Adversarial Science: Conflict Resolution and Scientific Review in British Columbia's Central Coast

Abstract

Science plays paradoxical roles in environmental planning. As a process for generating and adapting knowledge of the biophysical environment to human use, it is essential to achieving sustainability. As the socially contested evaluation of competing claims to truth, however, adversarial science often becomes the focus of conflict in the planning process. British Columbia's Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan (CCLRMP) planning process took place amid industrial restructuring, market campaigns, and scientific disputes over the conservation of the world's largest remaining temperate rainforest. This article shows how adversarial science set the terms of the policy debate, as well as the means for compromise. A multisector interdisciplinary information team played a key role in arriving at consensus by establishing a boundary organization that enabled bargaining and separated land use negotiations from disputes over the content, meaning, and implications of science.

Keywords:

• boundary object
• boundary organization
• conflict resolution
• ecosystem management
• environmental planning
• open-source
• science review
• temperate rainforests

Acknowledgments

We thank Nadine Schuurman and Tom Gunton for comments on earlier drafts, and the editor and three anonymous reviewers for numerous constructive suggestions and comments. All remaining errors of fact and interpretation are the responsibility of the authors.