Climate change – the challenge of translating scientific knowledge into action

Abstract

In spite of solid scientific evidence that anthropogenic climate change will affect the conditions for life on earth, little climate action is taking place. This paper discusses this apparent paradox. The main message is that lack of climate action has to do with the ways in which climate change interlinks with society. Climate change is representative of what in the paper is defined as ‘modern environmental problems’. Unlike ‘traditional’ environmental problems, ‘modern’ environmental problems are ‘internal’ to society and are ‘societal’ problems as much as they are environmental problems. The paper discusses how climate change must be understood in an overlapping interface between nature and society, and based on this theoretical analysis the paper discusses a number of contradictions and paradoxes illuminating the problems of linking knowledge and climate action. The concluding section calls for new methodological approaches to linking knowledge and climate action.

Keywords:

• climate change
• environment
• knowledge
• climate action
• science

Introduction

This paper is an attempt to shed light on one of the most fundamental problems pertaining to climate change: Why is it that in spite of the overwhelming and convincing body of scientific knowledge about climate change, so little climate action is actually taking place? (Adger et al. 2009: 5). Why does not the knowledge about the seriousness of climate change, its causes and effects lead to more decisive action? At the same time as we (and particularly the scientific community) call for more climate research, it remains an uncomfortable fact that if society had acted upon only a fraction of the knowledge on climate change that we already have, the situation would have been very much different.

There is no single or simple answer to this question, and I have no hope (or ambition) that this paper can provide such an answer. I do hope, however, to be able to point out a direction for better understanding of the barriers we need to be aware of when we aim to link climate knowledge to climate action. My argument shall be that in order to better understand the conditions for translating scientific knowledge about climate change into climate action we need to improve our understanding of how climate change is related to and integrated into society. So far scientists and decision-makers have tended to regard climate change more or less as just another environmental problem – though more serious and more complicated. This paper shall maintain that climate change represents a new generation of environmental problems that will also require revisiting the relationships between science, society and policy.

The relationship between global warming and climate change is well documented (IPCC 2007). With global warming our natural environment is undergoing fundamental changes on a global scale. Climate changes may in turn change the conditions for life on earth, as we know it today. At the same time as climate change is a natural phenomenon, it is ‘man-made’ in two different but interdependent ways.

On the one hand, the observed and predicted climate changes as caused by global warming are the result, even though unintended, of human activity. Climate change has been claimed to be the greatest market failure in history (Stern 2006). Modern society is built on extensive burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal resulting in increased emissions of CO₂ to the atmosphere and hence to global warming. Increased emission of other greenhouse gases (GHGs), like methane and nitrous oxide, is also due to human activity.

On the other hand, climate change is ‘man-made’ also in the sense that it is only visible to man and society through science. That is not to say that climate change as a physical phenomenon is a ‘social construct’. The problem is indeed real and exists irrespective of our knowledge about it. The point is – as we shall discuss below – that without climate research, without the concerted action of scientist under the IPCC and without the systematic and convincing dissemination from this scientific activity to policymakers and the public, climate change would not have been visible as a problem for society today.

This paper is an attempt to examine the links between knowledge – and in particular scientific knowledge – on the one hand and the ability to cope with the challenges of climate change on the other. The first main part of the paper is a (mainly) theoretical discussion of how our conceptualization of environmental problems interacts with our understanding of the relationships between nature and society and how the understanding of the role of science is an integral part of this ‘complex’. It is maintained that the problem of climate change exists in an overlapping borderland between nature and society. Based on this theoretical analysis the paper goes on to discuss six paradoxes and contradictions that may be observed in our attempts to turn scientific knowledge about climate and climate change into practical action. The final section of the paper is a discussion of alternatives to traditional ways of linking science and policies.

Traditional and modern environmental problems

As an intake to better understanding the nature of climate change and how it relates to scientific knowledge, we shall make an ‘ideal-type’ distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ environmental problems.

Traditional environmental problems are – put simply – environmental problems that can be perceived and identified in time and space. Examples may be sewage polluting rivers and lakes, traffic noise, industrial smoke causing forest death or health problems, deforestation due to agricultural or industrial expansion and depletion of mineral resources. In short, traditional environmental problems are all these negative effects on nature and environment that human activities may inflict upon nature and which people experience and are able to observe in their daily life.

At the same time as society has come a long way in dealing with traditional environmental problems, mankind has become confronted with a different category of environmental challenges. For the sake of simplicity, and in order to contrast them with the traditional type, I shall refer to them as modern environmental problems. These problems differ from traditional environmental problems by being ‘invisible’ and hidden from immediate perception. Unlike the traditional type, they are also more difficult to fix in time and space. They are diffused and built into the very structure of our societies. Climate change is probably the hottest issue as an example of a modern environmental problem. But there are others, like the threats posed to biodiversity, invisible toxic materials in our clothes and food or the hitherto unknown consequences of gene manipulation (Beck 2005).

