Science, knowledge, values and forest policy

One of the main aims of Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences is to explore the role of science in the environmental policy-making process. Many environmental problems, such as transboundary acid rain, ozone depletion and marine pollution, were only recognised as policy issues because of scientific research. Science is also central to the making of policy on forests, the subject of this special issue. However, there is no such thing as pure ‘forest science’. Forest science is linked to other areas of scientific research, such as soil science, biology and genetics. Scientists have estimated that there is still more carbon stored in forests than there is in the world's atmosphere (Prentice et al. 2001), so forest science and climate science are inextricably interlinked as areas of scientific research. No environmental issue can nowadays be seen as an isolated area of enquiry; and certainly not forests.

The collection of articles in this special issue focuses on the relationship between knowledge (both scientific and other knowledges) and forest policy. In so doing, they engage with four important questions that are relevant to the study of environmental policy. The first question is what role, if any, do social values play in the scientific research process? Science is often characterised as value free. The positivist view holds that social values have no place in the scientific research process; should values be allowed to creep into science then the integrity and impartiality of the research process and its findings will be compromised. But can science be ever completely value free? Throughout history, scientific research has been driven by the curiosities and interests of people who, in turn, reflect the social values of the time and place in which they live. Today much policy relevant environmental research is driven by the priorities and social values of politicians, who indicate to scientists the sort of knowledge they need. Government-funded scientific research is often ring-fenced around certain areas of enquiry, whereas the corporate-funded research is usually directed at product development.

So scientific research is always socially situated, reflecting some social values rather than others. But even if social values shape research agendas, they should never be allowed to interfere with the scientific research process itselt; science should always strive to be value free in an epistemological sense, even though it can never be sociologically value free. Indeed, it can be argued that not only can scientific research never be value free in a social sense, but also that this is undesirable. Science should be harnessed towards identifying and solving those problems that people and societies face, of which none, arguably, is at present more urgent than climate change. Science can strive for objectivity, even while the questions that scientists research are unavoidably conditioned by social values (Ravetz 2003).

The framing of science as value free and striving for objectivity, and policy-making and politics as value-laden and unavoidably subjective, leads to a second question; what is the relationship between science and policy? In particular, how should the relationship between scientists and policy-makers be managed in a way that both allows scientists to protect their research and conclusions from political interference while also enabling policy-makers to accept scientific knowledge as an authoritative, objective and legitimate foundation for public policy? This is the question which I address in the first article of this volume. My contribution explores the science-policy interfaces for two international issues; climate change and forests. I argue that the science-policy interface between these two issues is very different. The interface for climate change was created in the form of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following a political demand for a clear scientific basis for making international climate policy. In the case of forests, no such demand has been expressed by the international forest policy community. Despite this, the forest science community eventually set out to create an international forest science-policy interface that, in some important respects, drew its inspiration from the IPCC model.

The third question is, what is the relationship between science and localised or traditional knowledge? A distinction often drawn in the literatures on anthropology and nature conservation policy is between traditional ecological knowledge and scientific knowledge. The term ‘traditional ecological knowledge’ refers to the knowledge that indigenous peoples have gathered about their local environments. The practice of traditional ecological knowledge dates back centuries, although it is only since the 1980s that the term itself has become widespread. Traditional ecological knowledge is seen to be non-exploitative of nature, respecting the limits to ecosystems, and promoting a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature. According to Fikret Berkes (1999), traditional ecological knowledge is intimately tied to localised cultures and traditions and is always embedded in a particular place. Science, by contrast, which aspires to universalism, may be seen as disembedded knowledge. Scientific forestry, local forest communities often argue, is used to organise trees for commercial purposes, through geometrically neat seeding patterns and tree felling at regular intervals to maximise yield. The disembeddedness of scientific forestry is often set up in opposition to the embeddedness of traditional knowledge on forests (Banuri and Marglin 1993).

However, the distinction between science and traditional ecological knowledge has been questioned. In many African and Asian countries, the knowledge introduced by colonial foresters was passed on to local people and handed down through generations so that, over time, it became difficult to separate the traditional knowledge from the colonial (Antweiler and Mersmann 1996). Similarly, scientific knowledge often draws from the knowledge that local communities have of their ecosystems. Both science and traditional knowledge can therefore ‘know’ the same things. Another argument made against the distinction is that indigenous people arrive at knowledge of their local ecosystems using what are, in effect, scientific methods of inductive and deductive reasoning (although indigenous peoples do not actually use these terms, nor do they necessarily engage in experiments that are as complex as those conducted by scientists). For example, indigenous knowledge of the healing properties of a leaf when applied to a burn or wound is gathered over generations after what are, in effect, field experiments, with the leaf applied in different ways to different injuries and the results monitored to see if any general patterns emerge. But while the distinction between science and traditional ecological knowledge is contested on epistemological grounds, it is highly significant politically, as Newing argues in the second article of this volume.

Newing focuses on the treatment of traditional forest-related knowledge in international forest politics. Since the 1992 United Nations Conference and Development, indigenous peoples have argued that traditional forest-related knowledge should be respected and conserved, in part to strengthen their claims that they should be allowed to participate in international forest policy-making. But, as Newing argues, the idea of traditional knowledge shelters meanings other than those invoked by indigenous peoples. The governments of forest-rich developing countries have agreed to mention the term ‘traditional forest-related knowledge’ in international forest policy outputs to strengthen their claim that they should receive a share of the royalties that business corporations receive from the sale of agricultural, pharmaceutical and biotechnological products, which are manufactured using the knowledge of the traits of plant species harvested from tropical forests. In many cases, such knowledge was initially acquired by indigenous peoples and local communities. The term traditional forest-related knowledge thus serves as a surrogate for broader stakes, namely the financial benefits that accrue from the patenting of knowledge.

