Pursuing Sustainability: A Guide to the Science and Practice by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Development, Public Policy, Science, Ecology, Environmental Conservation & Protection, Life Sciences, Political Science, Sustainable Development, Business & Economics, Nature, Environmental Policy
ISBN: 9781400881215
Google: ojHFCgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 28567479
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

THE CENTRAL ROLE OF BOUNDARY WORK

How can the lessons about linking knowledge with action for sustainability discussed in this chapter be implemented in ways that produce trusted and thus influential knowledge? The details of effective strategies, as always, will depend on context. But an accumulating body of evidence suggests that a necessary ingredient of all such strategies is effective boundary work. Boundary work signifies the processes through which the “research community organizes its relations with the worlds of action and policy making”6 with practice-based and other forms of knowledge. The central idea of boundary work is that tensions arise at the interface between actors with different views of what constitutes trusted knowledge, and those tensions must be managed effectively if the potential benefits of knowledge are to be realized by society. Too little permeability of the boundaries separating science from the world of action means too little learning from or contribution to practice. Dissolving the boundary entirely, however, risks science being hopelessly politicized, and politics and politicians being viewed as mere mouthpieces of an arrogant and unreliable technocracy. Active boundary work is therefore required to manage effectively the interfaces among various stakeholders engaged in harnessing knowledge to promote action.

In the case of sustainable development, it is clear that an ongoing connection is necessary between expert/researcher communities and the broad range of stakeholders making decisions; harnessing knowledge to promote action for sustainability requires it. However, this turns out to be a very significant challenge for both communities. Working at the interface between science and policy—and more broadly, seeking to mediate activities between knowledge and action to lead to better decision making—is often outside the goals of research institutions and something that few individuals have been trained to accomplish. Different communities have different cultures, different languages, different kinds of evidence, and when multiple stakeholder groups and multiple kinds of science and technology experts are involved as well, the cross-cultural challenges are even greater. These groups characteristically have different views of what constitutes trustworthy knowledge. Bridging those various boundaries is nonetheless essential, and thus boundary work at the interface between communities with different cultures is at the heart of a sustainability transition.

Figure 5.1 illustrates the position of boundary work in the midst of one international effort to devise more sustainable ways of managing human use of the forest-agriculture interface in the humid tropics. In this case the crucial boundary role was played by the Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) program7 of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the consortium that helped bring about the Green Revolution. As it was organized in the wake of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), ASB faced enormous challenges of linking knowledge with action. First, the urge to act was far out ahead of a trusted knowledge base on which to base effective action. Activists and international program entrepreneurs concerned with the problem of tropical deforestation were so (wrongly) convinced that “slash and burn” agriculture was the cause that they (misleadingly) embedded their diagnosis in the title of the program meant to investigate the problem.

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