Modern environmental problems may be seen as examples of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin 1968) on a global scale, where the sum effects of millions of individual ‘small’ decisions add up to global problems. In the case of global warming and climate change the distance between causes and effects is, moreover, increased by the fact that cause and effect are separated not only in space but also in time. The most serious effects of global warming and climate change lie in the future.

The contrasts between traditional and modern environmental problems may be summarized in a simplified manner as in Table 1.

Table 1. Traditional and modern environmental problems

	Traditional	Modern
Causation	Caused by (easily) identifiable human activities – for example, pollution of rivers, industrial smoke or deforestation	Many and diffuse causes, or causes may be integrated with the way society is organized (e.g. emission from transport)
Visibility	Visible damage to local environments	Damage as a rule not directly visible, but must be identified by means of scientific research
Importance of time	Cause and effect can relatively easily be linked in time; those who are causing the problems are also those who suffer the consequences	Cause and effects are not easily linked in time; the environmental damage may lie in the future; those causing the problem may escape the effects
Importance of space	Cause and effects are linked in space	Cause and effects are not easily linked in space; diffuse causes like burning of fossil fuels or gene-manipulated plants spreading
Role of science	The problem as a rule identifiable through common knowledge; science supports and ‘expands’ common understanding of the problem and how to solve it	The problem is made visible only by means of scientific knowledge and expertise; the findings of research are often not supported by common knowledge or daily experience of people

One difference between traditional and modern environmental problems that is particularly important for our discussion is how the two forms of environmental problems relate to science and scientific knowledge. Whereas traditional environmental problems can be analysed and understood within the tradition of classical normal science, modern environmental problems require new approaches to understanding the society–science nexus.

Traditional environmental problems and ‘normal science’

Traditional environmental problems go together with ‘normal science’ (Kuhn 1970), or what Gibbons et al. (1994) refer to as ‘mode 1’ research. This is classical natural science as it has developed since the Renaissance and which has formed the basis for our modern technology-based society. It is also within this paradigm that our conventional understanding of the distinction between natural and social sciences places itself. The logic of ‘normal science’ is to expand our scientific knowledge about nature. This in turn has developed the knowledge basis for man's control over nature and the capacity to take advantage of nature by means of increasingly more advanced technologies.

‘Normal science’ about nature claims independence from society. The role of science is to produce true and objective knowledge about an unchangeable nature that is external to society. The ideal goes at least back to Galileo who claimed that ‘ … the conclusions of natural science are true and necessary, and the judgement of man has nothing to do with them’ (Ravetz 1996: 18). Nature and society are two separate spheres of reality. Nobody but other scientists can control and validate scientific knowledge. ‘ … (T)he scientist came to regard himself as independent of society and to consider science as a self-validating enterprise which was in society but not of it’ (Merton 1973: 268). The role of the scientist is to look into nature ‘on behalf of’ society and find out how nature works (Latour 2004) and, if human activities have caused damage to nature, provide knowledge about the ‘natural state’ that ideally should be re-established (EC 2000). This is science about a nature without people (Beck 2005), that is, nature that can (and should) be understood as a natural system independent of society. To the extent that society inflicts damage on this natural system, science (i.e. experts) can provide the answers to how damage can be minimized or avoided. The scientific expert's role is, in short, to serve as some sort of interpreter on behalf of nature. ‘Care must be taken that substances produced by humans do not interfere with any of the Earth's biochemical processes (environmental management must monitor natural processes and human activities to ensure that no crucial process is upset)' (Barrow 2006: 43).

Even though there is a strong tradition within the social sciences claiming that the same scientific ideal should apply to the social sciences, this is not possible. That is not to say that the social sciences are unable to produce objective knowledge or tell the truth about social reality. The basic and fundamental difference between the natural and the social sciences is that whereas the natural sciences study a reality that has no consciousness about its own existence, the social sciences study social reality made up of humans who are capable of relating consciously to knowledge about themselves as being the units making up society. Unlike society, nature will not on its own reflect on and respond to knowledge about the laws of nature. Social science knowledge about, for example, power relationships in society may well establish more or less well-proven ‘laws’ about power relations; but once these laws are established, people (i.e. society) may (or will certainly) use this knowledge to relate actively to processes in society in such ways that what was true one day may not be equally true the next day or after some time. The social sciences cannot isolate themselves from society in the same way as has been possible (at least in theory) for the natural sciences. The social sciences are part of, and integrated in, society in such ways that they serve as constructive forces in society. The way we, for example, study poverty serves to constitute poverty as a phenomenon in society (Albæk 1995). And the way we thus determine poverty has important implications for how various groups and interests in society relate to the phenomenon – and in turn, how the phenomenon is again studied and analysed tomorrow.

