Lahsen and Nobre (2007)
January 5th, 2007Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
A Summary, by Myanna Lahsen
Lahsen, Myanna and Carlos A. Nobre (2007), “The Challenge of Connecting International Science and Local Level Sustainability: The Case of the LBA,” Environmental Science and Policy 10(1) 62-74. (PDF)
This paper identifies some central challenges involved in bringing about applications-oriented research and associated institutions related to sustainability on the basis of “global change science”, using the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) as an example. The LBA is an integrated regional study carried out by an international science program – indeed, the largest program in international scientific cooperation ever focused on the Amazon region. Over the last decade, the LBA has carried out over 120 studies and contributed quantitative and qualitative understanding of the functioning of tropical ecosystems and their linkages to the Earth System. It has produced over 700 peer-reviewed publications, the vast majority in international science journals. Additionally, LBA has trained hundreds of young scientists, most of them from Amazonia. In this and other ways, it has self-consciously sought to improve past models of “scientific colonialism” involving Northern-funded science experiments in less developed countries which did little, and usually nothing at all, to improve the knowledge and infrastructure in the latter (note: henceforth, “North” and “South” refer to the global North and South unless otherwise specified).
The LBA fell short in other respects, however, in particular in its explicit goal to produce sound scientific understanding in support of sustainable development. Deforestation of the tropical forests of Amazonia has increased to clearly unsustainable levels and at great social and environmental cost. Sustainable management of ecosystems requires appropriate public policies and regulatory frameworks. Yet translating the scientific knowledge created in LBA into public policies has proven to be much more difficult than its planners anticipated. Key to overcoming the obstacles is greater knowledge and capacity to develop and disseminate appropriate technologies and methodologies for sustainable management of the environment. Few developing countries are making substantial investment to develop this capacity. This is of huge consequence as the funding-structures, interests and incentive structures – and even the knowledge base – of developed-country-dominated international scientific efforts are inadequate to meet present challenges. The LBA serves to illustrate this inadequacy.
Aside from merely identifying humans’ environmental impact, the LBA’s mission, as stated in its planning document, was to help safeguard the Amazon’s basic ecological processes. In addition to its scientific capacity building component, the sustainability dimension is the most obvious point where LBA research could bring benefits at the national and local levels. It is also the least developed dimension of the LBA. An independent mid-term review concluded that the program had performed weakly in the area of identifying and developing social, political and economic implications of the findings, especially as concerns sustainable development in the Amazon region.
One may trace part of the root problem to resource disparities between the global North and South at the levels of human and material resources related to knowledge production and mobilization. These disparities complicate the science-policy interface in less developed countries (Lahsen in press; Lahsen forthcoming (a); Lahsen forthcoming (b) and as such can weaken the effectiveness of efforts to assess and combat human-induced climate and associated effects. It also limits the level of participation and input of less developed countries in international scientific programs and policy efforts, allowing Northern nations, and especially the United States, to overwhelmingly dominate the production and framing of science underpinning international environmental negotiations. Studies suggest that this dominance can translate into political gain and that it at times weakens less developed country representatives’ trust and regard for international environmental assessment and negotiation processes (ibid).
Simply modeling science agendas in the South on those in the North would be a mistake to the extent that this would perpetuate the evaluation criteria and incentive structures that result in high quality research, yes, but without the necessary connection to applications at the regional, national and local levels. Had an Amazon-based institution led the LBA from the planning stages on, for instance, this would not have guaranteed that sustainability concerns would have been more central. Brazilian scientists – especially in the richer South of the country but also those in the Amazon – are increasingly hooked into international science and subject to the same incentive structures as their Northern peers.
Ways must be found to link excellence in research more tightly to urgent environmental and societal problems, attending to the perverse effects of presents incentive structures and heeding insights captured in calls for “sustainability science” (Cash, et al., 2003; Clark 2003; Clark and Dickson 2003; National Research Council 1999).
References:
Cash, David W., William C. Clark, Frank Alcock, Nancy M. Dickson, Noelle Eckley, David H. Guston, Jill Jäger and Ronald B. Mitchell (2003), `Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 100, No. 14, 8 July, pp. 8086-8091.
