-Riel 1992, 89). There is

330
a strong routine, many people visit a staff restaurant
every day. The guests will most probably be dominated
by the wish to relax and satisfy their need of
food, they are tired and hungry. In this setting, they
are most likely not very interested in the product
quality or even in written information about it. All
these factors will make communication measures
addressing the guests’ intellect quite likely to fail.
In addition, the expenses for the every day lunch are
assigned a fixed monthly budget, the guests will not
expect culinary top performance, but simply a decent,
tasty meal for a reasonable price. The lunch budget is
among the first positions to be most likely cut during
recession times. Another factor adds to the rather
high price sensitivity: many companies subsidize their
staff restaurants. Thus price increases on low prices
are perceived strongly, because there is a large relative
difference, even though the absolute rise may be
rather small. (E.g. a rise from five to six francs means
a difference of 20% although the difference is only
one franc, or 20 francs per month.) Therefore, any
price rises due to higher prices for the organic ingredients
of the meal will draw strong attention and may
even be refused. The fact that the organic quality
cannot be perceived directly still increases the problem.
Another important aspect was assumed to be the
different types of people that consume food in restaurants
because it would help with the customer
segmentation and the choice of distribution channels.
Unfortunately, no typology could be found that tackles
the question of customer typology specifically for
restaurant consumption. Therefore, a typology of
general food preferences was chosen (Empacher &
Götz 1999). The customer typology developed by
Wölfing Kast et al. (see previous chapter) could not
be used, because it was too specifically focussed on
the shopping behaviour and the restrictions that the
people met in the shops.
The typology consisted of six different types of consumers
that led to three different strategies of promoting
the choice of organic meals in restaurants:
Type 1 was already convinced of ecological food, this
type mainly needed information on the organic meal
offer. Types 2, 3, and 4 had different orientations
towards a specific food style (functional understanding
of healthy food, indulgence in good food, preference
of traditional meals). These types therefore were
supposed to choose the organic meals if their preference
of food style was met. Types 5 and 6 had a quite
low interest in food altogether, type 5 saw the need
for food as a nuisance and type 6 was very price sensitive.
For types 5 and 6 the most probably successful
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
strategy – if any at all – could be considered to replace
single ingredients that would result only in
minor or no price increases. An important question
that could not be answered because the study was not
performed specifically for the lunch break situation,
was whether this situation with its’ strong tendency
towards price sensitivity would dominate over the
preferences found for types 1 to 4.
3.2 STEP 3 AND 4: BUILDING THE CONCEPTUAL
BASIS FROM THE INSIGHTS DERIVED FROM
THE INTERVIEWS AND IDENTIFYING
RESTRICTING AND SUPPORTING FACTORS IN
THE FIELD OF ACTION
As the research was strongly explorative, it took
several iterative loops to put the heuristic into concrete
terms. As a first grid, the value chain inside the
companies was used to structure the findings from
the interviews into the supporting and restricting
factors on the strategic and the operational level.
3.2.1 ELABORATING THE HEURISTIC IN TERMS OF
THE MARKETING CONCEPT
Then the heuristic was refined for marketing, as one
part of the decisive restricting and supporting factors
was found there. Regarding strategic marketing three
aspects must be taken into account: Positioning,
timing, and customer segmentation.
The strategic fit between the general positioning of
the company and the organic products must be secured.
A company that pursues price leadership will
probably have difficulties to introduce organic products,
as they usually are more expensive in purchase
and sometimes also in processing than conventional
products. They thus can be aligned much easier with
quality leadership. The way that the organic products
are positioned also has to fit with the general setting
and situation of consumption in the restaurant. Some
culinary directions might fit easier with organic products
than others, although it is a most common but
unnecessary mistake to think that organic products
always have to be prepared according to whole-food
recipes. As already pointed out, the preparation of the
meals has to attract the guests’ appetite and the lunch
break situation is much more difficult for organic
meals than leisure time visits of a restaurant.
The question of timing is similar to other innovations,
followers can profit from the early movers’
experiences and market development measures. Late
followers even have their customers’ expectations for
guidance, but they have to fight for their market share
more than the early birds.
Studying the question of customer segmentation
revealed an interesting point. As the end consumers’

acceptance of the organic meals builds a pull effect
over the whole product chain, the restaurants had to
do a one layer segmentation - of their guests – and
the food processing company even had to do a double
layer segmentation – of the restaurants and their
guests. This was due to the fact that there was almost
no experience with organic convenience products so
far, so the food processing company had to think
about which restaurants might have guests that could
be interested in organic food in addition to the question,
which restaurants could be suited to use organic
convenience products.
Operational marketing mainly is concerned with
designing the marketing mix. First of all, the marketing
mix must be designed as a system of interdependent
variables, the four elements: product, price, place,
and communication must be adopted to each others,
else the customers might get irritated by elements,
that don’t fit together (Becker 1998).
The distribution channel (place) must be chosen
depending on the situation of consumption and the
main customer segments using this channel. As
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 331
Figure 4: A model marketing mix for organic meals in restaurants
shown, the lunch break situation that prevailed in the
case study is one of the more difficult situations for
organic products.
Communication tries to set a frame of thoughts
(Bateson 1994, 249ff.) in the situation of con-
sumption, that influences the way that guests interpret
and what they expect of the whole “restaurant
experience”. As was shown for the lunch break situation,
the senses should be addressed more than the
intellect. In other situations of consumption, the
intellect can be addressed too, e.g. when the chef de
service announces the day’s specials and takes a little
detour on explaining the special quality of organic
products.
The product design must be adopted to the guests’
preferred dishes, as the organic quality could be
shown to be only of secondary importance. The meal
also must be adopted to the whole consumption
situation or “restaurant experience”.
The pricing depends on all the above factors, people’s
readiness to pay not only depends on their budget but
also on the consumption situation (as seen for the

332
lunch break) and on the service and products delivered.
In addition, the price structure of the whole
menu list must be coherent with the guests feeling of
fair pricing and an appropriate order of prices. A rich
dish of assorted vegetables will be estimated to cost
less than a dish with meat, even when the vegetables
are all from organic production and the meat comes
from conventional farming because most people feel
that meat is more valuable than vegetables. The following
figures shows a model marketing mix for
organic meals in restaurants.
3.2.2 Elaborating the heuristic in terms of
strategy development
As already pointed out, the interviews draw the attention
to the process of strategy development. A systemic-constructivist
approach was chosen to develop
a grid for a systematic order of the identified influence
factors (See Rüegg-Stürm 2001, Schreyögg &
Noss 2000, Schreyögg 1998, and Maier 2002 for the
complete conceptual framework).
The process of strategy development could be understood
as multiple processes of interpretation, sensemaking,
and political negotiations among different
communities of practice in the studied companies.
Two general aspects were identified to be needed for
developing a good strategy: willingness and capabilities.
Willingness encompasses the following factors:
• signals and expectations of top management
• incentives for specific contributions of the
communities of practice throughout the
company
• personal interests and interests of the communities
of practice
• individual willingness to learn and change
• individual experiences
The following capabilities were important:
• functioning communication throughout the
company, to enable feedback loops for improving
the strategy
• knowledge on the external context and actors
along the product chain, especially the
customers’ needs and demands
• resources at hand
• instruments of evaluation at hand
• individual capabilities and know-how
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
3.3 STEPS 4 AND 5: RESULTS – ELABORATING ON
THE RESTRICTIONS AND DEVELOPING THE
STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME THEM
ACCORDINGLY
The results are presented in two parts. The first part
presents the restrictions and strategies along the
company value chain, both for the strategic and the
operational level: Product development, purchase,
production, and marketing. The second part shows
the restrictions and strategies for the strategy development
process.
3.3.1 Restrictions along the value chain
The product development was found to differ very
much according to a company’s product and service
range. In the cases studied, the choice of the organic
label touches upon the questions of positioning and
customer segmentation. A straight forward positioning
as an ecological leader suggest the choice of a very
strict, usually private label, a defensive positioning
suggests a rather permissive label with less strict rules.
This choice might result in an increase of costs for
ingredients or more labour-intense processing methods.
In general a trade-off exists between securing
quality and economic efficiency. Therefore a
positioning with cost leadership, but also a strong
price sensitivity of the consumers, as well as a
labelling organization calling for expensive
ingredients will restrict the introduction of organic
products. On the operative level, the introduction of organic
products goes along with developing recipes and
production methods that are in line with the rules of
the labelling organization. The collaborators have to
acquire new knowledge and the old, i.e. conventional,
quality standards might collide with the standards for
organic products, e.g. when ingredients that are used
for stabilizing product characteristics are prohibited
by the organic label. The collaborators then need to
revise their quality criteria. The stronger the quality
orientation in the “old” sense, the more difficult this
process will be.
The most important restriction on the level of strategic
purchase is the structural weakness of the young
market for organic ingredients. For conventional
products, acquiring new suppliers usually is no problem
and customers have bargaining power because
suppliers can easily be replaced. But suppliers who are
able to provide larger quantities of organic ingredients
are rare, their bargaining power rises accordingly.
Also, horizontal cooperation with other companies
on the same level of the product chain becomes
important because a single company often cannot
generate sufficient demand in order for a supplier e.g.
to take up the production of a specific organic ingre-

dient. Usually, “conventional” companies are not very
used to co-operations and lack the necessary capabili-
ties, which restricts a cooperation process.
On the level of operational purchase it is mainly the
consequences of the structural weaknesses of the
organic supply market that have to be overcome. But
there are also stable differences to the market of
conventional ingredients, e.g. the differing availability
of organic products according to the seasons. Again,
the collaborators have to acquire knowledge about
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 333
the different conditions, which might e.g. result in a
different working routine.
Regarding production, only restrictions on the operational
level could be found, which were mainly results
of the prohibition of certain conventional ingredients
or production methods. The production site and
store rooms once had to be organized in a way to
prevent the mix-up of conventional and organic
ingredients by mistake. Furthermore, the labelling
organizations all follow a strict control of the material