The social sciences have never succeeded in establishing themselves outside society in the same sense, as has been the case with the natural sciences. In addition, the social sciences have never succeeded in elevating themselves over the general public debate. In almost any policy controversy, one may see social scientists and social science results used to defend very different conclusions and strands of argument. This is not necessarily to say that one is right and the other wrong. Studies of, for example, poverty or power need to be based on conceptual frameworks (as, for example, a relative or an absolute definition of poverty; Albæk 1995). There often is no way of deciding scientifically which one is ‘right’ and which one is ‘wrong’.

We may now paint a simple picture of the traditional conception about the division between nature and society – and hence also the division between the natural and the social sciences. This is a picture of nature and society as two separate but interlinked systems (Figure 1). Each system works according to its own logic and should be analysed and studied as independent from the other. On the other hand, the two systems relate to each other. Nature provides ‘the environment’ for society, and hence society depends on nature. Society also influences on nature and may cause damage to nature. This interdependence makes it important for society to gain knowledge about and insight into the dynamics of nature.

Figure 1. Nature and society as independent systems.

The ideal role of the natural sciences is to ‘translate’ the facts about nature to society, and ideally, the social sciences shall facilitate the implementation of this knowledge in society.

There is ample evidence that scientific knowledge is indeed used and turned into action. Science has made it possible for man to manage and control nature more effectively – and to repair (at least partly) the damage that man's exploitation of nature has caused. Science, in short, builds on and expands man's practically based knowledge about nature and how nature works. This use of scientific knowledge does not remove conflicting interests concerning priorities in environmental policies. However, scientific knowledge makes choices clearer – and use of knowledge will be linked to conflicting interests in society in a more or less transparent manner.

That is not to say that research and scientific knowledge necessarily and always lead to ‘scientifically correct’ conclusions. Research results may be shelved, put away or used selectively to strengthen or weaken arguments in political controversies. Research results and scientific arguments may even be used to boost an argument or support a cause also when research results turn out to be unsubstantiated or misinterpreted.

Hence, in spite of evidence that industrial pollution in western societies has been reduced over time, surveys have shown people to believe that pollution is becoming more serious (Ungar 2000). In the 1980s, the observation of dying forests in Central Europe was linked to research on acid rain (WCED 1987). The linking of observations of sick trees and dying fish with research that claimed to explain the problem with acid rain led to extensive measures to reduce NO _x and SO₂ emissions. This has been relatively successful: the problem was addressed and resulted in cleaner air, better health and reduced fish death. As far as forest death is concerned, however, research has shown later that there was and is practically no link between acid rain and forest death. Widespread forest death was never really an extensive problem, but restricted to specific local areas and mainly caused by local industrial pollution (Lomborg 2001). In a similar vein, research on the danger of residential radon was over-interpreted as posing a more serious danger, and for more people, than has turned out to be reasonable (Kabat 2008: Chapter 5). The conclusion that we may draw is that the use or non-use of scientific knowledge is not solely a scientific question. Knowledge is turned into action by societal interests.

Modern environmental problems, climate and the changing relationship between nature, science and society

Climate change is one of the clearest examples of what we above termed ‘modern environmental problems’. Climate change cannot be understood and treated only as a problem in nature. It is representative of a type of challenge to society which is the result of man not only using science to discover and understand the laws of nature, but using this knowledge to change nature. Climate change is not a ‘damage’ inflicted on nature that can be repaired like the discharge of poison in a river or smoke in the air. Climate change is the (it is true – unintended) result of man's impact on nature that has changed basic properties of nature itself. To the extent that this observation is valid, it must also change our conception of natural science as elevated over and detached from societal interests. Science takes on a double role as not only examining the external reality of nature as an unchangeable system but also to serve as an instrument for changing the same system. These changes are generated not by natural processes in nature itself but by society's encroachment on these natural processes.

The climate issue is probably the best case for understanding how the relationships between nature, natural science and society have become blurred. In fact it all has to do with how mankind's ability to take advantage of the knowledge produced by modern science has changed not only society but indeed also science and nature. Figure 2 is an attempt to illustrate this relationship.

Figure 2. Nature and society as interlinked systems.

