Environment, Science and NGO Activism

Environment, Science and NGO Activism Report of a Workshop held on 17 June 2003 at the Business Centre, The Deep, Hull. Organised by: Sally Eden (University of Hull) s.e.eden@hull.ac.uk John Forrester (Stockholm Environment Institute/University of York) jf11@york.ac.uk Julie Barnett (University of Surrey) j.barnett@surrey.ac.uk Thanks also to Kerry Gray (University of Surrey) for contributing to this report. Introduction This workshop was sponsored by the ESRC s Science in Society Programme, which supports research into the changing relationship between science and society. Further details of the Programme can be found at http://sbs-xnet.sbs.ox.ac.uk/scisoc. The workshop was designed as a day of discussion between different groups, principally academics, NGOs and regulators. We were lucky to have a good range of people and some lively debate about the nature of science, the role of NGOs, the involvement of the public and problems of dealing with environmental science in policy issues. In this report, we do not attempt to represent everything that was said, but we hope to summarise the main discussions that took place during the day so that this will serve as a reminder of the debates and questions aired and also some of the positive suggestions for the future. We also provide some details of the two interactive sessions for future reference. Further details of the workshop are still available on the University of Hull webpage at www.hull.ac.uk/geog/html/ngo.html. The website for this workshop will stay open until 2004 and we welcome any additions to it from workshop participants (please send material to Sally Eden). We also encourage readers to photocopy or otherwise distribute this report to interested people. 1

Morning Session We got off to a great start with an introduction by Alan Irwin (Brunel University) on the changing framework of scientific governance. Alan opened the debate about the rhetoric of public engagement, using particularly the upcoming public debate on GM in the UK. This raised a series of questions, such as: Who frames the debate around issues? Who decides which questions are on the agenda? Who gets to speak and what relative status do different groups and forms of knowledge have? What is the role of NGOs and how much/well can they speak on behalf of the public? With respect to everyday governance, is the GM food debate a one-off or does it represent a more lasting change in UK policy culture? Despite the technological problems with displays, Science in Society Programme researchers then presented their work. Sally Eden (University of Hull) discussed how NGOs evaluate environmental science, looking particularly at the tensions between different forms and sources of environmental information and the problems of building credibility on the basis of varying indepence, rationality and experience. John Forrester (Stockholm Environment Institute/University of York) and Laura Potts (York St John College) presented on NGOs and advocacy groups and their involvement in science-based policy. They described how their work attempts to facilitate greater two-way communication and engagement between public health professionals and concerned citizens. They use a combination of more traditional social research data-capture methods backed up by community mapping of issues using a novel methodology possible with participatory GIS. For further details see http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/sei/pp/pubpartic.html Julie Barnett (University of Surrey) reported on research funded by the Environment Agency that aims to inform Agency interactions with Special Interest Groups. Material was presented from a series of interviews with Agency staff that highlighted their perceptions of expertise and preferences for interaction. Implications for day to day engagement as well as for the development of deliberative mechanisms were discussed. The morning presentations generated discussion about: Issue differences, for example the contrasts between GM foods and pesticides. Why does more inclusive public debate work around some issues, but not around others? New technology is very sensitive to public opinion the risks and hazards are more unknown. Older issues may already have institutionalised the form of debate - in comparison, this is still being argued through for GM food. How debate can create more controversy, as well as assuaging public concerns. NGOs and science. How can NGOs, especially small, local or under-resourced NGOs, access scientific advice that is remote from them or possibly expensive? This is especially important where scientific backing is expected in a policy debate. Morning Breakout Session Before lunch, John Forrester ran a breakout session on Problems and opportunities of NGO activism, to generate discussion and to summarise viewpoints. In small groups, participants were asked to identify what they thought were problems for NGO activism in environmental science debates, to think about what could be done or was being done to overcome these problems, and finally to consider opportunities for new ways of engagement between regulatory science and NGO activism. This session generated lots of debate that ran into the lunch break. Afterwards, John summarised the points under problems, options, and opportunities, to express the diversity of views (the full list is at the end of this report). 2

