Chapter 13: Science and Sustainable Development

The so-called ‘scientific method’ is just one of many approaches to understanding the world around us, but it has special significance in the world today. For two centuries or more the scientific method has proven its worth as an especially effective way of learning about the world and developing solutions to problems. Policy-makers concerned with the project of sustainable development often like to be seen to be ‘listening to the science’, and scientific data can command a particular kind of authority based on a shared perception of the objectivity and logical rigour associated with the scientific method. At the same time, science can be less objective than it seems at first sight: research is often deliberately steered (by funders and other stakeholders) in particular directions for particular purposes, and all science takes place within a political and cultural context. Scientific knowledge also influences sustainable development by its effect on public discourses, for example by contributing to public understanding of environmental crises, their causes, and possible solutions; and yet, relevant scientific knowledge sometimes has little effect on discourses, as it is often intentionally or unintentionally ignored. Thus, the relationship between science and sustainable development is more complex than it might at first appear. In the first part of this chapter, we explore the scientific method and its special claims with regard to knowledge production. Science can play at least three distinct roles in relation to decision- and policy-making for sustainable development: it can deliver new concepts about the world around us, which shape public and political discourse; it can assist the development and implementation of new policy instruments, e.g. new technologies or management tools, based on scientific understandings of cause and effect; and it can offer symbolic legitimacy for decisions that might already have been made on other criteria. We then look at how science interacts with sustainable development in practical terms. We present several different (co-existing) models for the way that science feeds into decision- and policy-making. We ask whether scientists or policy-makers (or both!) need to be better educated about each other’s cultures, practices, and priorities, and discuss how so-called ‘boundary organisations’ can help to communicate between the two camps. (These topics are taken up in more detail in ‘Chapter 14: Science-Policy Interfaces and Sustainable Development: Institutionally Bridging the Knowledge–Action Gap’ by Velander and colleagues.) In the second part of the chapter, we look at three case studies of the interaction between science and sustainable development. These case studies include (i) the effect of chemical pesticides on ecosystem integrity and human health; (ii) degradation of forest ecosystems; and (iii) exploitation of Arctic oil and gas resources.