Nature and society should be seen not only as interdependent, but also as two interlinked systems where the boundaries between them are becoming blurred (Beck 2005: 154). When nature and society are seen as interlinked in this way, the clear distinction between the social and the natural sciences also gets blurred. The natural sciences will no longer be sufficient to analyse and understand all changes in nature, and indeed not how these changes can be responded to by society (Hulme 2009; O'Brien 2009). Hence, the natural sciences will lose their supremacy as elevated judges and guardians of the truth about nature. If nature is to be understood as a more or less malleable system interlinked with and changeable by society, the natural sciences will be confronted with much of the same challenges that confront the social sciences. Sciences become linked with and governed not only by their internal scientific logic but also by societal interests. In the same way as the social sciences not only analyse society but also impact on the way society functions, so will the natural sciences have to take seriously the fact that they may interfere with nature in similar ways.

The climate problem is an expression of what Ulrich Beck calls the ‘risk society’ and which is explained as an expression of ‘reflexive modernity’ (Beck 1994, 2005) whereby modern society by its capacity to intervene in its own environment has set off processes in society and the environment that ‘reflect’ back and change its own functional logic. Under the norms of ‘normal science’ (Funtowicz and Ravetz 2008) the difference between the social and the natural sciences could be portrayed as follows:

… . . (S)ocial science forms an integral part of the self-understanding of society. No such thing can be said about nature, which is majestically indifferent to what human beings might think about it. (Albæk 1995: 93)

It is of course true that nature itself cannot reflect on its own existence. But the point is that if nature and society are interlinked in reflexivity, it will not be true that nature is ‘majestically indifferent to what human beings might think about it’. On the contrary, a nature that is increasingly formed by human intervention – and where new risks and environmental challenges appear as side-effects of human intervention – will indeed also become an integral part of the self-understanding of society. Hence our disagreement about climate change cannot be reduced to a dispute about climate change as a natural phenomenon, it is also a social and cultural phenomenon and impacts on how we as society relate to nature and to each other (Hulme 2009). This is the white spot in the body of climate research (O'Brien 2009). One may say with Novotny et al. (2001: 1) that society has begun to speak back to science, and hence science will have to come to terms with its own success. Climate science may be a clear example.

Contradictions and paradoxes

Based on the discussion above I shall claim that one important reason why it is so difficult to cope with climate change – and to treat coping measures as scientific problems – has to do with the nature of the problem itself. Climate change is a phenomenon in nature as convincingly documented by climate research. However, social drivers cause climate change. It is only when conceptualized in a societal context that climate change becomes a problem for society that requires policy measures to be formulated and implemented. This is underlying a number of overlapping contradictions and paradoxes that I shall discuss in more detail in the following.

The competition between traditional and modern environmental problems

In political and policy terms the climate problem is one among an – in principle – infinite number of environmental problems, bigger and smaller. As is the case in all management and policymaking, there is a competition of prioritizing and agenda setting. I shall maintain that in spite of the heavy scientific underpinning of the seriousness of the climate issue, it will easily lose in the prioritizing competition with other and more traditional environmental issues. There are several reasons for this. (1) Traditional environmental problems are immediate and visible. They will more often than not be local problem in the sense that they affect specific areas and communities. Hence, they can more easily mobilize local support. (2) This is why it may be easier to translate into practical action knowledge about adaptation than knowledge about mitigation (Rayner 2010: 617). Knowledge about how climate change may strike a concrete local community is more similar to traditional environmental problems than knowledge about how one household's use of energy is part of and should be acted upon as a global environmental problem. Human kind's need to adapt to environmental changes is nothing new (Adger et al. 2009). (3) Knowledge about traditional environmental problems may be more easily linked to problems and situations as people can perceive them in daily life. Knowledge about pollution of the local environment can more easily be linked to everyday life than the threat of sea-level rising gradually and becoming a problem in the future. Knowledge about such issues will more easily link up to and support policy action. Climate-change issues remain a more ‘academic problem’. (4) Solving traditional environmental problems will as a rule represent short-term positive effects for local communities whereas climate measures often are seen as costs without immediate benefits. Most benefits related to climate mitigation policies lie in an uncertain future. People generally tend to prefer short-term benefits. This is why economists include a discount rate in cost–benefit analyses. And this is why the Stern report has based its calculations on a very low discount rate in order to make mitigating measures undertaken today look ‘profitable’ (Stern 2006). (5) Political and economic measures to mitigate climate change and/or adapt to climate change may also come in direct conflict with other and more traditional strands of environmental policy. We see striking examples of this in contemporary environmental conflicts. The need to substitute traditional energy sources based on fossil fuels with renewable energy will certainly infringe upon traditional conservation values like protection of landscape qualities and preservation of nature. We see this clearly demonstrated in conflicts over hydro-power development plans, development of wind power parks and the discussion about biofuel development. Today we see clear tendencies of a bipolar development within the environmental movement: those who are primarily concerned with classical environmental issues and nature protection on the one side and those concerned primarily with the threats of climate change on the other.

