Governing the Air: The Dynamics of Science, Policy, and Citizen Interaction

Chapter 8. Co-producing Policy-Relevant Science and Science-Based Policy: The Case of Regulating Ground-Level Ozone

8 Co-producing Policy-Relevant Science and Science-Based Policy: The Case of Regulating Ground-Level Ozone Rolf Lidskog and Håkan Pleijel Few environmental issues on the international political agenda are unsupported by a body of scientific research. It is virtually impossible for an environmental condition to be successfully transformed into a political problem without scientific support in the form of data and analysis. At the same time, the relationship between science and policy is not simple: some environmental problems become politically prioritized despite considerable scientific uncertainty (e.g., forest decline in the 1980s, discussed in chapter 7), but scientific evidence supports other environmental problems that are still low priorities in practice (e.g., the detrimental effect of many air pollutants on materials, including cultural heritage). Science and policy have often been described as two discrete but interrelated entities, scientific findings being delivered to policymakers, who then act on their basis. As emphasized in this volume, a closer look reveals a complex relationship between science and policy. Science and policymaking are not discrete activities related through a one-way process, extending from scientific discovery of a problem to politically formulated environmental goals and then to governmental strategies for implementing these goals. Instead, the relationship between science and policy is one of reciprocity, the two intermingling in a complex and dynamic process. Through interaction and negotiation between various actors, science and policy are co-produced (Jasanoff and Wynne 1998). A prerequisite for any air pollution policy is that what constitutes “clean”—or “unclean”—air should be defined and operationalized. How the category “un/clean air” is framed and thereby made measureable and governable is decisive when analyzing science–policy relationships in the air pollution field. In this chapter, we focus on a specific aspect of un/ clean air—namely, ground-level ozone.1 We chose the issue of groundlevel ozone primarily because it is seen as an urgent threat to human 224 Rolf Lidskog and Håkan Pleijel health and the environment and is supported by a long history of research and policy. Scientific understanding of the problem, however, has undergone dramatic change, with great implications for the formulated policy. Moreover, the co-production of science and policy with reference to this environmental problem has been poorly researched. In fact, social scientists have neglected the ground-level ozone issue, in sharp contrast to their treatment of a number of other environmental problems. Our overall aim is to determine how science and policy have been co-produced in this particular case. Our guiding research questions are: How is the problem of ground-level ozone scientifically conceptualized? What fundamental changes can be traced in the evolution of the problem definition? What are the regulatory implications of the various problem definitions? What political considerations have influenced the process, leading to a changed understanding of the problem? The empirical material we used consists of official documents and records of discussions from workshops organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP, adopted in 1979). This institutional setting has been decisive for scientific discussions of ozone exposure . Even though the European Union (EU) has gradually become an important actor in developing air pollution policy in Europe, CLRTAP— with its organizational setting, institutionalized knowledge, and research networks—remains central to scientific discussions of ground-level ozone (Siebenhüner, chap. 4 in this volume).2 By analyzing scientific discussion and the results of workshops arranged by CLRTAP, we can explore expert opinion regarding relevant—that is, desirable and achievable— abatement strategies and investigate the political considerations and implications of this expert discussion. Investigating fundamental changes in scientific understanding in this context leads to exploring the importance of science in environmental regulation and of political expediency in the expert community. The chapter is divided into five parts, this introduction being the first. The second part further develops the analytical framework and describes how the science–policy relationship has been configured within CLRTAP. The third part investigates the evolution of scientific understanding of the environmental effects of ground-level ozone, finding various phases in the scientific conceptualization of the problem, all having different implications for the regulation of ground-level ozone and its precursors. The fourth part analyzes certain aspects of this history to trace how science and policy have been co-produced in developing a scientific Co-producing Policy-Relevant Science and Science-Based Policy 225 understanding...