334
flows in order to trace the correct handling of the
organic ingredients and to prevent the use of conventional
material on purpose. The introduction of the
changes regarding the set up of the production site,
store rooms, and production procedures need more
time and explanations, the more complex the production
process is.
In strategic marketing, positioning, timing and customer
segmentation must be defined for the organic
products. It must be checked whether the general
positioning openly or hidden corresponds or is inconsistent
with organic products. In both studied
companies, the strategic fit of the positioning with
the organic products was tested only very superficially
and finally proved to be wrong. The wrong assumptions
shaped the expectations both of top management
and the companies’ staff and consequently also
the measures that were taken for the introduction.
One of the studied companies entered into a vicious
circle of wrong expectations, inappropriate measures,
and superstitious learning (Levitt & March 1990). The
timing was equal for both companies. Their pioneer
status resulted in heavy costs for market development
which both had severely underestimated. They also
both had difficulties to segment their customers
appropriately. Without prior experiences it was almost
impossible to generate appropriate expectations
on the customer behaviour, expectations that would
have helped to decide on marketing measures. The
result was a straining trial-and-error-process.
Regarding the operational marketing the most important
restriction was the failure of both companies to
develop a coherent marketing mix that was properly
adopted to the strategic direction of the company. In
the interviews all collaborators stressed the guests’
price sensitivity as the only reason why the organic
meals did not succeed. They failed to understand the
nexus of factors that influenced the price sensitivity
and to discover the other factors that influenced the
guests’ choice of a meal. Another danger is to underestimate
the marketing expenses that are needed to
promote organic meals because the value of the organic
quality as criterion of differentiation is overestimated.
The following figure shows all restrictions on
the strategic and operational level along the value
chain.
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
3.3.2 Restrictions in the strategy development process
Three restrictions could be identified in the context
of willingness. First, collaborators developed misleading
expectations towards the organic products. In one
company, from simple collaborators to top management,
the expectation prevailed that the products
would fit not at all with the general strategic positioning
of the company. Those pessimistic expectations
led to inadequate measures, an insufficient marketing
budget, and finally no one was surprised that the
products failed. The other company’s top management
was convinced that organic products would fit
perfectly with the general positioning. This conviction
made it very hard for the operative staff to get their
messages through regarding problems in production
as well as hints on strategic marketing misfits. Also, in
both companies no specific incentives were set for
key people to support the organic products because
conflicting goals had been ignored in the planning
phase. The third aspect could be described as competency
trap (Levitt & March 1990). The collaborators
thought that they knew their business well and would
not need to learn about the new internal and external
conditions.
Regarding the capabilities also three restrictions could
be found. First, almost everybody in both companies
underestimated the need for communication
throughout the company. It was not understood that
the new experiences made in the different communities
of practice needed to be discussed and compared
in order to derive best practices which then could be
applied and developed further. In addition the actors
ignored their dependency from the other actors on
preceding and following levels of the product chain.
Both the importance on cooperating with their suppliers
and the importance of understanding the needs
and preferences of their customers were realized very
late in the process. And finally, both companies
lacked the appropriate instruments for evaluating the
progress of the organic products. The one company
had no financial indicators to tell them that their
enthusiasm for the organic products was not reflected
in their sales figures, and the other company had no
evaluation methods to tell them that their marketing
measures were inappropriate regarding the problems
that the marketing situation posed. The next table
gives an overview of the restrictions in the strategy
development process.

Table 4: Restrictions in the strategy development process
Willingness Capabilities
• Inappropriate expectations towards organic products
• Missing incentives for specific contributions of the
key actors
• Underestimated need for learning the new internal
and external conditions
4. Conclusions: The heuristic provides a
platform for reflection beyond the direct insight
of the actors involved
The heuristic “Options & Restrictions” is very close
to a pragmatic everyday approach to problem solving.
A goal is set, the restrictions that hinder actors to
reach that goal are identified and strategies are developed
in order to overcome the restrictions and reach
the goal. The heuristic’s specific contribution consists
in its’ systematic and theory based analysis of empirical
problems. The systematic approach enables researchers
to differentiate and reach out beyond the
actors’ self interpretations and thus provide a critical
constructive contribution to a sustainable development,
as the two research examples show.
The LCA of the six consumer types in the first example
revealed a more comprehensive perspective on
the actual ecological consequences of their consumption
patterns. It thereby helped to develop strategies
that could be fine tuned to the specific characteristics
of those consumer types. In the second research
example the deductive analysis of the consumption
situation in the staff restaurants helped to discover
influence factors on the guests’ choice that the actors
had failed to see. They also completely ignored the
restrictions that were caused by their own approach
towards the strategy development process – restrictions
that proved to have rather strong effects on the
failure of the organic products. In both research
examples using the approach of the heuristic helped
to reveal strategies that otherwise would have remained
hidden. Those findings are mainly due to the
systematic procedure of the research and the development
of a theory based perspective from which
the actors’ experiences can be reflected.
Our use of the heuristic was based on disciplinary
competencies. A comprehensive understanding was
reached by modifying and adopting different disciplines
along one specific empirical problem that was
tackled under a comprehensive research question.
This comprehensive understanding had to be worked
out in the co-operation between the disciplines – be it
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 335
• Underestimated need for communication in order
to derive best practices from experience
• Underestimated dependency on actors on preceding
and following levels of product chain
• Lack of appropriate instruments for evaluation
by one researcher due to his or her competency in
several disciplines, be it in a multidisciplinary team in
transdisciplinary cooperation. Transdisciplinary research
competency as we see it, is a specific competency
that disciplinary researchers acquire in addition
to their disciplinary competence.
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Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference

In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 337-345.
By-passing Barriers in Sustainable Knowledge Production
J. Edelenbos, M.W. van Buuren and G.R. Teisman *
1. Introduction
IN SEARCH OF QUALITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainable development is a frequently discussed
concept (Palmer et al 1997). It is seen as one of the
important qualities pursued by society. The quest for
quality appears to have become an important catchword
in the developing network society. Such a quest
will not be easy. There appears to be a broad consensus
on the need for quality. We could say that, in a
sense, the need for sustainability has been universally
defined. This definition has to do with survival and
with the ability to develop a society without creating a
scarcity of its basic elements and building materials.
At the same time, however, there seems to be general
confusion on the question of what quality is and how
it can be achieved. The more specific definitions of
sustainable development vary considerably. In practice
this means that sustainability may be achieved in
multiple ways, in the sense that there is not one single
agreed goal that should be reached. This important
observation will serve as a basis for this article. How
sustainability is defined, and how a ‘better’ situation is
to be achieved, is in the eye of the beholder. The
specific meaning of the concept ‘sustainable development’
is determined by different standards, beliefs,
values and interests, but also by different perceptions
of what our circumstances are and what they are
likely to be in the near future.
It is not only the differences in ‘point of view’ in the
perspectives of those involved, but also a fundamental
uncertainty about data and the policy problems
associated with this that play an important role here.
The increasing complexity and interdependency of
policy problems, certainly in the field of ecology,
make it difficult to obtain acceptable knowledge.
Uncertainty can no longer be reduced, but should be
accepted as a fundamental feature of our knowledge
(Ravetz 1999; Haag and Kaupenjohann 2001; Van
Asselt 1999). It seems that we have to require knowl-
* Erasmus University Rotterdam, Centre for Public Management,
The Netherlands. Contact:: edelenbos@fsw.eur.nl.
edge production activities that are able to handle the
variety in specific definitions used by the various
actors involved in order to develop society in such a
way that it becomes (much) more sustainable (Teisman
2001). Knowledge production is not in the first
place an implementation project based on clear goals
and planning schemes. Rather, it might be conceptualised
as a quest for a joint vision on and a passable
path towards sustainability. Such management should
incorporate the idea that the organisations involved in
the transaction process toward sustainability will have
and will maintain different definitions of the most
desirable results and the most suitable methods to
achieve ‘their’ kind of sustainability (Teisman, 2001).
MAIN ISSUE
In this article we argue that the problem of 'why there
is not yet a sustainable society' is not that there is too
little knowledge on sustainability for accomplishing
that. The problem lies mainly in the fact that nowadays
knowledge is produced in the wrong way. We
will try to explain why scientific knowledge fails to
have an impact on political thought and on the ideas
held by social institutions about a sustainable society.
In this article we state that we need new methods of
knowledge production that can cope with the multiplicity
of views on what sustainability stands for, and
can bridge the huge gap between scientific theory and
practice. We argue that traditional knowledge production
systems or processes can no longer meet the new
conditions of a complex network society. In addition
we will stress that it should be recognised that uncertainty
is an essential characteristic of knowledge. Such
uncertainty is to be preferred over fake certainty.
OUTLINE
In paragraph 2, we briefly discuss the changed social
conditions within which knowledge has to be given
shape nowadays. On the basis of these insights we
proceed in to give recommendations on process
management strategies in paragraph 3, i.e. how to
achieve the right approach to knowledge production,
taking the changed social circumstances into account.
Finally, in paragraph 4 we give a brief review of our
article and outline boundary conditions for a successful
application of our recommendations.