The paradox of the irrelevance of tacit knowledge – the knowledge–action paradox

We have observed that scientific knowledge about traditional environmental problems, like pollution of air and water, deforestation and landscape degradation, as a general rule links well up with people's perceptions, their experience and understanding of how things really are. Scientific knowledge is supported by ‘tacit knowledge’ (Polanyi 1967; Nonaka et al. 2008). In the case of knowledge about climate change this is different. Here scientific knowledge has little (if at all) support in tacit knowledge. Most people do not experience climate change, even if we may experience that summers get warmer, and those who travel to the polar areas may observe less ice and more open water, or farmers in Africa may experience that rainy seasons are becoming more erratic. These experiences are not consistent, and to the extent that they are really felt, they may not be conceptualized or understood as climate change (Magrath 2010: 895). Also, the problems are often not experienced by the same people who will have to implement measures to mitigate climate change. Hence it is generally accepted that the poor countries in Africa will be among those hardest hit by climate change. But the poor people in Africa can do little to mitigate these changes (Magrath 2010). Mitigating measures will have to be set in where emissions are taking place – and where somewhat warmer summers may not at all be felt as a burden! The point is that effective climate action is hampered by lack of consistency between scientific knowledge and people's experience and tacit knowledge possessed by society. This may be seen as a ‘knowledge–action paradox’. What scientists take for granted – what may actually be ‘tacit knowledge’ within the scientific community – may be in conflict with the immediate experience and ‘tacit knowledge’ of lay people. Science is becoming increasingly specialized and able to unearth dynamics in nature that represent fundamental threats to society, but at the same time these threats are only visible through the spectacles of specialized science and can hardly be linked to people's perceived reality. Hence the links between knowledge and relevant actions become more difficult to identify in ways which link them to socially meaningful actions.

What we are left with is a public scene where specialists and experts are brought together by media either to disagree on an issue or in concerted agreement to join a campaign to address a challenge. In order for collective action to take place there is a need for some sort of collective mobilization, or what Ungar calls ‘whirlwind effect’, that is, a rapidly occurring series of simultaneous events with ‘bridging metaphors to the popular culture’ that draw people's attention to a problem or a risk in such a way that the issue takes on its own momentum (Ungar 2000: 11). Her example is the success of the ozone hole discourse to mobilize striking and easily comprehensible metaphors like you and me being literally hit by lethal rays penetrating the protecting shield of ozone. The penetration metaphor also fits in well with familiar scenes from the virtual reality of video games and ‘space reality’. The ‘whirlwind effect’ cannot alone explain the process that led to a surprisingly rapid translation of scientific knowledge about depletion of the ozone layer into practical action in the form of regulation of industry and international regulation. The ozone problem was simpler, alternative technologies were easily available and a limited number of actors were decisive for solving the problem. However, the ‘whirlwind effect’ may have been important in raising public awareness and create a public pressure on key actors.

The climate issue does not lend itself to the same kind of ‘bridging metaphor-building’ where scientific knowledge more or less uncritically can be linked to some sort of bandwagon effect and strengthen and give legitimacy to a sweeping movement; one important reason is that the effects of climate change are not immediate and cannot be portrayed as a threat that will hit everybody in the same way irrespective of where they live.

Specialization versus the need for integrating knowledge

Ever since the climate issue entered global policy with full force with the Rio Summit in 1992, there has been a strong call for cross- and trans-disciplinary science to support sustainable development and to provide action-relevant knowledge to meet the challenge of climate change (UNCED 1992; CEU 2006):

The scale of global climate change which dominates the political agenda of today exposes more clearly than ever before the critical shortcomings of discrete scientific disciplines. Indeed the single-minded pursuit of disciplinary research could well prove counterproductive to scientific excellence. These questions can be answered only, if at all, through innovative and collaborative research efforts, utilizing, integrating, and perhaps reinterpreting the best pieces of knowledge and understanding that existing disciplines have to offer. (NAVF 1990: 13–14)

The paradoxical problem is, however, that the scientific progress that has on the one hand created the climate problem and on the other hand the knowledge about the problem is characterized by ever-increasing specialization and fragmentation. True, modern science is also characterized by teamwork and cooperation and may even be portrayed as an ‘industry’ (Ravetz 1996). But this is typically cooperation between specialists. It may also be true that traditional disciplinary borders are challenged by scientific innovation across traditional disciplines. The result, however, is often new specialities putting up their own borders and demarcations around them, and hence actually adding to the fragmentation of science (Ziman 1994). In this sense, science has removed itself from society and become more and more closed to non-scientists.

