Public Engagement and Science and Technology Policy Options ...

Public Engagement and Science and Technology Policy Options (PESTO) Final Report
Coordinated by
Andrew Jamison with contributions from
Jose Andringa, Kees Dekker, Mario Diani, Marco Giuliani, Sue Holden, Lise
Kvande, Pål Næsje, Magnus Ring, Leonardas Rinkevicius, Johan Schot, Arni
Sverrisson, Bron Szerszynski, Mauro Tebaldi, Robbin te Velde, Patrick van
Zwanenberg, Brian Wynne, and Per Østby March 1999
Summary and Contents The research project, Public Engagement and Science and Technology Policy
Options (PESTO), SOE1-CT96-1016, has been conducted from July 1996 to
January 1999 with the support of the European Commission, through its
program in targeted socio-economic research (TSER). The project was carried
out by research teams in Denmark, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Our objective in the project has been to examine both the new social
networks that are being constructed in science and technology in different
European countries, particularly in pursuit of a more sustainable
development, and to see how the broader public interest is being taken into
account. This report presents a summary of the results of the project, drawing on
two published volumes of PESTO Papers and a large number of works in
progress. A full list of publications and working papers is appended to
this report. The final report has the following contents: 1) Introduction: Issues and Concepts
2) On the Public/Policy Interface (workpackage one)
3) On Networks and Brokers (workpackage two)
4) On Transnational Linkages (workpackage three)
5) Conclusions and Reflections
References
Appendix: The PESTO Research Process Chapter One
Introduction: Issues and Concepts
I. Background[1] Throughout Europe, science and technology policy is in a process of
reconstitution. On the one hand, there is a general trend towards
international collaboration and coordination, along with decreasing direct
national state control. There is also a growing commercialization and
privatization of research and development activities, as well as the
emergence of what has been termed a new, externally-determined "mode" of
knowledge production, which transcends traditional disciplinary and
institutional boundaries (Gibbons et al 1994). On the other hand, there has been a doctrinal shift in many areas of
science and technology to the new tasks of "sustainable development", which
often involve new combinations of corporate, governmental and non-
governmental actors. Emphasis is increasingly given in many national and
international research and development (or R&D) programs to the
institutionalization and development of environmental management procedures
and so-called cleaner technologies. As such, environmental R&D is no longer
the responsibility of a delimited sector; rather, environmental concern has
begun to be diffused across the entire realm of science and technology
policy in relation to a variety of different, and often conflicting,
projects of "ecological transformation". In a schematic form, environmentally related science and technology policy
can be seen to have gone through six main phases since the 1960s (see box).
Phases of Environmental Science and Technology Policy Period Emphasis
1) pre-68: awakening public education and debate
2) 1969-74: sectorization institution building
3) 75-80: public mobilization energy policy
4) 81-86: professionalization environmental assessment
5) 87-92: internationalization sustainable development
6) 93-: integration ecological transformation In the 1960s, a range of new societal problems were identified, from
chemical risks to automotive air pollution, which gave rise to widespread
public debates and eventually to a number of policy responses. The postwar
mode of techno-economic development, with its dependence on science-based
innovations and its relatively unproblematic view of science and
technology, was shown to have serious "side effects"; and the 1960s ushered
in a period of questioning, criticism and reexamination of the dominant
socio-economic development and science and technology policy doctrines
(Salomon 1977). By the end of the 1960s, the period of questioning had inspired both the
emergence of new activist groups, as well as a process of policy reform and
institution building. In this second phase, most European countries
established new state agencies to deal with environmental protection and
other newly-identified social problems, and environmental research and
technological development were organized in new settings. Many national
parliaments enacted more comprehensive environmental legislation and, at
the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in
1972, the environment was recognized as a new area of international policy
concern. In this period, there was, more generally, a reorientation of science and
technology policy to a societal agenda. In the influential report, Science,
Growth and Society in 1971 (the so-called Brooks report), the Organization
of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) proposed a range of new
societal areas for state support for scientific research and technological
development, as well as a new kind of "assessment" activity that was
suggested to be included in science and technology policy (cf. Elzinga and
Jamison 1995). One of the most important new science and technology policy
sectors, as they came to be called, was environmental protection. From the first oil crisis until about 1980, there was a shift in
environmentally related science and technology policy, as energy issues
moved to the top of many national political agendas, especially in relation
to nuclear energy. An important result of the energy debates of the 1970s
was a professionalization of environmental concern and an incorporation by
the established political structures of what had originally been a somewhat
delimited political issue (Jamison 1996). As a result, there was a both a
specialization and transformation of knowledge production. When nuclear energy was removed from many national political agendas in the
early 1980s, there was thus a range of expertise that had previously not
existed. In many European countries, there were university departments and
research institutes, as well as substantial state bureaucracies and non-
governmental organizations, which had an institutional interest in
environmental and energy issues. But there was also, in this period, an
ideological shift in the world of science and technology policy, from a
social orientation to a more economic emphasis. A new language of
deregulation and strategic research, and new programs that stressed the
importance of "university-industry collaboration", came to replace the
notions of societal assessment and many of the sectorial programs that had
been established in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, however, environmental concern emerged once again, but in
a new more, "global" guise. A range of new environmental problems - climate
change, ozone depletion, biodiversity - replaced local problems as the main
areas of concern, and the solution to these problems came to be
characterized in the vocabulary of sustainable development, following the
report of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987,
which drew on terminology previously articulated by the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF). Environmental protection, and approaches to other societal
challenges, were reconceptualized in economic terms. The environmental
discourse, in particular, was reframed in more constructive, or reformist
language (Hajer 1995). The idea of sustainable development showed itself to be filled with
contradictions, and it has, in the intervening decade, proved notoriously
difficult to realize in practice. Following the so-called Earth Summit in
Brazil in 1992 (the UN Conference on Environment and Development), many of
the central actors in environmentally related science and technology policy
have come to characterize their activities as part of a more explicitly
defined environmental industrial policy, which has come to be termed
"ecological modernization" (Rinkevicius 1998). A growing number of business firms have adopted new methods of
environmental management, including environmental auditing, recycling of
waste products, and more efficient uses of resources and energy in
production processes, while new forms of regulation and policy making have
developed at the national and transnational levels (see box).
Principles of Ecological Modernization "pollution prevention pays"
academic-industry interaction
flexible, or soft regulation regimes
economizing of ecology
faith in advancement of science and technology
dialogue and consensus in decision-making
international cooperation
For some, the shift is seen as a change in production paradigm, while for
others it is primarily a shift in rhetoric and public relations.
Increasingly, however, environmental concern is being integrated into
corporate planning and innovation strategies, while many management and
engineering schools have begun to provide training in