338
2. Problems in knowledge production
In this paragraph we will discuss some of the problems
in knowledge production. These problems are
strongly related to the traditional method of knowledge
production within a changed social context for
knowledge production.
FROM A WELL-ORDERED TO AN UNKNOWABLE
SOCIETY
During the nineteenth and much of the twentieth
century, Dutch society was still fairly well-ordered
and intelligible. Government decrees were not, or
hardly ever, doubted or contested. There was general
faith in the idea that society was ‘practicable’, capable
of being planned. This caused the government to
develop from a passive ‘night watchman’ who
guarded peace and security into a 'social engineer'
who had the ambition to educate and to take care of
society. Knowledge is indispensable to correctly fulfil
this role of social engineer. Thus we see that during
this period many organisations and institutions were
set up and introduced in order to make society more
transparent and more conveniently organised. ‘To
measure is to know' and 'knowledge is power'; these
expressions convey the dominant mentality of this
era, which is the very raison d’être of institutions such
as the National Spatial Planning Agency [‘Rijksplanologische
dienst’] and the Central Planning Office [‘Centraal
Planbureau’].
During the seventies, the ‘practicability concept’ and
the general belief in progress began to lose their potency.
The adage 'knowledge equals power' lost its
validity, and seemed to be replaced by another adage,
'knowledge is soft’. Data proved to contain multiple
contents, depending on the interpretative and conceptual
framework in which they were placed. This
made developments in society less easy to comprehend
and totally impossible to predict. The development
of policies ‘from the top’ was no longer an
obvious matter. The central authorities were no
longer the sole owners of knowledge; they no longer
guided knowledge, but were mostly guided by knowledge
themselves. In addition, the acquired knowledge
had only a limited shelf life. Because data were public,
they caused citizens and (social) organisations to
change their behaviour. It became more and more
difficult for the government to survey and comprehend
society.
In other words: society is developing more and more
in the direction of a network society (Castells 1997).
One of the features of such a society is that on the
one hand an enormous quantity of reports and data is
produced, while on the other hand unforeseen and
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
unexpected developments continue to occur. This has
also been called the ‘paradox of the unknowable
society’ (Van Gunsteren and Ruyven 1995).
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN A POSTNORMAL
PERSPECTIVE
Roughly speaking, knowledge production may be
placed in two theoretical perspectives: the neopositivist
and the postnormal perspective (Funtowicz et al
1999; In 't Veld and Verheij 2000). The neopositivist
perspective is dominated by the image of the independent
researcher or advisor who supplies objective
knowledge to the policy-maker. The policy-maker
asks the scientist or professional expert to deliver this
knowledge, because it is assumed to be unbiased.
After all, knowledge production is not connected to
policy-making and is not controlled by the standards,
values and interests applied by policy-makers. When
taking decisions based on political motives, policymakers
can choose whether or not they wish to use
the knowledge which has been objectively supplied to
them.
The postnormal perspective, on the other hand, is
dominated by the idea that knowledge is socially
constructed. There is no such thing as objective
knowledge, because different interpretations of the
same data are possible (Rorty 1999; Weick 1995). The
truth does not exist; several different truths may exist
at the same time. In this perspective, the researcher
or scientist does not supply objective information,
but decides in mutual interaction with the principal,
the target groups and the interested parties which
truth is being shared and what has not yet been
agreed upon. In this way it is possible to arrive at fully
negotiated knowledge which is not free of bias, but
has been the subject of a social debate (In ‘t Veld and
Verheij 2000, 125). Thus, the emphasis shifts from
the quality of the product to the quality of the knowledge-acquisition
process.
Nowadays the second perspective is gaining in importance.
Knowledge is no longer objective and unbiased,
but charged with bias, uncertain and above all
ambiguous. Particularly the concept of 'ambiguity'
plays a major role in the postnormal perspective. We
may speak of ambiguous knowledge if it involves a
situation that can be approached and interpreted in
multiple ways, without there being any clear criterion
for distinguishing between valid and less valid interpretations.
In a situation of ambiguity, it is difficult to
determine what is ‘true’ knowledge and what is not.
Several interpretations exist simultaneously, each of
which gives a different meaning to the things we
perceive around us (Morgan, 1986; Weick, 1995).
Reality is not always one thing or the other, but can

sometimes be both at the same time.
KNOWLEDGE STRUGGLE AND REPORT WARS
The non-recognition of ambiguous knowledge can
lead to problems in policy processes. People think
that they are faced with uncertainty in knowledge,
which can be reduced by getting rid of the lack of
information. If uncertain knowledge is assumed while
actually ambiguous knowledge is at stake, ‘report
wars’, 'fragmented research' and/or 'knowledge races’
may be the result. After all, the aim is to reduce uncertainty
in decision-making by supplying more
knowledge within a certain perspective. This blocks
the way for other viewpoints, while it is typical of
ambiguous knowledge that several different perspectives
on the interpretation of this knowledge are
possible. Because knowledge is delivered from a
single individual perspective, actors who hold a different
view of the matter will find this perspective
meaningless and non-authoritative; the other parties
will then counter with knowledge delivered from their
own individual perspective. This is the genesis of
‘report wars’, in which actors fire from one trench
(perspective) at the other. In projects the use of
knowledge appears to be aimed mainly at convincing
the opposition and substantiating one’s own perspectives.
Actors spend most of their time deconstructing
each other’s research, trying to prove that suppositions
are contestable, a database inadequate, conclusions
may also be interpreted differently, et cetera. It
is easier to criticise knowledge than to construct it in
joint cooperation (In 't Veld and Verheij 2000, 115).
Fighting each other leads to an accumulation of reports
which often contain contradictory conclusions.
No attempt is made to search for knowledge that
transcends the individual perspective. This greatly
hampers the quest for well-negotiated and shared
knowledge.
THE EXPERT/SCIENTIST HAS BEEN KNOCKED OFF
HIS PEDESTAL
The changed social circumstances of knowledge
production are clearly reflected by the reduced status
of (scientific and expert-) knowledge. There are two
reasons why the scientific and professional expert has
lost his authority.
First, present-day citizens and social groups are less
and less inclined to automatically accept in advance
the research results and lines of argument supplied by
scientific authorities. Actually, this is not just the case
with scientific treatises, but with political-normative
arguments as well (Advisory Council on Government
Policy (WRR) 1998, 117). There are no longer any
‘big’ stories and all-encompassing truths; rather, these
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 339
have become dependent on the specific situation and
the perspectives used by the parties involved at that
point in time.
Nowadays it happens rather frequently that experts
on the subject, when carrying out parallel studies,
arrive at contradictory and conflicting conclusions. In
the American literature this is known as the ‘contradictory
expert problem’ (Susskind and Cruikshank
1987). Due to these contradictions, citizens and social
groups are no longer prepared to simply accept expert
knowledge without reservation. Moreover, interested
parties have come to the conclusion that expert
analyses and scientific studies cannot/do not do any
better than the lay knowledge possessed by ‘normal
citizens’. After all, expert knowledge has proved
unable to solve complex social problems (Woltjer
2000). Thus, in the eyes of the citizen the validity of
scientific knowledge is being visibly eroded.
In addition, the vocal, self-assured and well-read
citizen of today has obtained much more insight into
the nature of scientific knowledge (WRR 1998, 118).
Knowledge is no longer the sole province of society’s
elites, because nowadays nearly everyone has received
at least some form of (higher) education. Knowledge
has become ‘democratised’, it has become public
property. Furthermore, it has become easy for the
citizen to obtain information from various media
channels and to form his own picture. The increased
amount of knowledge present in society enables more
people to put the aura and superiority of scientific
knowledge in perspective by asking clever questions,
to criticise and debunk this knowledge.
Sharp questioning is able to expose the (sometimes)
fragile basis (assumptions and suppositions) of scientific
research in a (sometimes embarrassing) way.
Scientific knowledge has become fallible (Hoppe
1998, 12):
“Although we must begin any inquiry with prejudgments
and can never call everything into question at
once, nevertheless there is no belief or thesis, no matter
how fundamental, that is not open to further interpretation
and criticism” (Bernstein 1991, 327).
Secondly, the methods and techniques on the basis of
which the scientist delivers knowledge for policy
processes have come under increasing suspicion.
Social criticism is based on the fact that science focuses
too much on methods and techniques, and is
therefore too technocratic and not democratic
enough (Van Eeten and Ten Heuvelhof 1998). The
methods used by scientists are often unfathomable
for outsiders, and as such difficult to follow and to
understand. An understandable response from outsiders
is one of mistrust and suspicion: ‘Seeing is
believing’. The technocratic view of the acquisition of