It is hence reasonable to maintain that at the same time as science has become increasingly important for changing our environment, science has become more alienated from society. Scientific knowledge is specialized to such an extent that even within the scientific community ignorance about the specialized fields of colleagues is spreading, referred to by Shelly Ungar as the ‘knowledge–ignorance paradox’ (KIP) (Ungar 2000). With the proliferation of specialized expertise, fewer and fewer are ‘competent’ to control the increasing number of specialists. There is practically no room left for the ‘public intellectual’ in modern society (Jacoby 1987).

The more society gets dependent on advanced and specialized knowledge, the more difficult it will be for non-experts to grasp and critically relate to this exponentially growing body of knowledge. And hence knowledge itself will not be enough to cause action on a problem to be taken.

Hence the paradoxical development that together with the explosion in scientific knowledge and an ever greater ability to manipulate and change nature, goes a widening gap between experts and ‘ordinary’ people (including politicians and decision-makers). This has also led to the paradoxical development that together with the explosion of science and insight into aspects of nature that were unthinkable only a couple of decades ago, fewer and fewer people have actually the competence to take part in an informed debate based on scientific insight.

The impossibility of scientific solutions to modern environmental problems

The development of the natural sciences has brought with it an engineering problem-solving tradition. Science can – through engineering skills – develop ‘scientific solutions’ to problems in society. Engineering skills will also be important for meeting many of the challenges of climate change. But this is not the main point. The main point is that there are no obvious links from climate research and climate knowledge to policy action.

The science that has given us knowledge about climate does not at the same time lead us to solutions to the problem of climate change. Science has told us that climate change – at least to a considerable extent – is man-made, and it has also identified human activities that cause climate to become warmer, for example, burning of coal and car traffic. But the actual effects for society, the costs and for whom are highly uncertain (Aldy et al. 2009); and the solutions do not follow. For example, should we develop alternative forms of renewable energy or should we reorganize society so that we reduce energy consumption? Is the answer to be found in technological innovation and engineering skills or in reorganizing our societies? The practical answer may be yes for both! But in what combination and how do we combine? Or is part of the answer that we should be less concerned with mitigation and more with adaptation (Rayner 2010)? This discussion is constantly going on and it will continue. The point is to underscore a basic insight: there is no ‘scientific solution’ to how we solve the climate problem. Science has presented society with a problem but not with its solution. The solution lies in society, not in nature. Or more correctly, the solution lies in the interaction between nature and society and will require new ways of linking natural and social sciences to practical problem-solving. This, however, also means that the natural scientists will need to enter into much of the same role in relation to society as the social scientists have had to accommodate to for a long time – that of taking part in a bargaining over political priorities and competing values.

The top-down versus bottom-up paradox

This leads us to a fundamental question concerning the linking of science and action: Who are the relevant users of knowledge? The fundamental challenge of climate change is the way in which the problem has become an integrated part of both nature and society. The well-known slogan ‘Think Globally but Act Locally’ hits at the core of the dilemma. The challenge is global but it is caused by billions of individual acts and decisions every day; and in order to address the problem, billions of big and small actions and decisions all over the globe have to be changed. That means the users of knowledge are found everywhere. They are individuals, families, companies, local and central governments and international organizations. In this context the problem is not knowledge or lack of knowledge. The problem is the context for using knowledge and the incentives to actually turn knowledge into action. In this sense the climate crisis may prove to be a crisis of governance more than a crisis of the environment (Hulme 2009: 310).

Climate change is a ‘public bad’ and to turn the trend would be to produce a ‘public good’ (Sterner 2009). Hence the climate problem is a classical dilemma of collective action in handling problems of common good (Hardin 1968). In principle, the individual actor would profit by not participating provided everyone else (or a majority) participates (the free rider principle). Hence we are confronted with what may be referred to as a ‘social dilemma’ (Ostrom 2009) where we fail to reach at the socially optimal outcome because individual rationalities fail to add up to the best solution for the collective. In the case of climate change, the situation is even more pessimistic as the beneficiaries of common action may be found far from the contributors both in space and in time. This is also part of the complex that we have discussed above and which makes the whole exercise of averting climate change an intellectual, theoretical and moral issue more than the outcome of rational choice. It is only comprehendible for the actors if seen through the eyes of scientists and experts whom we have no chance to control or to talk with on equal terms. This has led some to call for a ‘new social contract of science’ whereby scientists should take on a more explicit responsibility for addressing the most urgent issues of society (Funtowicz et al. 1998: 104).

