Modelos de producción textual

Up to this point, the discussion has focused on the structures of governance and the complex interaction between state and non-state, local and international actors in environmental governance. However, environmental governance is also evolving in response to challenges over technocratic approaches to resolving environmental problems and the dominance of certain types of knowledge in the process o f policy making. These challenges are linked to debates about the social and economic basis of environmental problems discussed previously, and to academic critiques of reductionism and the authority of science. These two factors will be discussed in turn.

Policy decisions are now understood as emerging from processes o f negotiation between policy actors, collective interpretation and the dominance of certain discourses over others (Keeley & Scoones, 1999, Knoepfel & KissHng-Naf, 1998). Thus policy is seen as ‘an inherently political process, rather than the instrumental execution o f rational decisions’ (Keeley and Scoones, 1999:4). Technocratic approaches to environmental problems based on the imposition o f expert and scientifically defined solutions are increasingly seen as ineffective and inequitable (Berkhout et al.^ 2003) for two main reasons. Firstly, there is a need to incorporate an understanding of the historical, social, political and institutional contexts o f a problem into its framing and resolution by drawing on the understandings, values and knowledges held at a local level (Gass et al., 1997). Secondly, and more fundamentally, because the claim of scientific knowledge to universality and objectivity is being challenged.

Criticisms of the objectivity and legitimacy o f scientific knowledge itself reflect debates that have been going on since the 1970s in the social and political sciences about the assumptions o f positivism. Post-positivists claim that ‘science, like all human knowledge, is grounded in and shaped by the normative suppositions and social meanings of the world it explores’ (Fischer, 1993:167). This thinking has led to questions about the distinctions often made in the policy arena between the knowledges of scientific experts and non­ experts (Fischer, 1993; Leach & Scoones, 2002), and challenges the exclusive right of scientists to speak for the environment (Eden, 1998). By their elitist natures, it is argued that science and scientists have become externalised from democratic processes, and led to calls for a new expert-citizen relationship in the policy process, whereby science is seen as one form of evidence used in reasoned decision-making processes framed by citizens

the public sphere whereby moral and emotive-aesthetic reasonings (those focused around values and ethics, and emotive experience respectively) have an equivalent status in debate to instrumental-technical reasoning (scientific and technical arguments) (Habermas, 1984). The thesis underlying Habermas’ theory o f communicative action is that no norm can be considered valid unless all those affected can accept its associated consequences, to the extent that those consequences can be known, and that a competent agreement for action can only evolve out of a competent understanding (Webler, 1995). In other words, decisions should be made according to ‘the power o f the better argument’ (Habermas, 1984).

Greater transparency and involvement in scientific policy-making is increasingly being demanded by the public, as mistrust o f science and experts increases (Irwin, 1995). It is argued this mistrust is partly due to the unexpected and damaging side-effects of social and technological developments (such as BSE), and a sense of the irony that science is used to tackle problems caused by science in the first place (Murdoch & Clark, 1996; Holmes & Scoones, 2000). In addition, the norm that scientific ‘facts’ are used by politicians to support a range of policy positions leads to the realisation that scientific findings are highly dependent on the way research is framed (Grove-White, 1999). The role o f commercial and economic interests in this research agenda is, for example, particularly apparent in the GM and climate change debates. But, it is not necessarily scientific knowledge itself that is being contested (except where the rigour of scientific inquiry is itself open to question), but the rights o f scientists and expert institutions to set the assumptions under which science is constructed as truth and used to justify policy decisions. It is argued that the public bring more to their definition and evaluation of risks than is recognised in the framing o f these risks by scientists, who ignore the social and cultural dimensions, notably that public perceptions of risk are influenced by a judgement o f the trustworthiness of the expert institutions themselves (Wynne, 1996). It is suggested that there is a role for broader public discussion and involvement in the exploration of risks and in shaping the moral and ethical basis of scientific research and policy (Stirling, 2001). The questioning o f the universahsm of science has also led to greater legitimacy being placed on ‘local’ knowledge, embedded in the society and culture of a single place (Murdoch & Clark, 1996). It is argued that we should move away from differentiating between the scientific and the non-scientific, focusing on the lay-expert dichotomy, and emphasise instead the relevance of different types o f knowledges, linking the local and the general, the natural and the social, if we are

to devise solutions to complex environmental problems (Eden, 1996; Murdoch & Clark, 1996; Wynne, 1996).

The environment is also notable as a pohcy area as one where there has been considerable innovative experimentation in ways to engage the pubhc and those who have a stake in the outcomes o f the decision-making process. This can be linked to a number of factors. Firsdy, environmental problems are increasingly understood as being embedded in local cultural, social and institutional systems, with consideration of these factors crucial to identifying the causes of environmental decline and devising sustainable solutions (Berkhout et ai, 2003). Environmental problems tend to be characterised by local complexity and uncertainty, making the rehance on expert knowledge (based on assumptions o f universahsm) to make decisions and predictions about a situation without the incorporation o f local knowledges and understandings o f the problem potentiaUy ineffective (Wynne, 1996). Secondly, top-down approaches are also criticised as being inequitable, with pohtical motives outweighing scientific judgement so the costs of a decision frequently faUing on the communities with least capacity for resistance (Halfacre & Matheny, 1999).

Thirdly, the use of the market as the appropriate institution through which to determine environmentaUy sustainable solutions is questioned, particularly in terms of the market’s abihty to capture and represent values o f nature. WeU-documented criticisms of processes of contingent valuation, cost-benefit analysis and willingness to pay exercises are summarised below:

• values are expressed as the individual preferences o f consumers, whereas the environment is a pubhc good rehant on judgements of what is best for ah of society (now and future generations), not just individuals

• the process assumes that pubhc preferences are weU informed and formulated • the complex array of values and motivations held by people are reduced to a single

monetary figure which may not truly reflect their positions

(Niemeyer, & Spash, 2001). These criticisms have led to caUs for new non-market procedures through which values of nature can be fully explored, articulated and decisions made (Jacobs, 1997). Jacobs argues

for the use of ‘deliberative value-articulating’ and ‘decision-recommending’ institutions whereby people debate issues in the public sphere, leading to a greater understanding of the complexity of meanings, reasons, values and arguments surrounding environmental valuation, which can then be reflected in the final decision (ibid). All these factors, including the complexity of environmental governance and its local situatedness, the rising demands o f the environmental justice movement, and critiques of market-driven valuation processes, have led to greater exploration of the use o f participatory processes as discussed in Section 2.2.