Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

4
Scientific Advice and Ocean Dumping:
Knowledge-Based Regime Analysis
Since the ocean dumping problem gave rise to a global regime, reflectivists
would be inclined to believe that in 1972 most states perceived ocean dumping
as a global commons problem and that the negotiations on the regime
would proceed as a largely cooperative process. This was not the case, however,
as Russell Train, head of the U.S. delegation to the London Convention
negotiations, explained before the United States Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations in the spring of 1972: “Perhaps naively, I had thought
everybody would be in favor of doing something effective about stopping
dumping in the ocean, but we have found that many of the [less developed
countries] are very leery of getting into this. They would rather not have a
convention.” (Train 1972, p. 17)
The proposal to establish a global ocean dumping regime was made by
the United States. Reflective scholars would therefore examine whether scientists
and experts had persuaded U.S. decision makers to propose that
states work together in controlling ocean dumping. This group of theorists
would assume that decision makers, who would be uncertain about the
nature of the ocean dumping problem, its possible solutions, and costs of
possible control strategies, would consult and possibly take advice from
marine biologists, ecologists, and other scientists serving as policy experts.
Reflectivists would expect that decision makers would then transform consensual
or nearly consensual knowledge and expert advice into stringent
control of ocean dumping.
Scholars stressing the importance of technical and scientific knowledge
would, in addition, investigate whether marine scientists and other experts
would constitute an epistemic community providing decision makers with
nonconflicting scientific advice. Epistemic-community theorists would
examine whether international expert advice and pressure had influenced