The logic of social dilemmas in most cases is seen as calling for top-down action in terms of, for example, institutional changes in order to change the framework of action for the individual actors (Hare et al. 2010). In the case of climate change this is in principle relevant at all levels from the global down to the levels of local governments and families. This is also why many argue that the basic condition for coming to grips with the climate problem at a global level is an effective and binding international agreement. The flagship of this approach is the Kyoto Protocol with its ambition to lay the foundation for a binding intergovernmental climate regime (Schneider 1998).

Others maintain that the top-down approach has actually failed (Prins and Rayner 2007a; Rayner 2010), and are less pessimistic about the possibility to stimulate collective action and argue that in spite of conventional theory predicting collective action in face of social dilemmas to be more or less impossible, in fact a lot of collective action is actually taking place down at local levels (Ostrom 2009), and that in fact there are effective bottom-up alternatives for action (den Elzen and Beck 2004). Among the conditions for collective action to take place according to Ostrom is the availability of knowledge and open spread of information. Others have argued that deliberative practices make it possible to overcome social dilemmas. By having to defend our positions publicly we may suppress immediate short-sighted individual interests (Goodin 1996: 846). In any case, in order for action to be taken to address the threats of global warming one has to believe that there are countervailing forces to short-sighted self-interest. Confronted with the challenges of global warming and other man-made threats to modern society, scientists, decision-makers and individuals will have to act and apply available knowledge on the basis of moral obligation more than according to the logic of self-interested rational choice (Ravetz 1996; Holden 2002).

Along similar lines, Prins and Rayner have criticized the top-down approach of the Kyoto Protocol for misreading the problem of climate change. In their perspective, climate change is not a discrete problem that lends itself to one elegant top-down solution. It is a complex (or ‘clumsy’) problem that should be approached by various means and from different angles and levels (Prins and Rayner 2007a, 2007b).

The self-perception of scientists (still locked up in the ‘traditional’ paradigm?)

Modern science is contextualized and driven forward by specialization (Ungar 2000; Novotny et al. 2001). The reward system in science is in fact more or less the same as the one Merton described in his classical article from 1942 emphasizing science as a system driven forward by forces internal to science, by the critique and recognition from one's own peers (Merton 1973). Even though the concern with the environment in general and global warming in particular has stimulated science with a broader focus, and where criteria such as practical applicability and relevance to real problems have come more to the foreground, the reward system of science also today is mostly ‘career driven’ and ‘academic driven’ (Weichselgartner and Kasperson 2010: 275). Generally natural scientists – also those who are concerned with producing ‘usable knowledge’ – tend to talk to society and to decision-makers rather than to talk with them. As modern science becomes more specialized and more removed from tacit knowledge the distance between scientists and ordinary people also increases. As is the case with climate change, scientists are actually the ‘problem owners’ in the sense that without the scientist as the link and door-opener between nature and society, climate change would not have been ‘visible’ to society. This places the scientist in a unique position, which it seems many climate scientists are also well aware of. Many see it as their role to educate politicians and the public, to ‘speak truth to power’, and seem to get frustrated and sometimes irritated when ‘the power’ seems not to listen. What I am saying is that many scientists seem to be locked up in the traditional paradigm where there existed a more or less linear relationship from scientific knowledge through engineering expertise to solutions. Scientists seem often to forget that in the complex interplay between knowledge, societal interests and nature, the scientist who wants to see his scientific knowledge translated into action must accept that the logic of society is not an extension of the logic of science.

I would like to round off the discussion with some concluding reflections on how science and practice can be interlinked and integrated in more fruitful ways in the face of the challenge of global climate change.

Concluding discussion

We started our discussion by asking (the rather rhetoric question) why, in spite of all our knowledge about climate change, so little climate action is taking place. The underlying assumption is that knowledge about a problem and its causes should lead to action to solve it. Our discussion should have led us to accept that with global warming and climate change we are confronted with a problem that does not have a decisive or a final solution. There is not one and best way to address the threat of climate change. With the effects that mankind has inflicted on nature we have sparked off processes that are already changing our climate and will continue to do so. Most importantly, we shall have to accept that climate change is not only a problem in nature; it is representative of a new generation of environmental challenges where human success in interfering with and exploiting nature has become ‘reflexive’ and changes nature itself. These changes are creating new uncertainties. They are making nature itself more unpredictable and hence making scientific knowledge more ad hoc. I have also argued that by these changes in the relationships between nature and society there will be a need to link the natural and social sciences in new ways.

