Thomas Dietz: Democracy and Science
On countless environmental issues, local and global, scientific understanding outpaces the social capacity for effective action.
As I explore the intersection of scientific analysis and public policy, one book I've been reading is the 1995 volume Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation: Evaluating Models for Environmental Discourse.
From the foreword by Thomas Dietz ("Democracy and Science"), former chair of the U.S. National Research Council Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change:
By 2050, the human population of the earth will double. … Stresses on human, biological and physical systems, already at critical levels, will be greatly exacerbated. …
To meet these challenges, we must improve our ability to answer two questions. One is descriptive: How does the world work? The other is prescriptive: What should we do? …
Humans have evolved to coordinate group action by discussion and shape individual action through social learning and reflection. While the forms of democratic process have been modified throughout history, and must be modified again, the basic concept has very deep roots. …
However sound the democratic tradition, it is under pressure in the contemporary world. One source of pressure is the power of science and technology to transform the world. We can produce changes that are not easily related to the daily experience of most people and thus not linked to our moral sense. … Another pressure comes from the scale at which democracy must operate. … And, while in some sense all politics is local – it relates critically to the lived experience of the citizens – all politics is now global. Actions taken in one locale often have profound implications across the planet. So the context in which decisions must be assessed is much more complex.
For several decades, a handful of scholars and activists have proposed ways democracy can cope with these profound problems. … This volume is the most important work to date. … The discussion focuses appropriately on the toughest challenges facing democracy: problems of environment and technology. Environmental and technological issues are at the intersection of science and politics, involve subtle and uncertain risks, large time and spatial scales and a myriad of conflicting interests and values.
It is precisely in this area that traditional democratic process seems to falter. The resulting policies are often inequitable and poorly aligned with science. … This collection is not the end of the debate on these issues, but the place from which all future work must start.
See also: "Integrating Science and Deliberation."