Useable Information for Policy
December 15th, 2006Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Twenty-two members of Congress have written a letter to the head of the Climate Change Science Program observing that the program is failing to fulfill its mandate under Public Law 101-606 to deliver useable information for policy makers. This is good news.
The letter observes that the Bush Administration has failed to produce an assessment as required by the law, which is supposed to be delivered every four years. This situation is analogous to the behavior of the Clinton Administration which produced a single assessment in 2000, which was six years overdue. The assessment produced by the Clinton Administration was produced within OSTP under the nominal leadership of Al Gore which – rightly or wrongly – put a partisan tint on the product. Some – both on the right and the left — continue to use the 2000 assessment six years later as a political wedge device.
The letter from the members of Congress observes:
. . . the current CCSP [Climate Change Science Program] website acknowledges that the law directs the agencies to “produce information readily useable by policy makers attempting to formulate effective strategies for preventing, mitigating, and adapting to the effects of global change,” . . . The failure of the CCSP to produce a National Assessment report within the time frame required by law has made it more difficult for Congress to develop a comprehensive policy response to the challenge of global climate change.
The CCSP is currently producing 20 different assessment reports but according to the program’s previous direction, the CCSP does not engage in discussion of policy options. It is pretty difficult to produce usable information for policy makers without discussing policy options.
Does the Bush Administration want to avoid disucssion of policy options on climate change? Yes. Did the Clinton Administration also want to avoid discussion of policy options on climate change? Yes. Has much of the scientific community also wanted to avoid discussion of policy options on climate change? Yes. Sounds like a perfect situation for congressional oversight.
The policy failures of the CCSP have nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans, and everything to do with the structure of scientific advice implemented under the CCSP and its predecessor organization. Why do I say this? Because in 1994 I defended my doctoral dissertation on implementation of the climate science program under Public Law 101-606, and the exact same issues involving “usable information for policy” identified by the current letter from the 22 members of Congress existed at that time as well.
It is good to see Congress finally invoking the language in P.L 101-606 calling for usable information for policy makers. This is a matter of the effective governance of science in support of decision making, and it should not be dragged into partisan political bickering. The bipartisan letter from 22 members of Congress is a good place to start.
For details see:
Pielke Jr., R. A., 1995: Usable Information for Policy: An Appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Policy Sciences, 38, 39-77. (PDF)
Letter from 22 members of Congress to CCSP, courtesy of E&E Daily (PDF)
December 15th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I’m curious if you feel that the National Assessment provided ‘usable science’ for decision making? For oversight, I think there are two separable issues here: the issue of producing a national assessment (what does that entail, do the 21 reports cover that role or not) and producing usable science. It would be highly useful for Congress to look at both. Incidentally, one of the 21 reports, having to do with carbon in North America, does discuss options. It is still in draft but available on the web having undergone public review at: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap2-2/public-review-draft/default.htm
[Disclaimer, I am a co-lead of this report]. The reports have been issued guidance to be policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. We have included options (policy and otherwise) throughout the report and worked with stakeholders throughout the process. It remains to be seen of course whether the report is usable or not.
December 16th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Hi Lisa-
You ask:
“I’m curious if you feel that the National Assessment provided ‘usable science’ for decision making?”
As we’ve often discussed the real answer to this question comes from asking the decision makers who requested the assessment in the first place, which in this case is Congress — i.e., as we discuss in SPARC, reconciling supply and demand.
From where I sit, because the 2000 national assessment did not go far down the path of offering different policy options, it was of limited use from the standpoint of climate policy. That being said, it has proven to be very useful from a political standpoint, as I mentioned, for advocates on the left and the right. This probably wasn’t what was intended for the assessment by its designers!
You describe guidance on policy for the current 21 (or 20?) assessments underway as to be “policy relevant but not policy prescriptive.” This is taken from the IPCC and is meaningless. What does it mean to be policy relevant but not policy prescriptive? This is a Rorschach blot of a statement that allows the assessors to assert policy relevance but to avoid it at the same time.
Defining what policy relevance actually means is a necessary step to actually being relevant. For 16 years the climate science program has avoided this key step in making research more useful to decision makers.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:09 am
Hi Roger-
We have tried to introduce two key features into our CCSP assessment that STS scholars including yourself have said is necessary for assessment to be useful for decision makers: that the information include options and alternatives, and that the information be “credible, salient and legitimate” (sensu Clark et al.) We’ve deliberately tried to build the former into the report through the content we’ve required and the folks we have involved. We’ve attempted the latter through our stakeholder process. Like many pieces of legislation the “usable science” or “policy relevant” requirement is vague and open to interpretation (as you’ve written). I agree that it would be useful for the CCSP and/or Congress to define what policy relevance means to the CCSP as a whole– in the meantime we’re experimenting with some ways of trying to build it in to our task by applying what’s been found through previous scholarship by those who study assessments and policy science. This has been certainly a challenge but one that we feel is important to meet the mandate of our particular report. This all being said I look forward to the results of the letter from Congress to CCSP (subject of your post) with interest.