Although plenty of problems were identified, there are common threads in many - communication problems and problems within the system of participatory democracy surface frequently. Thus, any focus on opening up science and science policy-making to greater public engagement must interface with other current models of participation, such as in local politics. There were far fewer opportunities identified - clearly there is room for more creative thinking here in future. It seems that, out of this list of problems and opportunities, there are some quite specific roles and responsibilities for different stakeholders and groups of actors and that the corpus scientifique is but one participant in the science in society debate. Other identifiable groups include academia, the policy community, regulators, local government, national government, NGOs, wider civic society, and the media. Each could look to their own activities to see how they pick up on the opportunities mentioned and develop opportunities for engagement, meaningful communication and fostering of greater trust. Afternoon session We heard three contrasting papers in the afternoon. Andrew Jamison (Aalborg University, Denmark) discussed NGOs and the shaping of green knowledge with reference to the legacy of environmental thinking since the 1970s. He particularly critiqued the polarisation of modern environmental approaches into green business and critical ecology, especially since the 1990s, and the ways in which different groups, such as NGOs, draw on different knowledge forms in their activities. Tim Jenkins (Head of Policy and Research Unit, Friends of the Earth) spoke about how FoE engage with science in different ways, influencing processes of funding and using science, getting involved in new debates and new science as well as developing science in established debates, and investigating alternative solutions such as renewable energy and organic farming. He gave examples of FoE s work to determine how local people perceive local risks and to improve public access to environmental information, particularly about industrial pollution, and argued that greater resources have shifted power away from governments to corporations and that this will have major implications for the scientific agenda in the future. Concluding the presentations, John Colvin (Social Policy Manager, Environmental Policy Unit, Environment Agency) spoke about how the EA is learning to learn differently and seeking to change its culture so as to be more open to local communities and public views and thus move away from its traditional approach to science. Afternoon Discussion Session The final session was opened by John Forrester, who reported back on the morning breakout sessions and then kicked off an open discussion. This raised many questions and also some disagreements and this report can only summarise the main points of argument. Opportunities and international learning. There was some discussion about the extent of international learning and opportunities. To what extent can Britain learn from what is going on in other, especially European, countries? There is a strong tradition in the UK of consultation, but not of participation in decisionmaking: can/should this be changed? 3

Providing scientific advice and NGOs/communities The problem of providing scientific advice and access to scientists more widely, especially for smaller NGOs was discussed. This was to link communities needs with the research needs of science and also to communicate good practice telling what works where. Community groups often have access to funding, but little real opportunity for access to expertise that they see as impartial. A meeting place could become a useful forum for such access. Suggestions were that an (unbiased) academic think-tank would be a useful resource for smaller NGOs and advocacy groups, who find themselves with limited time and staff to gather and evaluate large amounts of information and policy options. There was some discussion about whether this could be a web-based meeting place themed similarly to the workshop that could also alert academic researchers to NGO needs, although electronic access was not always possible for groups. Scientific legitimacy and democracy An interesting question is whether or not the legitimacy of science is dependent on a functioning democracy. If science is a process and if that process requires space, then for science to be legitimate we need to have debate. Who pays for science to be done is also an important issue can science done in the private sector ever be trusted by any public? Should (citizen) science instead be done in a public space? If so, who should pay? What are the consequences if democratic science must now balance commercial pressures? Science may be conceptually disinterested (unbiased) but the interpretation and application of science are certainly not. NGOs sometimes find themselves cast into an anti-science role (by policymakers, the media and so on) because they challenge a dominant scientific ideology. However, the dominance of that scientific ideology often relies for its power on its policy links not necessarily on its science. Scientific translation and public interest Following on from this, the good point was made that you do need mediators to translate in both directions from scientific institution to public and vice versa. People are often interested in pure science, in disinterested science, and people are interested in natural history, space exploration, and so on. What they are often turned off by is the application of science. Further, people often do not want to know how science is applied unless it affects them. But non-scientists are capable of asking questions which need scientific research to give answers, so better citizen engagement with research priorities is important. Science as process or truth Disagreement arose between the contrasting conceptions of science as a social process, as one of many ways to understand the world, and of science as the only way to understand the world ( the truth ). Some regulator scientists seem to favour the latter conception of science. We tried to move on from this disagreement, because this ground has been covered elsewhere and the need for citizen science to be both socially robust and reliable has been argued extensively in the literature. What we are interested in here is not whether citizens can or should censure science itself, but whether citizens can use and better engage with science and scientists. The arguments from scientism are often characterised as you can t vote for the result of an experiment, but this rather misses the point of the citizen science argument that you should be able to vote for which experiment is carried out and how it is funded! It may be a truism that a certain level of scientific education is necessary to truly understand science processes, but arguably no science education is required to understand the implementation of science policy. 4