340
knowledge has become obsolete, because the idea
that information and knowledge are constructed in
the course of social interaction processes has become
increasingly accepted.
Besides, distinguishing between the values of policymakers
and the facts of scientists appears to be less
easy than was thought to be the case in the post-war
decades (Wildavsky 1987). During the fifties and
sixties, the mainstream of policy science focused on a
strict separation of values and facts. The discussion
about values and goals to be pursued was seen as a
matter exclusively for policy-makers. Policy science
was supposed to deliver information ('truth') (for the
benefit of decision-makers) about the actual causeand-effect
relation between social phenomena (WRR
1998).
Although this relation between knowledge and policy
was subject to some criticism at the time (policy being
perceived as excessively ‘science-driven’), today we
are faced with the opposite problem: much of science
is seen as being ‘policy-driven’.
Nowadays, science and politics have moved closer
together. Because scientists sometimes tend to nestle
too close to the ‘warm place’ occupied by the decision-making
powers, scientific knowledge has lost
much of its authority. Scientific researchers are suddenly
given the opportunity to tell the truth through the
decision-making powers (Wildavsky 1987). The reverse
side of the coin is that scientists are forced to pay for
their increased influence on policy-making with the
corrosion of their autonomy and independence
(Hoppe 1998, 6). To enhance the usefulness of research,
all too often arguments tend to be based on the
perspective and the interests of the ‘client’ or principal.
Science has become politicised and entangled in the
policy process (Van Eeten and Ten Heuvelhof 1998,
161). It has become too closely linked with the decision-making
powers and sometimes even serves these
powers; it uses problem definitions, objectives and
alternatives set in advance (often by the principal),
and all too often fails to subject them to a critical
examination or to assess other problem definitions as
part of the research. In doing so, science basically
conceals a political-normative bias. This results in
‘advocatory’ studies and knowledge characterised by a
'd.j.-mentality': 'We take all requests'.
“In (…) traditional decision-making arenas, proponents
and opponents of a project might each hire technical
experts to provide analyses, forecasts, and impact assessments
to support or undermine a proposed project.
… They (…) must go to great expense to ‘buy’ technical
expertise so that they can participate effectively.
And, it seems, there are always experts available to provide
the answers that support each side’s point of view”
(Ehrmann and Stinson 1999, 376).
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
MARKET OF KNOWLEDGE SUPPLY AND DEMAND
On the basis of the above we may conclude that, due
to changed social conditions, scientists or other professional
‘knowledge producers’ are beginning to lose
their monopoly on the supplying of knowledge. Scientists
have been knocked off their pedestal and have
thereby lost their ‘a-priori authority’. At the same
time, research results are beginning to lose their ‘apriori
authority’ as well. These days, the authority of
research results needs to be earned over again every
time. In other words, a ‘knowledge and ideas market’
has emerged with many suppliers (and applicants),
who have to compete in trying to prove the significance
of their knowledge. On this ‘knowledge market’
knowledge is quickly supplied with counterknowledge.
In its professionalism, the counterknowledge
possessed by for instance conservationists
and environmental groups, social interest groups or
organised citizens is in no way inferior to the knowledge
possessed by administrators on the basis of
scientific support (WRR 1998, 119).
It is not just the supply of information, but also its
interpretation and evaluation that have become ‘demonopolised’.
Administration and decision-making
no longer means being right on the basis of appealing
to superior knowledge held by reputable research
institutes, but being put in the right on the basis of
persuasiveness, negotiating abilities and the approach
to discussions with policy consumers.
Roughly speaking, the knowledge market consists of
two types of knowledge: expert knowledge and lay
knowledge. Expert knowledge is based mainly on
training and professionalism. Lay knowledge is based
on experience, knowledge of the environment and of
the specific case in question. If only expert knowledge
is used in processes, we speak of a technocratic
approach to knowledge (Fisscher 1990). Such an
approach is characterised by a one-sided focus of
experts on the technical complexity of both problems
and solutions. Such a knowledge approach leads to
the conviction that:
• The problem can be precisely circumscribed
within one or several (technical) disciplines;
• The desirability of the activity can be shown by
means of standardised methods and procedures;
• The use of the available expertise is sufficient to
enable an efficient implementation of the solution;
• The participation of other interested parties is
unnecessary, because they do not have enough
technical expertise to be able to understand the
problem and the proposed solutions.

These characteristics of a technocratic approach lead
to knowledge production in which there is no room
for non-technicians (also called ‘laymen’). Some authors
emphasise that use should be made of both
expert- and lay knowledge in the production of
knowledge. In this approach, there is explicit recognition
among traditional decision-makers (politicians,
civil servants, experts) that others (NGOs, community
groups, lay people) can fruitfully contribute to
the identification and solution of problems. This
requires a more open approach to what constitutes
legitimate knowledge and expertise. Different claims
to understanding and knowing – such as lay knowledge
and scientific knowledge – need to be able to
coexist and inform each other. This will then lead to
the emergence of a so-called ‘social learning environment’
(World Bank Sourcebook on Participation
1996; Wenger 1998).
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN SEPARATE NETWORKS
Another factor which tends to restrict the use of
knowledge is that knowledge is often produced in
separate networks and arenas. A first separation is
that between knowledge institutes (such as consulting
firms and universities) and those who make use of
this knowledge (such as authorities and private parties).
This separation enables several forms of logic
and paradigms to exist side by side. And this in turn is
one of the main reasons why the knowledge supplied
by experts and scientists has so little impact on decision-making.
The research flow makes use of a rational
approach, which assumes that it is the aim of
decision-making to develop alternative actions, gauge
their impact, and then make a choice based on its
most favourable effect from the perspective of social
preferences/problems. The policy flow, on the other
hand, is often dominated by the role-playing paradigm
(March 1999), which states that it is not the
primary aim of decision-making to solve problems,
but rather that it is a means to help individuals and
organisations develop and strengthen their identity (in
terms of attention, status, position and means) in
relation to individuals and organisations in their environment.
In other words, decision-making is seen as a
situation or a series of consecutive situations in which
individuals and organisations are able to establish
their own visible identity through their actions.
So far, most scientific research has focused on the
question how policy processes can be rationalised. In
other words, the aim has been to teach policy-makers
a rational perspective. This has proved rather unsuccessful
so far. No interconnection between the logic
of the 'knowledge client' - the policy-maker - and the
logic of the 'knowledge provider' - researcher - has
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 341
been established. Each actor has his or her own logic
in order to value information and knowledge.
But even if the arenas of knowledge institutes and
knowledge users are interconnected, a second separation
may keep knowledge from being disseminated
and used. In this case, several constellations of
knowledge institutes and users exist side by side. The
consequence of this is that while knowledge is being
used within the arena because knowledge producers
and –consumers have developed a workable relationship
and logic, that same knowledge is not seen as
credible in a different constellation of knowledge
institutes and users; because the knowledge supplied
does not correspond to the paradigm and the institutional
context prevailing in this constellation, it is
contested and rejected. Therefore, to enable knowledge
to have an impact in other arenas and networks,
links should be established between different knowledge
production arenas.
FUNDAMENTAL INSECURITIES IN KNOWLEDGE
PRODUCTION
Apart from the problems involved in the development
of knowledge in the light of several different,
conflicting perspectives and interests, we also find
that there are a number of fundamental insecurities in
the knowledge acquisition process. Gallopín et al
(2001) mention three changes in current society
which necessitate a new view of knowledge development:
• Changes of an ontological nature;
• Changes of an epistemological nature;
• Changes in the method of decision-making.
Changes of an ontological nature can be perceived in
the increasing complexity and interdependency of the
world around us. Interventions cause a chain of response
that is impossible or almost impossible to
survey. Uncertainty is a basic feature of research,
because reality is impossible to depict. The timehonoured
strategy that was always followed in the
past to make phenomena more transparent (by reducing
the units perceived) has proved inadequate: the
failure to take all sorts of related phenomena, crossconnections,
etc., into account trivializes the explanatory
and predictive value of models (Haag and
Kaupenjohann 2001).
Changes of an epistemological nature refer to the way in
which we produce knowledge. More and more, the
participation of laymen and attention for other perspectives
is being seen as an indispensable part of
knowledge production (Lindblom and Cohen 1979).
Scientific knowledge is developed in interaction (or

342
should be developed in interaction) in order to
achieve an effective problem-solving process.
Also the method of decision-making has been subject to
changes. We have already discussed this fairly extensively
above. Briefly put: the traditional institutions of
state and market, as epicentres of decision-making,
have lost their importance. Decision-making has
become a social issue, and the mobilisation of knowledge
has increased tremendously: knowledge has
been demonopolised.
In this context, we may also speak of the development
of transdisciplinary knowledge. As it functions
at present, the knowledge infrastructure of the Netherlands
is insufficient to achieve integral social problem-solving.
While there is an existing knowledge
base in the Netherlands, this base is quite narrow and
(in the vast majority of cases) non-discipline transcendent.
Currently much attention is being given in
scientific research to developing toward a disciplinetranscendent,
or transdisciplinary, form of science
(Gibbons 1994), a development that was characterised
by Gibbons as a transition from ‘Mode 1
science’ to ‘Mode 2 science’.
MODE-1 SCIENCE MODE-2 SCIENCE
Academic context Application-oriented
Instrumental, strategic
rationality
Communicative rationality
Disciplinary Transdisciplinary
Homogenous Heterogeneous
Hierarchical and stable Heterarchical and variable
Quality control academic
Quality measured by a
broader set of criteria;
context-specific (problem-oriented)
The notion of knowledge development as a complex,
interactive process and no longer a linear one also fits
this picture. Producers of knowledge may be users at
the same time and vice versa. Here knowledge is a
process that is developed in a process of coproduction,
disseminated over and shared by a large
number of social actors, knowledge institutes, authorities,
enterprises, social organisations, intermediaries
and the general public. This means that actors
such as authorities and intermediary organisations are
not just users of knowledge; they are also producers
of knowledge.
At a later stage (Nowotny et al 2002) the notion of
‘Mode 2 science’ was supplemented with that of the
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
‘Mode 2 society’. The question how Mode 2 science
was able to develop was answered by the authors with
the statement that this was necessitated by the emergence
of the Mode 2 society. Science has become
increasingly contextualised; a necessary development
if it wishes to retain its relevance in a changing society.
Society is increasingly capable of confronting
scientists with questions and criticism. The book
advocates a contextualised form of scientific research:
interaction with interested parties is crucial to produce
the type of science that benefits society.
“The increasing emphasis on the contribution of science
to wealth creation (and social improvement), the
growing deference to so-called ‘user’ perspectives, the
great weight now attached to ethical and environmental
considerations, are all examples of the intensification of
what we call contextualization” (Nowotny et al 2002,
166).
The greater the contextualisation of knowledge, the
more ‘socially robust’ it will be. Involving third parties
(interested parties, experts, etc.) as much as possible
is not just inevitable, it is also desirable. It will
serve to increase both the quality and the quantity of
the knowledge being produced.
3. Reorganisation of knowledge production:
process management strategies
The previous paragraph leads us to conclude that
there are a number of persistent problems with which
knowledge production is faced. Due to changed social
circumstances, scientific knowledge (on sustainable
development, for instance) needs to be produced
in a different way to give it impact and meaning.
Because of the multiplicity of the concept ‘sustainable
development’, transition processes have to be organised
and managed in terms of ongoing interaction, in
which various forms of knowledge on what a sustainable
society should look like are effectively combined
(Teisman, 2001). Inter-organisational interaction
should enable stakeholders to find a temporary balance
between economic, social, spatial and ecological
goals. Such a balance will be of good quality if it is
satisfying to the actors afterwards as a result of interaction.
The road to a more sustainable society is an
open one, which pursues important changes towards
sustainability on the one hand, but also deals with a
variety of definitions regarding specific goals and the
effectiveness of the methods applied, and even involves
definitions of the situation on the other hand.
This will require a method of knowledge production
in which different stakeholders collaborate and compete
with one another on the question of what, exactly,
knowledge is. Such a joint fact-finding process
will be necessary in order to achieve a long-term