This means that our conventional ways of thinking about the science–society nexus need to be revisited. A picture of reality where complex phenomena can be reduced to their simple atomic elements in such ways that society can apply its engineering skills to find practical solutions to problems in nature is no longer adequate. The new generation of environmental problems – such as global warming – must be addressed in the interface between nature and society, and for that purpose, we have no proven methodology. We shall need new ways of organizing knowledge and application of knowledge that overcome technocratic reductionism and include a wider range of sources and information (Funtowicz et al. 1998; Gallopin 1999; Weichselgartner and Kasperson 2010). This will need to be a methodology, which, instead of excluding values and societal interests, make the inclusion of values and societal interests a key concern.

One possible approach to this is the concept of ‘post-normal science’ (PNS) as developed by Funtowicz and Ravetz (1991, 2008) (see Figure 3). PNS is an effort to link science and governance and, as I read it, a possible approach to combine natural and social sciences. PNS is an attempt to place research in the interface between science and policy and may be seen as a form of ‘mode 2’ research (Gibbons et al. 1994), that is, as research carried out in the context of application and where the problems are seen as both scientific and social.

Figure 3. Post-normal science and climate change. Source: Based on Funtowicz and Ravetz (1991, 2008).

Figure 3 has been used as an illustration to relate PNS to traditional approaches to research and problem-solving.

The problem situation can be placed in relation to the two axes of ‘systems uncertainties’ and ‘decision stakes’. When both are low, we have the classical situation of application of ‘normal science’. This is the conventional expectation to how scientific knowledge through engineering skills and applied technologies solves practical problems. If either is medium we move towards the middle range. Put in simple terms, scientific knowledge here needs to be supplemented with judgements and policy-related assessments. In the outer range, we are in the sphere of ‘PNS’. This is where decisions are strongly related to interests and values and/or where the score on the systems uncertainty dimension is high.

I have placed the climate problem in the left-hand upper sector of the diagram. With the reservations, which I have already mentioned, scientific knowledge about climate change as a ‘natural’ phenomenon should be regarded as solid. Consequently, climate would get low or medium score on ‘systems uncertainties’. However, as I have tried to demonstrate in this paper, when the climate issue is placed within its societal context solutions to the problem get contested. Hence, the score on ‘decision stakes’ is high. However, ‘decision stakes’ may not be equally high for all issues related to or relevant for climate change. One challenge would be to identify climate-relevant policy measures that are win–win situations (Rayner 2010). Such win–win situations may be, for example, local improvements of transport infrastructure and new technologies that reduce emissions from urban traffic and which at the same time improve air quality and make urban life better for ordinary people. A comprehensive, binding and effective international agreement to regulate GHG emissions on a global scale would, on the other hand, have to be placed in the extreme upper left-hand corner of the diagram.

This approach places scientific knowledge in the science–practice nexus and may provide a framework for better understanding the conditions for linking knowledge and action. In situations where decision stakes are high, as in situations of conflicting interests and/or where institutions feel threatened, even well-founded scientific knowledge may be disputed or turned down – or the implications of the knowledge for practical solutions become contested. If this is the case, more traditional scientific research and more refinement and documentation of scientific evidence will not lead to more or better problem-solving. One may have to accept that there is actually not one strategy that can be identified and that will lead mankind to solving the problems related to climate change (Prins and Rayner 2007a). As I have pointed out above, our knowledge about climate change is not the same as knowledge about how the problem can be abated. The further we move from basic knowledge about the dynamics of global warming and climate change towards knowledge about measures of mitigation and adaptation, the more uncertain becomes the scientific basis for our knowledge and our actions. The problem may have to be attacked at various levels and in various contexts, and in settings where scientists and decision-makers meet to seek the best possible compromises rather than the one scientific solution.

Practical guidelines for how post-normal knowledge processes should be organized will need more methodological development work. The main challenge for such methodological development will be to avoid two equally dangerous pitfalls: On the one hand is the danger of simply reproducing a two-party forum where scientists and stakeholders talk to each other across the divide between science and practice. PNS will have to include stakeholders as partners in cross-disciplinary scientific processes and the methodology for this is not developed at present. On the other hand, the inclusion of stakeholders may lead to the danger of ‘action research’ or more traditional policy research. This is where stakeholders define the problem situation and policy researchers become ‘instruments’ for (often contending) interests in disputed decision situations. One obvious danger with the post-normal ideal for organizing research, and indeed with mode 2 research, is that science will lose its critical and truth-seeking function.

PNS is no panacea to solving the problem of climate change. On the contrary, the main message of this paper is that there is no such scientific panacea. The climate problem exists in a complex and ever-changing interface between nature, science and society, and PNS may be one possible approach to handling knowledge in this complex interface.

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of the CLIMADAPT project funded by the Research Council of Norway. Thanks are also due to the project leader, Geir Orderud, and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments and to Helena Dell'Ara for assistance with language editing.