Clark, William C. (2003), Institutional Needs for Sustainability Science link in PDDF
Clark, William C. and Nancy M. Dickson (2003), `Sustainability Science: The Emerging Research Program,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 100, No. 14, 8 July, pp. 8059-8061.
Fogel, Catheleen A. (2002), `Greening The Earth With Trees: Science, Storylines And The Construction Of International Climate Change Institutions,’ Doctoral Dissertation (Environmental Studies: University of California, Santa Cruz).
Lahsen, Myanna (in press), `Distrust and Participation in International Science and Environmental Decision Making: Knowledge Gaps to Overcome,’ in Mary Pettinger (Ed.), The Social Construction of Climate Change (Ashgate Publishing).
Lahsen, Myanna (forthcoming (a), `Knowledge, Democracy and Uneven Playing Fields: Insights from Climate Politics in – and Between – the U.S. and Brazil,’ in Nico Stehr (Ed.), Knowledge and Democracy (Transactions Publishers).
Lahsen, Myanna (forthcoming (b), dependent on acceptance of completed revisions). “Science and Brazilian environmental policy: The case of the LBA and carbon sink science” Climatic Change.
January 7th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Nice job, Myanna! (and Carlos too)
I read your whole piece, it was very interesting, as I expected it would be. As a scientist participant in LBA, primarily on the “basic science” side, your analysis of why the “human dimensions” side was not as successful sounds about right to me.
I think many probably would agree with you, even on the basic science side, because the last thing we want as scientists would be to gain an understanding of a system, only to have it disappear from the earth due to a combination of deforestation and climate change.
Reading your piece, one feels acutely what a lost opportunity it was that that LBA was not able as a program to better and more coherently integrate “basic” and applied (or human dimensions) science in the study of the Amazon in a way that would not only lead to understanding of the Amazon, but more effectively contribute to saving it as well. This failure is all the more poignant given the urgency posed by such rapid devastation of the greatest contiguous remaining tropical forest on earth.
An important question raised by your piece is: could the LBA research program have been any different?
I think the cultural and incentive-based barriers you cite to effective investigation of human dimensions problems (“linear” or “curiosity driven” conceptual models of what science is, and the hierarchy that puts basic science above applied) are indeed daunting, but potentially could have been surmounted, especially for an iconic ecosystem like the Amazon, where the urgency of the problem of environmental destruction is generally recognized. The evidence for this is (a) numerous basic scientists working in the Amazon are already trying to bridge the basic/applied divde (Dan Nepstad, whom you quoted, and Antonio Nobre are just two examples); (b) that particular high-level scientists involved in making LBA happen were sympathetic to that goal (including Carlos Nobre, your co-author, who was head of LBA for awhile), and (c) there is a now very wide recognition, in the ecological sciences especially, of the urgency and need for going beyond basic science if the world’s ecosystems are to be saved (your citations to Jane Lubchenco, former president of both the Ecological Society of America and the AAAS are witness to the prominence of this concern).
However, the institutional funding arrangements are a different story. It is difficult to imagine that with NASA as the primary funding agency, things could have turned out much different than they did on the human dimensions front, given the structure of priorities within NASA. (indeed, given those arrangements and priorities, I think things arguably turned out better than many would have expected, certainly on the capacity building front, as you mention in your article).
With NASA, my guess is that the problem did not arise from the split you cite (between basic versus applied science), but rather from a split between areas which NASA considered to be within versus outside its mission. Consider: NASA’s mission during the LBA time (i.e., before it was mysteriously changed a year ago — perhaps by James Hansen’s hypothesized midnight slug!) included:
“to understand and protect our home planet…
… as only NASA can”
The key words here are “as only NASA can”, which as I read it means those questions addressable from air or from space. These include both basic and applied science, but exclude things that cannot be somehow, eventually, connected to remote sensing or atmospheric measurements. The rationale for the extensive ground-based measurements made during the course of LBA were that they were necessary to understand/calibrate the kinds of measurements (remote sensing) that can be done “as only NASA can.”