transition towards sustainable (i.e. high-quality in
multiple terms) development.
In this paragraph we argue that meaningful knowledge
can only be created on the basis of a process of
interactive knowledge construction and –production, in a ‘joint
fact-finding process’ (Susskind and Cruikshank 1987)
that … "extends the interest-based, cooperative efforts of
parties engaged in consensus building into the realm of information
gathering and scientific analysis. In joint fact-finding,
stakeholders with differing viewpoints and interests work
together to develop data and information, analyse facts and
forecasts, develop common assumptions and informed opinions,
and, finally, use the information they have developed to reach
decisions together" (Ehrmann and Stinson 1999, 376). In
a process of joint fact-finding, stakeholders, decisionmakers
and experts develop and implement a research
strategy and –approach in mutual interaction,
in order to answer questions on knowledge. Here
some authors have used the term interactive social science
(Caswill and Shove 2000). Below, we describe a number
of process management methods to give substance
to a process of joint fact-finding.
PROVIDING INSIGHT INTO THE MULTIPLE
EXPERIENCING OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The concept of sustainable development has been
interpreted and given meaning in different ways. A
first process management strategy involves mapping
out this multiplicity and positioning it with respect to
each other. The aim of this strategy is not to give
higher or lower marks to the various interpretations;
rather, the idea is to depict, throughout their whole
range, the meanings of sustainable development that
are commonly used and relevant to the project in
question, without reducing this in any way. We could
call this a ‘problem-structuring process’.
ORGANISATION OF A SEARCH FOR ACCEPTABLE
TRUTHS
Nowadays, faith in the creation of objective knowledge
is being steadily eroded; intersubjective knowledge
appears to be the most that can be achieved.
People are seeking a common ground on the basis of
which joint action becomes possible. One option is to
pursue 'negotiated knowledge'. This form of knowledge
is no longer seen as the ‘real’ facts, the ‘right’ interpretations
or the ‘real’ situation. It means verifying in mutual
consultation on which points agreement can be reached
and on which points this is not (yet) possible (‘agree to
disagree’), and then deciding together how an agreement
may perhaps be reached after all.
We can speak of negotiated knowledge if two conditions
are met: (1) it is accepted by the interested parties,
and (2) it passes the test of scientific character
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 343
(expertise) (Jasanoff 1990, 1995; De Bruijn et al 1998,
178). The parties involved will have to negotiate
about the question whether certain forms of knowledge
are authoritative. But at the same time the fact
remains that ‘negotiated knowledge’ is the result of
scientific insights. These two requirements entail that
knowledge from experts and that of so-called ‘laymen'
should be interwoven. Expert knowledge is not
automatically seen as a superior form of knowledge
which is self-evident. In order to obtain the status of
meaningful knowledge, it has to ‘compete’ with other
forms of knowledge such as the ‘practical knowledge’
or ‘experiential knowledge’ of interested parties. “An
expert is not a special kind of person, but each person is a
special kind of expert, especially with respect to his or her own
problems” (Mitroff 1983, 125).
Knowledge that has been accepted (and thereby
promoted to the status of shared knowledge) can be
recorded in a document, a so-called 'single negotiating
text’ (a concept originating from the negotiating
literature on thorny political issues, such as the Middle
East conflict). The ‘single negotiating text’ is
intended specifically to focus the discussion between
the stakeholders and to put down in writing fundamental
points on which agreement has been reached.
The text is then revised several times and eventually
produces an inventory of shared knowledge and facts.
LOOKING FOR ACCEPTABLE KNOWLEDGE ON THE
BASIS OF A JOINTLY AGREED RESEARCH DESIGN
To eliminate gaps in knowledge and knowledge disputes,
independent experts and various interested
actors (such as private parties, authorities and social
groups) draw up a research design in mutual consultation.
In mutual interaction they search for workable
methods in the quest for knowledge and the guiding
principles, assumptions and suppositions on which
these methods are based. Also the (fundamental,
temporal and geographical) system boundaries and
the scope of the study (e.g.: when will the study begin?,
when will it be concluded? Which effects will be
included in the study? On the basis of which criteria
will these effects be evaluated? Which subjects will be
part of the study, and which will not?) are ratified by
mutual agreement. Briefly put: the research design is
the outcome of a process of discussion and negotiation
between stakeholders and external experts rather
than – as in the neopositivist perspective – something
that has been given in advance.
In case the stakeholders are unable to decide which
methods should be used, they may decide to use
several (competing) methods and/or sensitivity analyses
to analyse to what extent the outcomes will vary
for the different assumptions on which the various

344
methods are based. They may also decide to integrate
various research models. And finally, they may decide
to set up a Committee of Wise Men composed of
independent experts from various disciplines, charged
with the task to settle persistent knowledge conflicts.
ORGANISATION OF A KNOWLEDGE MARKET
Another process management strategy is the
organisation of a knowledge market. Various forms
of knowledge are active on this market, such as:
expert knowledge, experience-based (experiential)
knowledge, knowledge of the surroundings, et cetera.
And on this market the various forms of knowledge
will start to flow, increasing the chance of their
becoming linked. This linking of knowledge should
take place in such a way that each form of knowledge
retains its own identity; the strength of the system lies
precisely in the value added that the different forms
of knowledge can supply to each other. Jasanoff
(1990) calls this 'boundary work' . If experts retain
their own identity, they have the opportunity to
supplement knowledge production with a scientific
and/or professional test. In this case the expert does
not just act as a purveyor of knowledge; rather, he has
become a ‘knowledge broker’ or ‘contact’ (Jasanoff,
1995).
ORGANISATION OF LINKS BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE
PRODUCTION AND POLICY-MAKING
An important aspect in the organisation of a process
of joint fact-finding is that of linking the knowledge
production process to the policy-making process. In
joint fact-finding, these two processes are not carried
out in isolation, but are instead interwoven. This
increases the chance that knowledge will lead to authoritative
and consolidated decision-making (Jasanoff
1990). There is more chance of this occurring in
policy processes where the boundaries between science
and policy-making have become more fluid and
the two are linked (De Bruijn et al 1998, 54). Such
linkage can be realised by, for instance, actively involving
formal decision-makers in addition to the
other stakeholders in the joint fact-finding process.
ORGANISATION OF LINKS BETWEEN DIFFERENT
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION ARENAS
As described above, the fact that, as we have found,
knowledge is generated in closed network constellations
of knowledge producers and –consumers, has
led to a knowledge conflict or ‘report wars’. Links will
have to be forged between the different networks and
acceptable agreements will have to be made on how
knowledge is to be jointly produced. Knowledge
produced in such a way has a certain level of authority,
all the more so because many of those involved
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
were able to express their opinions, which were taken
into account in the study.
VALIDATION OF KNOWLEDGE
The last strategy deals with the validation of knowledge.
The results of the knowledge-production process
can always be subjected to an ‘extended peer
review’ (Ravetz 1999) in which the results are tested
by interested parties, scientists, experts and decisionmakers
together. Needless to say, a purely scientific
arsenal of testing criteria is not sufficient here. It is
precisely the multiplicity of criteria to which the results
are tested which will give this review its value
added.
4. Conclusion: retrospect and questions for future
consideration
RETROSPECT
In this article we have discussed the problems affecting
knowledge production in complex decisionmaking.
Due to changed social circumstances, knowledge
production these days is no longer the sole
province of reputable consulting firms or the 'big
names' in science. People no longer have faith in
objective scientific knowledge; knowledge is a social
construct, is determined intersubjectively and has
become a negotiable good.
This insight emphasizes the need for a different approach
to knowledge development. This article is an
attempt to initiate such an approach, by stressing the
organisation of a process of joint fact-finding, in
which various stakeholders (experts, government
agencies, private companies, and social groups) take
the position of active seekers of knowledge. A transition
towards a sustainable society can only be realised
through a joint fact-finding process in which the
different stakeholders have produced knowledge and
information on what a sustainable society should look
like and how it is to realised. So, in order to create
sustainable development, new methods of knowledge
production must be developed. We have provided
some process management strategies in this article in
order to accomplish this.
QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION
The process management strategies outlined in paragraph
3 cannot be applied just like that. They require
careful institutional embedding into the existing
methods of knowledge production, and often also call
for actors to assume a different role perspective. If
knowledge is sought in a more interactive manner,
whereby many forms of knowledge (such as lay

