Coping with Collapse: Ecological and Social Dynamics in Ecosystem Management
The role of ecological expertise in policymaking is evolving. In fields such as engineering or medicine, long-established professional standards guide the application of expertise in public decisionmaking. Professional ecologists, however, participate in decisionmaking in variable and changing ways. Some function as technicians, providing factual information used by decisionmakers; others as detectives, drawing attention to some previously unrecognized problem; and still others as advocates, adducing information designed to support a particular position. In some of the most successful applications of ecology, governments have actively sought the expert opinions of ecologists. In addition, scientists themselves have sometimes been able to define a broad consensus on what is known and not known, and they have clearly stated their uncertainties. Examples of effective contributions include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Houghton et al. 1990) and numerous reports by panels of the US National Research Council (see the Web site www.nas.edu). In other cases, ecological expertise has been manipulated by agencies or interest groups to serve narrow political goals (Wagner 2001, Hutchings et al. 1997). Ted Strong, director of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, commented that “science has become a commodity rather than a standard. Too many groups can go out and buy science, and then use science to reaffirm a political decision” (Dietrich 1995). Some ecologists have compounded the discipline's problems through self-serving advocacy, arguing that “more research is needed”—an argument aimed at sustaining their own funding—while delaying effective action on environmental problems (Walters 1997). Other ecologists, however, are frustrated by these abuses of expertise and by dilution of ecology's impact on public policy.