Whether one thinks this approach is good or bad, this kind of mission prioritization by method is at odds with question-based prioritization for research support, where effectiveness in addressing the question (whether it be basic or applied, natural or social science oriented) determines the priority. Prioritization by method disadvantages research into questions that have significant components addressable only with methods outside the favored method. This applies not only to aspects of human dimensions science (except, e.g., where the research could be connected to remote sensing of logging or human-induced forest burning, or agricultural practices), but to basic natural science questions where remote-sensing measurements were not very relevant. Thus, it is arguable (and was argued) that if you took the basic science question seriously (to understand the “biological, chemical and physical functions of Amazônia”) then you would not fund even the basic science work in the same priority as NASA did (with an emphasis first on questions that could be linked to observations from air or space), but would focus first on some basic physiological and ecological questions about organismal functioning. These kinds of measurements were not a part of NASA-funded LBA work, except insofar as they were shoe-horned in along with larger projects that were consistent with NASA priorities.
So, in sum: could things have turned out differently? I think yes, but only if you found a funding agency with significant resources whose priorities were driven more fundamentally by the questions as stated. Given the climate for science funding in the U.S. right now, it seems unlikely that much more funding from the U.S. will be available for Amazonian research of any kind in the future (I have been trying!). However, given Brazil’s seeming revived interest in the possibility of “avoided deforestation” as a policy option to mitigate global warming, perhaps there is potential there: if they become serious about avoiding deforestation, it seems that a more direct confrontation of the human dimensions aspects becomes much more critical (you probably know more about this than I do).
Best regards, and happy new year (and I will look forward to your forthcoming works on LBA as well!),
Scott
January 8th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Thanks much Scott for these thoughtful comments. I have shared them with our SPARC project group, which will ensure that Myanna gets them, in case she is not regularly checking here!
January 15th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Thank you very much for the commentary, Scott. You make some excellent points! It is important to recognize that scientific agendas dictated by method-dictating, institutional mission priorities can conflict with question- and problem-based research. Given differences in funding institutions’ missions, it does indeed seem important to involve multiple funding sources with divergent missions such as to better enable research approaches best suited to address global environmental problems in their complexity. We think you are very right and articulate in your analysis of how NASA’s mandate limited its ability to respond to concrete, local level sustainability problems. It is thus also noteworthy that the few studies we mentioned in the article as exceptions under the LBA in their potential to be directly useful came about through support from ground-focused and applications-oriented institutions such as Embrapa, the Federal Rural University of Amazonia and the US Forestry Service.
That said, if the incentive structures and cultural dimensions captured in the “linear model” truly pale in comparison to the missions of funding sources in terms of their impact on research applications, then the LBA should still have produced a much larger body of such studies considering the important financial contributions of the Brazilian government and other Brazilian funding sources. While NASA may have had to focus its efforts on activities and technologies directly linked to its mandate, namely rmote sensing, Brazil’s direct and indirect financial contribution to the LBA amounted roughly to that of NASA. In other words, NASA was a central funding source, yes, but not as singularly important as one might understand from your commentary. An important part of Brazil’s financial contribution came in the form of participation of scientists and the use of research laboratories at institutions such as INPA and Embrapa Amazonia Oriental whose missions center on sustainability and the Amazon.
As a cultural anthropologist, one of us, Myanna, is inclined to be somewhat less optimistic as to the ease with which cultural and incentive-based barriers are overcome, and thus also the ease with which they might have been surmounted in the case of the LBA. I see the change as being much more gradual, because the mindsets are so entrenched. While many may respect the few scientists who directly involve themselves with human and political dimensions of the environmental problems at hand, and while present funding structures may give such individuals relatively more space, many LBA scientists whom I (again, Myanna) interviewed as part of my research were explicitly uncomfortable about “mixing science and politics.” While scholars of science stress the porous and constructed nature of any supposed boundary between science and politics, and can point to an ever growing body of studies to illustrate the extent to which they are inextricably interlinked (or “co-produced”), scientists do generally assume professional risks when choosing to do applied work and to engage with politics. Cultures can and do change, but they do so slowly, especially when the desired changes are at odds with long-standing incentive structures. We mention in the article how difficult it was, for instance, to engage LBA scientists in the production of materials designed to reach a broader public.
