Transnational environmental policy:reconstructing ozone

Transnational Environmental Policy analyses a surprising success story in the field of international environmental policy making: the threat to the ozone layer posed by industrial chemicals, and how it has been averted. The book also raises the more general question about the problem-solving capacities of industrialised countries and the world society as a whole. Reiner Grundmann investigates the regulations which have been put in place at an international level, and how the process evolved over twenty years in the US and Germany.

Ozone and climate:scientific consensus and leadership

This article compares the cases of ozone layer protection and climate change. In both cases, scientific expertise has played a comparatively important role in the policy process. The author argues that against conventional assumptions, scientific consensus is not necessary to achieve ambitious political goals. However, the architects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operated under such assumptions. The author argues that this is problematic both from a theoretical viewpoint and from empirical evidence. Contrary to conventional assumptions, ambitious political regulations in the ozone case were agreed under scientific uncertainty, whereas the negotiations on climate change were much more modest albeit based on a large scientific consensus. On the basis of a media analysis, the author shows that the creation of a climate of expectation plus pressure from leader countries is crucial for success. © 2006 Sage Publication.

The role of expertise in governance processes

In present day knowledge societies political decisions are often justified on the basis of scientific expertise. Traditionally, a linear relation between knowledge production and application was postulated which would lead, with more and better science, to better policies. Empirical studies in Science and Technology studies have essentially demolished this idea. However, it is still powerful, not least among practitioners working in fields where decision making is based on large doses of expert knowledge. Based on conceptual work in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) I shall examine two cases of global environmental governance, ozone layer protection and global climate change. I will argue that hybridization and purification are important for two major forms of scientific expertise. One is delivered though scientific advocacy (by individual scientists or groups of scientists), the other through expert committees, i.e. institutionalized forms of collecting and communicating expertise to decision makers. Based on this analysis lessons will be drawn, also with regard to the stalling efforts at establishing an international forestry regime.