knowledge and expert knowledge) are introduced at
the same time, a different role is expected of the
expert. He cannot simply take a solistic attitude, but
will have to cooperate more not just with his principal,
but also start seeking acceptable knowledge together
with potential target groups and stakeholders.
This stresses the need of institutional innovation, i.e.
a reflection on and change of roles of people - policymaker
and (scientific) researcher - play in knowledge
production processes.
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In: Frank Biermann, Sabine Campe, Klaus Jacob, eds. 2004. Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition. The Challenge for Social Science”,
Global Governance Project: Amsterdam, Berlin, Potsdam and Oldenburg. pp. 346-351.
Creating Organizational Knowledge for the Transition to Sustainability
Nancy P. Goucher and Sarah Michaels ∗
Introduction
The concept of sustainability has achieved an international
audience in a multitude of disciplines. Sustainability
is most commonly defined as “development
that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs” (World Commission on Environment
and Development, 1987). Sustainability holds the
vision of a world that is one day free of scars on the
earth system left by human activity (Dovers, 1995).
To move towards sustainability, many believe that
society needs to have a range of stakeholders generate
more knowledge on the subject (Biermann, 2002,
Dovers, 1995, Paavola, 2002, Voehringer, 2002).
While there is much talk about the importance of
knowledge to western society and economy, there is
little explanation of how knowledge is created in the
institutional settings in which collective concerns
about the environment are addressed. Individual
organizations charged with managing natural resources,
such as watersheds, must create knowledge
for the transition to sustainability.
This paper describes a pilot project that identifies the
enabling conditions and requirements for implementing
organizational knowledge creation in the Grand
River Conservation Authority, Canada. Along with
other legislative responsibilities, conservation authorities
in Ontario are charged with managing water at a
watershed scale (Ivey, de Loe and Kreutzwiser, 2002).
Managing water in its natural state is becoming more
complex as human population increases, demands on
finite water supplies mount, and technology becomes
more pervasive (Gleick, Wolff, Chalecki, Reyes,
2002). To address the constantly evolving problems
in a way that leads to long-term sustainability requires
continuous innovation. The organizations best able to
do that are those capable of organizational knowledge
creation. This process involves creating new knowledge,
disseminating it throughout the organization
and embodying it in what it does and how it does it
(Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). However, there are few
guide posts to follow in the natural resources man-
∗
University of Waterloo, Canada. Contact: michaels@fes.uwaterloo.ca.
agement sphere, in part because of the lack of understanding
about the prerequisites for undertaking
organizational knowledge management. The research
described here begins to lay the necessary groundwork.
In the next section, we sketch out the significance
and context for our work, highlighting the potential
of subnational, regional scale organizational knowledge
creation to provide the beach-head for the
knowledge transition necessary to accompany the
sustainability transition. Next, the Grand River Watershed
and the Grand River Conservation Authority
are briefly described. We describe our methodology
and then discuss our findings before bringing the
paper to a close.
Significance and context
The necessity of knowledge in environmental policy
making in general has been well argued (Dovers 1995,
Meadowcroft 1997, Handmer, Norton and Dovers
2001). Biermann (2002) focuses on the need for a
knowledge transition to make the transition to sustainability
possible. Biermann (2002, 3-4) states that
“A sustainability transition requires new advances in
human knowledge” while “the existing knowledge
base and its political implementation remain insufficient
for a world-wide transition to sustainability”. If
it is premature to tackle the challenge globally, there
maybe merit in looking to smaller scale initiatives for
critical, early successes. Subnational, regional organizations
engaged in natural resources maybe poised to
provide constructive examples of how to take the
first steps in creating the organizational knowledge
necessary for the transition to sustainability.
Proponents of managing knowledge suggest that its
application could lead to dramatically improved organizational
effectiveness (Morey, Maybury and
Thuraisingham, 2000). Consequently, much is being
written about how to manage knowledge within organizations,
particularly business firms (for example,
Bukowitz and Williams 1999; Davenport and Prusak
1998, Leonard and Sensiper, 2002, Nonaka and Takeuchi,
1995). The Executive Resource Group (2001)
concluded, however, that knowledge management is
not well understood in the public sector, yet the public
sector plays a critical role in developing organizational
knowledge for sustainability. To date, work that
considers applying knowledge management to natural

esources stewardship is rare. Simard’s (2000) account
of managing knowledge at the Canadian Forest Service
is a pioneering effort in this regard. The research
discussed here is an initial step in understanding the
building blocks for creating organizational knowledge
to aid in the transition to sustainability. Organizational
knowledge allows an organization to be innovative
and generate knowledge essential to the transition
to sustainability (Biermann, 2002).
Creating organizational knowledge, as defined by
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995, viii) is the “capability of
a company as a whole to create new knowledge, disseminate
it through the organization and embody it in
products, services and systems.” This focuses and
builds on knowledge management which Tsoukas
(2001, 1) defines as “the capability to draw distinctions,
within a domain of action, based on an appreciation
of context or theory, or both.” Creating
knowledge can happen at a variety of levels: individual,
group and organizational. This research focuses
on organizational knowledge because it is the organization
that facilitates the creation and accumulation
of knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) book on organizational
knowledge, The Knowledge-Creating Company has
been highly influential in shaping the emerging field
of organizational knowledge management (Umemoto,
2002). Particularly salient for our research is the discussion
of five conditions that are required at the
organizational level to promote innovation: intention,
autonomy, fluctuation, redundancy and requisite
variety and seven requirements for implementing
organizational knowledge creation: ability to identify
information needed by the organization, ability to
utilize information, recategorizing information, exploiting
experienced based knowledge, sharing experienced
based knowledge, amplify knowledge creation
across different organizational levels and enhancing
enabling conditions. These five conditions and
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 347
seven requirements may provide the key to determining
whether an organization has the capability to not
only solve existing problems, but also to create new
knowledge and information, re-define problems and
solutions and re-create its own environment.
It is important to remember that subnational, regional
organizations responsible for natural resources management
undertake creating organizational knowledge
to steward specific geographical space.
The Grand River Watershed and the Grand River
Conservation Authority
THE GRAND RIVER WATERSHED
The Grand River Watershed drains an area of 6962
km2 . The watershed, located about 100 km west of
Toronto, Ontario and 300 km east of Detroit, Michigan,
drains into Lake Erie (see figure 1). It is home to
approximately 787,000 residents in 55 municipalities,
and 11 regions and counties. Growth rates of 6 to
11% have occurred in four of the basin’s five largest
urban populations since 1996. By 2020, the population
of the watershed is expected to grow by 37 %.
(Ivey, 2002).
The primary source of water supplies in the watershed
comes from groundwater. Additional sources of
municipal water supplies are the Grand River, providing
less than 20% of the water in the watershed and
the Great Lakes, providing about 1%. The watershed
includes urbanized areas and rural areas of intensive
livestock farming, tobacco production, and rural nonfarm
communities. The Basin’s northern limits are
characterized by vast areas of wetlands. The middle
of the watershed, near the cities of Kitchener-
Waterloo is dominated by rich farmland while the
southern portion of the Grand River travels through
gravel moraines (Ivey, 2002).

348
GRAND RIVER CONSERVATION AUTHORITY
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Figure 1. Location of the Grand River Watershed
Source: http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwgeog/special/grand/bsn_con.htm.
In Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, conservation
authorities are provincially created bodies
mandated to manage, protect and restore Ontario’s
freshwater resources on a watershed basis. They plan,
coordinate and manage on behalf of municipalities
within a watershed. The Grand River Conservation
Authority is one of the best resourced conservation
authorities in the province and is engaged in managing
the largest watershed in southern Ontario. The
Grand River Conservation Authority manages surface
water flows, monitors surface and ground waters,
implements local rural water quality programs, facilitates
local drought management, and engages in
modeling, planning, and research (Ivey, 2002).
RECOGNITION OF GRCA’S INNOVATIVENESS AND
EFFECTIVENESS
The GRCA has a long history of being innovative,
beginning with its inception in 1932. It was the first
conservation authority in Canada and only the third
in North America. From the outset it was a model for
other conservation authorities and the Ontario provincial
government about how to undertake various
aspects of watershed management (Mitchell and
Shrubsole, 2001).
The GRCA has been recognized nationally and internationally
for its watershed management success. The
Canadian Heritage Rivers System (CHRS) designated
the Grand River a Canadian Heritage River in 1999.
To be considered for the designation, a management
plan or heritage strategy, based on public consultation
and consensus must be produced to ensure that the
natural, cultural and/or recreation values of the river
will be maintained (Canadian Heritage River Systems,
2003). It was the GRCA that produced the necessary
management plan for the designation. The designation
provides recognition that a river is one of the
best examples in the country of Canada’s river heritage.
By being awarded the 2000 Thiess International
River prize for river management, the GRCA received
recognition internationally of its success in
restoring the Grand River system to health (Thiess
Services River Prize, 2003).
WHY USE THE GRCA AS A PILOT CASE STUDY FOR
INVESTIGATING THE FOUNDATIONS OF
ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CREATION?
To understand how organizational knowledge is
created, we chose to research the GRCA because of
its recognized track record in generating innovation
to advance watershed management. It is doing so
while the watershed is experiencing rapid growth that
poses servicing and environmental challenges to
water managers (Ivey, 2002) attempting to manage
often competing needs within the watershed’s limited
water budget.
Methodology
Since the primary task is to understand how action is
taken to manage specific situations, a qualitative case
study approach was employed. A qualitative approach
is an effective means to gain an overview of the context
under investigation and to capture the perception
of insiders (Miles and Huberman 1994). A case study
approach provides for a complete understanding of
the complexity of a situation by examining the phe-