Certainly, change is possible, but it is by no means easy to effect it. It requires concerted thinking and action, and therefore it is important to hear how you and others on the inside of science think these barriers might be overcome.
Thanks once again for the interest and the comments!
Best wishes,
Carlos and Myanna
January 17th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Ms. Lahsen, allow me to make a few comments. Roger has just steered me here from a different thread.
1. I think you are absolutely correct that the incentive structures of funding institutions and the individual incentive structures of the scientists involve are key reasons why so little applied science connected to developing sustainable practices in the Amazon has come out of the LBA. But they are not the only reasons.
Few scientists take naturally to politics. Even when important public policy issues are at stake, the efficacy of those scientists who do choose to step into the policy arena may be severely limited, as is clear from the climate change debate in the US. Decision-makers act or delay action based upon perceptions of self-interest and the interests of constituencies they identify with.
Scott Saleska alludes to this when he refers to the travails of Hansen and the changing official agenda of NASA.
This problem is even more acute in the Amazon, where land tenure and land use practices are highly politicized, and where speaking out in ways that affect the strongest interest groups is outright dangerous, not merely to one’s career, but to one’s health.
2. There are plenty of scientists who engage in applied science – but mainly with respect to fields of application where there is a strong demand from the private market. I suspect that the only area where applied science is in significant demand in the Amazon is for agricultural science and technology in the areas that have been converted to soybean farms. Interest in silvaculture and ecosystem protection may grow if groups interested in preserving forests or growing trees can find a greater voice, both politically and legally.
3. In your conclusion, you rightly refer to international factors that fuel “sustainability problems” (viz., deforestation) in the Amazon, but these are very thinly sketched out and deserve greater attention. But even more importantly, I think you misunderstand the relative importance of the various institutional failures that are driving the destruction of the Amazon, and are wrong to conclude that “the most deep-cutting solutions depend on systemic changes at the global level”.
While global markets create incentives for some to cut and export logs and others to burn forests and raise cattle or crops for export, the rest of the developed world faces the same the markets and still does not destroy its forests – in fact, forests are growing in the north. Trying to tackle Amazonian deforestation by destroying export markets, “capitalism” or “liberal globalization” is simply Quixotic (if not counterproductive), and the implication that embargoes should be placed against Brazilian products derived from forest destruction are objectionable not only on grounds of practicality but morally – shall we beggar Brazilians to protect the forests that we find more valuable than they do?
The principal problem is simply that by and large nobody owns the forests in the Amazon (or in other tropical ares), or where there are indigenous peoples and others who do, these rights cannot be effectively enforced. Most of the Amazon is government owned, but the government does not care (and is probably incapable even if it desired) to protect its forests against politically well-connected cattle and farming interests. As is frequently the case when the government “owns” resources, those resources are very vulnerable to depredations by national elites.
The result in the Amazon is that forests are essentially a free resource that can be easily taken from the public treasury and converted into private wealth – and local interests that wish to protect forests (from rubber tappers like Chico Mendez to indigenous peoples and their sympathizers, like priests and nuns) are dealt with brutally and with essential impunity , as you have recognized. Like the open and secretive ways that fossil fuel interests have made efforts to protect their free use of the open-access atmosphere, we can expect that entrenched interests in Brazil will try to forestall measures that eliminate their free plundering of public forests and forests titled to the powerless.
While there is indeed a problem that there is no mechanism presently in place by which wealthier nations could pay Brazil to protect the Amazon, such steps are being discussed, but will still require effective enforcement on the ground to be at all meaningful.
Accordingly, rather than looking to “systemic changes at the global level”, one should recognize that the causes of local-level problems in the Amazon and their solutions are, contrary to your conclusion, in all tractable senses purely local to Brazil.