The distinction between science and traditional knowledge is also explored by Gillman and Erenler in the third article of this issue. Whereas Newing focuses on the international debate on traditional ecological knowledge, Gillman and Erenler ground this debate in South America and Africa, using cassava cultivation as a case study. They outline the importance of different traditional crop management systems in breeding different genetic strains of cassava, and in doing so they identify a relationship between cultural diversity and biodiversity. They argue that interventions by scientific research laboratories and businesses can produce improvements in cassava, which from a commodification viewpoint are termed as ‘improvements’. But such interventions can undermine traditional resource management systems and lead to negative consequences for long-term sustainable forest management. Gillman and Erenler examine the different claims made to knowledge on forest species by indigenous peoples and scientists, a debate which, they observe, is compounded by, first, the problem of defining clearly the traditional knowledge holders, and, second, the difficulty of disentangling the contributions made to the development of different cassava species by indigenous peoples and scientists. These problems are currently being explored by parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. In different ways, therefore, the second and third articles of this issue engage with traditional knowledge and the competing claims made by different actors to the benefits received from knowledge patenting. Gillman and Erenler also provide some important insights into the different approaches to crop production and the sustainability of traditional indigenous management systems and genetic intervention.

The fourth question is, how does scientific knowledge interact with other variables in the environmental policy-making process? Scientific research is often, and unavoidably, characterised by some major uncertainties, especially when there are complex, and often poorly understood, positive feedbacks. This is especially the case in some areas of climate science, although the basic thesis that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are leading to a rise in the global mean temperature of the Earth is no longer seriously disputed. But even when environmental science is clear, this rarely leads to straightforward and commonly accepted policy responses. Social values are always contestable and never fully accepted, and different political interests will inevitably disagree on how an environmental problem should be framed, the time horizon that should be used in policy planning and how scarce economic resources should be deployed.

The role of science as one variable amongst many in forest policy is explored in the fourth article by McDermott, Cashore and Kanowski. They observe some major differences in forest policy trends in different regions and argue that a focus on just science, or indeed on any single explanatory factor, is insufficient to explain these differences. Other key variables include the level of economic development, the role and type of landownership, and whether or not a given policy is enforced. Along with science these variables have intersecting as well as independent effects that need to be researched further to understand the different ways that policy principles for sustainable forest management are translated and implemented on the ground. McDermott, Cashore and Kanowski hypothesise that the greater the scientific consensus on an environmental problem the more likely it is that highly prescriptive policies will be adopted.

The role of variables other than science and knowledge in forest policy is also explored by Innes in the final article of this volume. Innes shows that although science can play an important role in catalysing policy innovations, science alone is insufficient. Innes examines innovation primarily in a developed capitalist country context, a focus that is both contrasting to Gillman and Erenler's article on indigenous methods of forest management, yet also complementary in that both articles seek to identify how improvements can be realised that are consistent with long-term sustainable forest management. In a rapidly changing world, the forest sector needs to be open and responsive to change if forests are to be conserved and sustainably managed. Forest sector innovation comes in different guises, including using the latest science in the invention and deployment of new forest-sector technologies, the development and application of new, more sustainable, forest management practices, the design of innovative forest products and the innovation of new forest business management systems. Governments have an important role to play in enabling innovation. For example, if forest small holders are to change their management practices they will need incentives, and this requires government economic policies that provide benefits to those who are prepared to experiment with innovation. So in the forest sector as elsewhere, innovation is as much a social concern as it is a scientific-technical one.

While knowledge from science is important for sustainable forest management, so too is the knowledge from other disciplines, such as economics (in particular on market intelligence), political science, business management and the law. Segura-Bonilla (2003) argues that a new concept – the system of innovation – is emerging to represent the role of science and other sources of knowledge in policy-making and implementation, including knowledge on production processes, marketing, the institutional framework and human resource training. How these different knowledges interact will affect the process of learning in a system of innovation (Segura-Bonilla 2003: 379). A system of innovation is shaped by and grounded within institutions, but not necessarily accepting of the institutional status quo. Because institutions are dynamic rather than static entities, an effective system of innovation can help to catalyse fundamental institutional changes when these are necessary to realise shared goals, such as sustainable forest management or carbon sink enhancement.

The articles in this collection remind us that many different stakeholders have an interest in scientific research and how it is applied. The term ‘civic science’ denotes the view that citizens have a stake in environmental science and policy, which should no longer be viewed as the exclusive preserve of scientists and policy-makers (for example, Clark and Illman 2001). Civic science seeks to bring the values and normative considerations involved in scientific research to the fore, and encourage greater citizen engagement and participation in the production of scientific knowledge and how it is applied, so that science becomes more responsive to public needs (Bäckstrand 2003). The idea of civic science may present a problem for scientists; how should they maintain credibility as unbiased researchers while also taking into account the needs and interests of citizens and communities? Guldin suggests that for a scientist to step over the line ‘to become an advocate or apologist for a particular policy – or even being perceived as an advocate or apologist – is detrimental to one's scientific credibility and independence. This is among the most noteworthy risks associated with operating at the science-policy interface’ (Guldin 2003: 335). On this view, scientists should confine themselves to communicating knowledge, but not to advocating policy. But not all would agree. Being a scientist should not necessarily preclude one from being an advocate, although it does suggest the need for those who work as both scientists and policy-makers to manage carefully any possible conflicts of interests. Even if one accepts that science and policy should be separate domains, the notion of civic science reminds us that scientists are citizens too, and they have a moral responsibility to consider how their work will be used, the values and interests it will promote and the type of socio-political order it will produce.