nomenon within the context that it occurs (Yin,
1984). Evidence for analysis was gathered through indepth
interviews with professional staff with the
GRCA. These interviews are important for capturing
the tacit knowledge of individuals about the issues
being investigated.
In-depth, elite interviews were conducted with the
Assistant Chief Administrative Officer, Resource
Management and water resource engineers, a planner,
a hydrogeologist, a biologist and an information manager.
Snowball sampling was used to ensure that we
spoke to relevant professional staff who because of
their job responsibilities could inform our investigation.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
The open-ended questions used in the interviews
were designed to elicit the extent to which each of
Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) five enabling conditions
(intention, autonomy, fluctuation, redundancy,
and requisite variety) and seven requirements for
implementation (identifying information required,
gaining new knowledge, recategorizing knowledge,
leveraging tacit knowledge, using socialization, amplifying
knowledge creation, and enhancing enabling
conditions) exist within the GRCA and play a role in
creating innovative watershed management practices.
Transcripts of these interviews were generated and
the contents analyzed using NVivo software.
Discussion of results
Analyzing the results of the interviews reveals that
GRCA professionals identified four (autonomy, fluctuation,
requisite variety and redundancy) of Nonaka
and Takeuchi’s (1995) five enabling conditions and
three (utilization of information, recategorizing information
and commitment) of their seven requirement
for implementation as existing within their
organization and being essential to creating organizational
knowledge. This knowledge proved to be the
basis for innovative, sustainable watershed management
practices.
AUTONOMY
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) argue that enabling
individuals within an organization to act as autonomously
as circumstances permit induces learning, the
kind of learning necessary for undertaking adaptive
environmental management (Holling 1978). Professionals
within the GRCA particularly valued the freedom
to engage in information sharing with those
outside the organization, such as decision makers in
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 349
municipalities and the public. It is important to reach
both these groups if the transition to sustainability is
to take place (Paavola 2002; Biermann 2002; Voehringer
2002.
The ability to communicate freely with municipal
decision makers and staff within the Grand River
Watershed means that the GRCA staff can provide
quality information as it is needed to constituent
municipalities who rely on GRCA’s environmental
expertise. Without this information, there is a greater
likelihood that every day decisions may be made
without considering the sustainability component of
each issue.
For sustainable knowledge generated by experts to be
of use to civil society requires that the information is
publicly available (Biermann 2002). Because of
GRCA’s open communications policy staff can present
information to the public through such means as
responding to the media and via the GRCA website.
Real time data on water conditions, such as river
levels, water quality and flow augmentation actions,
are provided on the GRCA website.
FLUCTUATION
Fluctuation is defined by Nonaka and Takeuchi
(1995) as both internal and external change in the
environment. Fluctuation, albeit stressful to individuals,
was recognized by GRCA staff as inducing the
creation of organizational knowledge. A number of
interviewees cited the changes that resulted from
significant cutbacks in funding from the Ontario
provincial government in the mid 1990’s to the conservation
authorities as a powerful example of fluctuation.
That the funding cuts had been anticipated
by GRCA leadership led to a highly constructive,
internally initiated strategic planning process This
process enabled the organization to reassess its goals
and to restructure the organization to meet the revised
goals. The end result, according to GRCA staff,
is a more efficient, focused organization.
Fluctuation enables an organization to test its flexibility.
A flexible organization that is able to adapt is in a
better situation to develop policy that reflects current
ecological principles than one which is not (Walker,
2001). It is also less likely to promote decisions that
attempt unsuccessfully to force stability onto an ecological
system (Holling, 1978 and Handmer, Norton
and Dovers 2001).
REQUISITE VARIETY
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) define requisite variety
in an organization in terms of staff diversity in disciplinary
backgrounds and demographics. GRCA pro-

350
fessional staff members consider their organization
appropriately diverse in terms of disciplinary expertise.
Staff members recognize the value in working
with those of different educational backgrounds both
within and outside the organization.
Leonard and Sensiper (2002) describe diversity of
intellects as being critical to creating organizational
knowledge and innovation. Each person tends to
apply her or his own understanding of a problem and
potential solutions to an issue. For example, engineers
dealing with needed repairs to the Shand Dam
decided to drain the lake impounded behind it. Lack
of engagement with others outside of engineering,
such as biologists, led to this decision and the collateral
loss of aquatic life. Gladwell (2002) also explains
how requisite variety is healthy for an organization
and that good ideas often originate with someone
who is not directly involved in the issue but has insight
into something closely related. Now that the
GRCA is working towards sustainability, it engages
an interdisciplinary perspective in deciding on courses
of actions, evaluating ecological and sociological
impacts in addition to physical changes in specific
situations.
Holling (1995) indicates that environmental problems
such as water quality are not purely ecological, economic
or social problems and neither are the solutions
to them. What is required is to understand the
interrelationship among people, nature and economics.
To do this appropriately involves tapping into
requisite variety of expertise.
REDUNDANCY
According to Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995, 80), redundancy
is defined as “information [that] is provided
in duplication to other staff even if it does not
immediately seem directly related”. The potential for
redundancy within the GRCA has been enhanced by
its reasonably flat organizational structure. Professional
staff felt that this structure reduces barriers to
communication and encouraged new ideas. Leonard
and Sensiper explain how staff equality is conducive
to improving organizational communication.
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) describe how redundancy
can be built into an organization by strategically
rotating personnel. The GRCA selectively rotates
employees into different divisions. For example,
a staff member originally trained in engineering may
be moved into the planning department.
COMMITMENT
Commitment can be expressed through documents
and culture. Staff at the GRCA point to both for
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
evidence of the organization’s commitment to sustainability.
According to Leonard and Sensiper (2002), it is important
for an organization to have written statements
articulating an organization’s collective understanding
of its purpose. They note that this keeps
people within the organization working towards
common ends. The GRCA’s mission statement,
publicized on its website, declares the organization’s
dedication to “ensuring a healthy and sustaining relationship
between the natural environment of the
Grand River watershed and the demands on this
environment by all forms of life” (GRCA).
One measure of commitment at the GRCA is the low
turnover in personnel. A number of professional staff
explained that their commitment to the organization
was, in part, a function of the strong match between
the organization’s goals and their personal goals. The
organizational culture promoted leading edge professional
practice to achieve sustainability.
UTILIZING INFORMATION
The ability to utilize information regardless of how it
is acquired is essential to creating organizational
knowledge. GRCA professional staff members are
encouraged to experiment with new ideas and to
experiment with developing collaborative approaches
to utilizing information. One example of this is the
development of databases that are accessible to individuals
with different disciplinary backgrounds in
different divisions.
RECATEGORIZING KNOWLEDGE
Recategorizing organizational knowledge for strategic
use by others is an indicator of a flexible organization
(Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). Recategorizing knowledge
involves taking data generated for one purpose
and applying it to something else. A number of
GRCA professional staff members mentioned the
quaternary geology mapping dataset as a prime example
of recategorizing data. By combining provincial
hydrology and geology datasets with information on
fish habitat, staff members at the GRCA were able to
identify where cold water springs were located based
on location of fish spawning. Now similar mapping
techniques are used by other conservation authorities
and by provincial agencies.
Future directions for research
Our pilot study into the building blocks of creating
organizational knowledge in an agency responsible
for natural resources management suggests a wealth

of potential topics to explore further. At the conceptual
level, how would alternatives to Nonaka and
Takeuchi’s (1995) approach to creating organizational
knowledge provide insight into knowledge creation
within organizations striving to achieve sustainability?
Do important factors in enabling organizational
knowledge creation in the GRCA resonate in other
conservation authorities and other natural resource
management organizations? How does the experience
in the Grand River Conservation Authority compare
with other conservation authorities in Ontario and
other watershed management entities in other jurisdictions?
How does the understanding of organizational
knowledge creation differ between the professionals
we interviewed and the most senior level of
decision making, including the chief administrative
officer and the GRCA board members? The board
members are the elected representatives of the constituent
municipalities.
Conclusion
Understanding the building blocks for creating organizational
knowledge for subnational, regional scale
natural resources management provides a critical first
step in making the knowledge transition necessary for
the transition to sustainability. Research in this area is
very much in its infancy. Still, the work that has been
done suggests the importance and necessity of developing
more sophisticated and comprehensive approaches
to understanding how organizational
knowledge relevant to sustainability being created,
crafted, analyzed and used.
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352 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
List of Participants
Acosta-Michlik, Lilibeth; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University
of Berlin, Germany
Allen, Will; Landcare Research NZ Ltd., Canterbury Agriculture and Science Centre, New Zealand
Andima, Dymphina; KARI-Regional Research Centre, Kenya
Andresen, Steinar; University of Oslo, and Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway
Bäckstrand, Karin; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Ball, Rob; Stirling University, United Kingdom
Barkmann, Jan; University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Bauer, Steffen, Global Governance Project of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Free University
of Berlin, Germany
Bauknecht, Dierk; Institute for Applied Ecology, Freiburg, Germany
Bauler, Tom; Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium
Bauriedl, Sybille; University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Becker, Michael; University of Cottbus, Germany
Berkhout, Gerhard; Germany
Berlincourt, Pierre; Swiss Embassy, Berlin, Germany
Betsill, Michele; Colorado State University, Colorado, United States of America
Biermann, Frank; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Free University of
Berlin, Germany
Bleischwitz, Raimund; Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal, Germany
Böhme, Simone; Germany
Böhmer-Christiansen, Sonja; Hull University, Hull, United Kingdom
Boschert, Karin; University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Boyd, Heather; Gardner Pinfold Consulting Economists Ltd., Canada
Boykoff, Jules M.; American University, Washington DC, United States of America
Boykoff, Maxwell T.; University of California, Santa Cruz, California, United States of America
Brand, Karl-Werner; Münchner Projektgruppe für Sozialforschung e.V., Munich, Germany
Bregnballe, Anne; Lillehammer College, Norway
Brodach, Ari; Auxilia, France
Brohm, Rainer; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University of Berlin,
Germany
Brown, Andrew; University of Texas, United States of America
Brueckner, Martin; Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, Australia
Bruyninckx, Hans; Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Bulkeley, Harriet; University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Busch, Per-Olof; Global Governance Project of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Free

