Environmental Science and Politics: Science and Resource Management

This week in my Environmental Science and Politicscourse (ERST-POST 2100H) we examined how science is used in natural resource management.  It�s a central topic in science and politics: the application of science to forests, fisheries, and other resources have reshaped landscapes and our relations with nature around the world, not least in Canada.

I emphasized a few key themes.  I started with a short case study of the recent history of the Pacific salmon fisheries.  My point was that, whatever resource scientists aspire to, they are very often not able to obtain a firm grasp of the state of resources, or provide concrete, useful advice to resource managers and users.  Pacific salmon populations have fluctuated enormously over the last decade, for reasons that remain opaque � could be food supply, could be predators, could be climate change.  How, then, to decide how many to catch each year?

We also examined the consequences of resource science for the environment: particularly the simplification of ecosystems that accompanies the pursuit of efficient production � as seen, for example, in forests, water management (dams), and agriculture.  In other words, the role of science in converting nature into �factories� for commodity production.

Then we returned to uncertainty, and the causes of it, in both nature and human activities.  Uncertainty is rooted in the �four C�s�: complexity, contingency, chaos, and constraints (on research).  The Newfoundland cod crisis of the 1990s remains a �classic� case study of the scientific sources of uncertainty and their consequences.  The key issue (as in resource management generally) was that resource decisions must be made now � one can�t wait for better information.  And the pressure of immediate decisions has various consequences, in terms of the factors other than empirical data that shape scientific advice.  These include theory, professional expectations, values and political imperatives.

And as the cod crisis showed, these factors can often result in some kinds of information being disregarded � as occurred when inshore fishers were reporting, years before the crisis, that they weren�t finding the cod that was supposed to be there.  In subtle ways, uncertainty can lead to confirmation bias � when one is not sure what�s happening, one can readily interpret the evidence in terms of what one thinks should be happening.  It�s an interesting story, demonstrating the historical significance of uncertainty.