Scientific practice and institutions Scientific institutions seem out of touch with the things that are important to members of the public. Non-scientific citizens are generally not directly concerned with science per se, they may touch upon scientific questions but they don t see these issues as scientific issues, they see them as being about need, benefit, control of processes, engagement with issues. But many scientific institutions (the Royal Society was mentioned as one exemplar) give little sense that they can learn from the public there is no self-reflection that they might be presenting their own priorities incorrectly. This is still very much the deficit model: if only the public understood science better then they would think differently. There is a range of institutions in our society that produce science and scientists. Yet the issues that we often find ourselves talking about are to do not with producing but with using, or appropriating, science, and there is no real organisational structure for this. Scientists tend to be taught to do science rather than to use it. But more institutions are not going to make things better the opportunity, therefore, is to change attitudes within the scientific institutions that do exist. The point was made that working scientists may well be aware of communities and society s wants and needs and how research might address these, but funding decisions lie with the research councils and other funders. Examples were cited of certain research councils (ESRC, NERC) being proactive in trying to comprehend society s wants and needs. However, it is up to the public to shout loud enough and use the media to say these are the questions that need answering, these are the things we are worried about. Further, internal peer review within scientific institutions needs to be brought up to date. Taking action This discussion generated two main areas for action in future: 1. Scientific institutions including funding institutions - still need some internal attitudinal change towards non-scientific publics. 2. A meeting place for NGOs, concerned members of the public, regulators, scientists (and funding agencies) could be a useful resource: This meeting place could be a web-based forum designed to bring NGOs and academic researchers together and it could have links to an academic think-tank that could be used as a resource by members of the public. The meeting place could be an occasional face-to-face forum (maybe something like a focussed Café Scientifique?) to talk over issues and fulfil the need to link communities needs with the research needs of science. Future Activities The ESRC s Science in Society Programme is now reviewing research proposals for its second phase of research funding, many of which are likely to follow up on similar themes to the ones in the workshop (details will be on the website http://sbs-xnet.sbs.ox.ac.uk/scisoc in late 2003). John Forrester presents on his research as part of the British Association s Science Festival in Salford in September 2003. Julie Barnett is continuing her work on the Environment Agency/special interest group (SIG) interactions to enable the Agency to develop its social policy aspects, as discussed in the workshop. 5

Comments from Breakout Session - compiled by John Forrester Problems Information problems local people feel lack of education is a barrier to interaction accessibility of information (length of documents etc) Engagement and communication problems lack of engagement early enough in process how do you make people feel interested? how do you inform people? media coverage: how do you get better coverage from the media for deliberative processes and public debates? environmental protection is still largely a middle-class agenda different scales of knowledge: localscale, personal experience and scientific understanding at population/ community scale competing local groups different perceptions/ information on the same issue Trust Risk and public perception of risk Problems within the system (including time, what is science, different agendas, departmentalism, and methods of engagement) environmental health issues are transdepartment and trans-disciplinary, this makes it very difficult to engage with policy makers who are often used to working in reductionist ways NGO activists engage with individuals but need to change organisational viewpoints, not just the views of individuals within organisations scientific / policy organisations are not well geared up to dealing with public and need to change to do so How does a large organisation adapt to dealing with more engagement with public/ community groups? remit of decision makers constrains scope of debate lack of representation by politics is science used to make decisions at all? lack of proper consultation role of science in litigation (replacing participatory democracy?) we re allowed to talk but what then? political culture importing foreign methods of engagement only some data is used for decision making only certain types of data are generated ownership of data is a problem science bring a lot of historical baggage reification of science disempowers citizens who is the public? how is the context framed local/ national, group/ population who sets priorities? whose priorities count? time lag between identification of problem and any action post hoc need to do something re new technologies there are environmental causes/ triggers (e.g. for breast cancer) yet it is difficult to get prevention on the agenda this requires a big shift in scientific thinking Social problems credibility of knowledge value of different knowledge(s) all knowledge is situated (thus not objective) science is inherently uncertain validity of scientific evidence how to evaluate? blame as a mobilising issue independence of science versus the social construction of science Research funding and careers problems financial constraints are a greater factor than science career advancement within science who s paying? money! who gets it and on what grounds? academic competition 6

Comments from Breakout Session - compiled by John Forrester Options/ Solutions Opportunities Environmental solutions campaign for basic environmental rights Careers options open scientific careers/curricula so that scientists can become active and can work for NGOs without breaking their career opportunities Policy options recognise that science does not necessarily determine policy Funding solutions funding of (more) research Research options international comparisons teach us bringing anecdotal evidence together to give it extra validity and credibility Communications options talking the same language strengthen the public s right to know expose vested interests empower public to use available data to influence decisions communicate not just through reports expose limitations of scientific data Engagement options form partnerships between local community organisations and scientific establishment and policy makers public concerns taken more seriously (but not to the disadvantage of other groups) inclusiveness proportionate engagement where are the biggest risks, environmentally and/or for the public? local stakeholders can organise their own meetings and forums and increase control of the process resurrect traditional avenues for engagement (e.g. seed listing rules in the GM debate) highlight potential liability issues to influence decision making policy makers need to feel the tension between their regulatory/policy agenda and local concerns/knowledge explore new methods of policy engagement / exchange / decision making New space need new space for engagement Popular knowledge use traditions of popular knowledge making Decision making opportunity to shift power balance Better science increased objectivity of science Empowerment greater understanding of policy making process = empowerment Media involving the media 7