University of Berlin, Germany
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 353
Campe, Sabine; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University of Berlin,
Germany
Carius, Alexander; Adelphi Research, Berlin, Germany
Charlesworth, Mark; Keele University, United Kingdom
Collins, Eva; University of Waikato, New Zealand
Daedlow, Katrin; University of Greifswald, Germany
Davidson, Debra J.; Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, United States of America
de Vries, Daniel H.; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America
Delgado, Monica; Ecuador
Dingwerth, Klaus; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University of
Berlin, Germany
Dovers, Stephen; The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Dross, Miriam; Institute for Applied Ecology, Germany
Dyck, Elisabeth; Secretariat, International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, Bonn,
Germany
Edelenbos, Jurian; Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Enders, Judith; Germany
Engel-Di Mauro, Salvatore; University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Wisconsin, United States of America
Feindt, Peter H.; University of Hamburg, Germany
Fiersens, Anne; Belgium Federal Science Policy Office, Belgium
Fischer, Anke; University of Göttingen, Germany
Füssel, Hans-Martin; Department of Integrated System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany
Göll, Edgar; Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment, Berlin, Germany
Göpel, Maja; University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Grosskurth, Jasper; International Centre for Integrative Studies, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Gupta, Aarti; Research Scholar, Transparency International, Berlin, Germany
Gupta, Joyeeta; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gupta, Shalini; Kiel Institute for World Economics, Kiel, Germany
Hage, Maria; Institute for Ecological Economy Research, Germany
Harms, Fabian; Germany
Haydon, John; HGH Consulting PTY Ltd., Australia
Healy, Stephen; University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Heinrichs, Harald; German Research Centre Jülich, Germany
Hetzer, Kajetan; SNS Asset Mangement, The Netherlands
Hirsch Hadorn, Gertrude; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Switzerland
Hoedoafia, Gameli Dominic; Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
Höfer, Thomas; Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung, Germany
Horstmann, Britta; Germany
Huby, Meg; The University of York, United Kingdom
Ignatow, Gabriel; Stanford University, California, United States of America
Ishii, Atsushi; National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
Israeli, Aviezer; Medionics International Ltd, Israel
Jacob, Klaus; Environmental Policy Research Unit, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Jaggard, Lyn; University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Jahn, Detlef; University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
Jänicke, Martin; Environmental Policy Research Unit, Free University of Berlin, Germany

354 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Jiehua, Lu; Pukyong National University, Korea
Jóhannesson, Ingólfur Ásgeir; The University of Akureyri, Iceland
Jokela, Minna; University of Turku, Finland
Jörgensen, Kirsten; Environmental Policy Research Unit, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Jungwirth, Martin; University of Vechta, Vechta, Germany
Jürgens, Ingmar; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, France
Kanda, Yasuhiro; Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan
Karlsson, Sylvia; Secretariat, International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, Bonn,
Germany
Karmanski, Andreas; Environmental Policy Research Unit, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Kerkkanen, Anu; University of Tampere, Finland
Kern, Kristine; Social Science Research Centre Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Keskitalo, Carina; University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
Kessel, Isabell; Institute for Applied Ecology, Germany
Kieken, Hubert; French Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Environmental Engineering, France
Kilvington, Margaret; Landcare Research NZ Ltd., Canterbury Agriculture and Science Centre, New Zealand
Kim, Joy Aeree; Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, United Kingdom
Kirchner, Almut; Prognos AG, Switzerland
Kirton, John; University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Kissling-Näf, Ingrid; Swiss Academy of Sciences, Bern, Switzerland
Krück, Carsten Peter, VDI Düsseldorf, Germany
Kuang, Jianbo; HGH Consulting PTY Ltd., Australia
Kumar, Pushpam; Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi, India
Kurian, Priya; University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Laes, Erik; University of Louvain and Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, Belgium
Lehtonen, Markku; Université de Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yveline, France
Lindseth, Gard; University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Loibl, Marie Céline; Austrian Institute for Applied Ecology, Austria
Loorbach, Derk; Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Department of Global Change and Social Systems, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research, Germany
Lövbrand, Eva; Kalmar University, Sweden
Lupp, Julia; Free University of Berlin, Germany
Maier, Simone; Schweizer Verband der Raiffeisenbanken, Switzerland
Marschinski, Robert; Global Governance Project and Department of Integrated System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research, Germany
Matsumoto, Yasuko; National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
Maubrey, Regis; Greenway International, and University of Paris XIII, France
Mayer-Ries, Jörg; Institut für Organisationskommunikation, Germany
McBeath, Jerry; University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, United States of America
Meteh, Simon Ediage; Voronezh State University, Russia
Michaels, Sarah; University of Waterloo, Canada
Mieg, Harald; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Morrison, Keith; Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand
Müller, Daniel; University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Munshi, Debashish; University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Muylaert, Maria; Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and International Virtual Institute on Global Change, Brazil

Naumann, Ekkehart; Consultant, Vienna, Austria
Neumann, Kirsten; United Nations University, Japan
Nilsson, Mans; Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 355
Nölting, Benjamin; Centre for Technology and Society, Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Ochs, Alexander; German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin, Germany
Oels, Angela; University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Ohndorf, Markus; Centre for Economic Research, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, Switzerland
Okamatsu, Akiko; National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
Olsson, Lennart; Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Øvrelid, Bjarne; Lillehammer College, Norway
Owens, Susan; University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Paavola, Jouni; Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment and University of East Anglia,
United Kingdom
Pachauri, Dr. Rajendra; chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Tata Energy Research Institute, New
Delhi, India
Patermann, Christian; director, Environment and Sustainable Development Programme, DG for Research, European
Union
Patt, Anthony; Department of Global Change and Social Systems, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,
Germany
Pattberg, Philipp; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University of
Berlin, Germany
Pereira, André Santos; Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and International Virtual Institute on Global Change, Brazil
Petschel-Held, Gerhard; Department of Integrated System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,
Germany
Pohl, Christan; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Powroslo, Eva; University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
Quinn, Claire; Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, United Kingdom
Rangachari, T.C.A., Ambassador, Embassy of India, Germany
Read, Peter; Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Rebori, Marlene K.; University of Nevada, Nevada, United States of America
Renvert, Dino; London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom
Roncoli, Carla; University of Georgia, Georgia, United States of America
Roper, Juliet; University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Saarikoski, Heli; Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom
Sand, Peter H.; University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Saretzki, Thomas; University of Lüneburg, Germany
Schäfer; Jürgen, Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal, Germany
Scheffran, Jürgen; Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam
Schellnhuber, Hans-Joachim; Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, United Kingdom
Schepelmann, Philipp; Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal, Germany
Schiller, Frank; University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Schindel, Klaus; Federal Ministry for Education and Research, Germany
Schmandt, Jurgen; Houston Advanced Research Centre and University of Texas at Austin, Texas, United States of
America
Schmitz, Simon; World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Geneva, Switzerland
Schrader, Ulf; University of Hannover, Germany
Schreyögg, Anna; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University of
Berlin, Germany
Schröder, Heike; Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

356 Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference
Schroeder-Wildberg, Esther; Adelphi Research, Berlin, Germany
Schütz, Michael; Germany
Shaw, Alison; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Shuaib, Lwasa; Makere University, Uganda
Siebenhüner, Bernd; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Oldenburg
University, Germany
Simon, David; University of London, London, United Kingdom
Simon, Karl-Heinz; University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany
Singh, Ashbindu; Division of Early Warning and Assessment North America, United Nations Environment Programme,
United States of America
Snell, Carolyn; The University of York, United Kingdom
Sohn, Hans-Dieter; Indo-German Forum on International Environmental Governance, and Global Governance Project,
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University of Berlin, Germany
Stehlíková, Dzamila; University of Jan Evangelista Purkynì, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
Stehr, Nico; Technical University, Darmstadt, Germany
Stevenson, Ruth; University of Wales, United Kingdom
Stoeck, Sabine; Germany
Stoll-Kleemann, Susanne; Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Swart, Rob; National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, The Netherlands
Tänzler, Dennis; Adelphi Research, Berlin, Germany
Tennberg, Monica; University of Lapland, Finland
Thoresen, Victoria; University College of Hedmark, Norway
Throgmorton, James; University of Iowa, Iowa, United States of America
Timmer, Vanessa; Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
United States of America
Treyer, Sebastien; Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, France
Troy, Patrick; Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Tull, John C.; BRRC University of Nevada, Nevada, United States of America
van Dongen, Hilde; Belgium Federal Science Policy Office, Belgium
VanDeVeer, Stacy D.; University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire, United States of America
Varho, Vilja; University of Helsinki, Finland
Voehringer, Frank; Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Vogel, Coleen H.; chair, International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change and University
of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Vogelpohl, Anne; Germany
Volkery, Axel; Environmental Policy Research Unit, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Voß, Jan-Peter; Institute for Applied Ecology, Freiburg, Germany
Weber, Jürgen; Germany
Weber, Melanie; Germany
Welker, Bertram; University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
Welp, Martin; Department of Global Change and Social Systems, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany
Wettestad, Jørgen; Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo, Norway
Whitelegg, Katy; ARC Seibersdorf Research
Wieczorek, Anna J.; Industrial Transformation core project office, International Human Dimensions Programme on
Global Environmental Change, The Netherlands
Winter, Gerd; University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Wolff, Franziska; Institute for Applied Ecology, Germany
Young, Oran R.; chair, Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Scientific Committee, International

Proceedings of the 2002 Berlin Conference 357
Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, and Dartmouth College, United States of
America
Zaccai, Edwin; Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Zerbe, Noah; Northern Arizona University, USA
Zerger, Carolin; Global Governance Project, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Free University of Berlin,
Germany
Ziegler, Hansvolker; chair, International Group of Funding Agencies for Global Environmental Change, and Federal
Ministry for Education and Research, Germany
Zieschank, Roland; Environmental Policy Research Unit, Free University of Berlin, Germany

ISBN 3-00-014956-2