The destructive exploitation of the Amazon is a paradigmatic case for the problems of sustainable development everywhere. To have wealthy societies, we must have instititions that eliminate destructive exploitation by establishing clear and enforceable rights (whether private, collective or public) to property.
This means that one effective investment in research will be towards low-cost technology that helps resource owners on the ground to identify their property, to provide warnings of trespassers, and evidence that can be used to bring private or public proceedings to protect property.
Respectfully,
Tom
March 6th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Dear Tom,
You frame the problem as a strictly local one, and we beg to differ.
Global consumption patterns drive natural resource use. Growing demand for soybeans in China, and to feed cattle in Europe in the wake of the mad cow disease scares, is centrally driving soybean production in the Amazon, for instance, which has greatly accelerated deforestation in the Amazon in recent years. The oscillations in deforestation rates correlate closely with the prices of soybeans on global markets.
Yet another global, systemic cause of deforestation as well as human rights abuses in the Amazon is neoliberalism, which has weakened national governments, especially in Latin America, as we mention this in the paper and back up by reference to scholarly studies.
Finally, we take issue with your suggestion that “The principal problem is simply that by and large nobody owns the forests in the Amazon.” As indicated in critiques of Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” theory, private property is not a solution. Indeed, much of the destruction of the Amazon is on private lands.
Respectfully,
Myanna Lahsen and Carlos A. Nobre
March 6th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Hi Mayanna,
You write, “Finally, we take issue with your suggestion that “The principal problem is simply that by and large nobody owns the forests in the Amazon.” As indicated in critiques of Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” theory, private property is not a solution. Indeed, much of the destruction of the Amazon is on private lands.”
Here’s a website that says:
“In Brazil, 65 percent of forested area is in public hands, but the proportion reaches 75 percent in the Amazon region. According to Azevedo, the new law, accused of “privatising” the forests, seeks precisely the opposite: to combat de facto privatisation through illegal means. Currently, more than 80 percent of illegal lumber production comes from public lands.”
So that website is saying 75 percent of the forested area in the Amazon region is in public hands, and that 80 percent of illegal lumber production comes from public lands.
Do you disagree with either of those numbers? If so, what do you think the numbers should be?
Mark
March 6th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Oops. This is the website that had those figures on land ownership and illegal logging:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32558
March 16th, 2007 at 5:40 am
Myanna and Carlos:
Many thanks for the response.
However, you misinterpret me. First, I have NOT said that the problem is a strictly local one, and I completely agree that global consumption patterns are closely tied to natural resource use. Any rational observer of the international economy will see not only that market economies are great at creating wealth where private transaction occur relating to OWNED resources, but are also great at the destructive exploitation of resources that are not effectively owned or protected.
The Amazon is a classic case of the latter. There are essentially two possible approaches to the problem – one can try to put a stick in the gears of the global markets for foreign resources (by destroying export markets, global “capitalism”, “liberal globalization” or “neoliberalism”), or one can focus on trying to ensure that Amazonian forests are more effectively owned and protected.
Which of those seems to you like a more manageable task? (And if you chose the former, don’t forget the ethical questions I posed to you on them.)
I don’t think that the problem is an easy one at all, and I commend you both for trying to tackle it. However, I think that solutions, if any are to be found before the Amazon is gutted, will most likely be found in trying to ways to help people on the ground identify and protect resources that are important to them – and in trying to co-opt the wealthy elites who are essentially plundering Brasilians’ “national wealth” by using brazen physical power.
How can this be done? Imaginative people can think of many ways. A few come immediately to mind. One is to push the Brasilian government (and foreign aid agencies) to stop subsidizing the development of physical infrastructure like roads and power, so that those who would profit from destruction have to pay all of their own costs. It would help to identify clearly those who are converting forests, but this is not strictly necessary if taxpayers can be made aware that they are being fleeced twice – in the theft of government property and in the subsidization of it. Perhaps the government could even be persuaded to get out of the land ownership business altogether, and have all of the land auctioned off to the highest bidders. Police forces, courts, land registration offices and technologies that help identify land and trespass would all be beneficial. Markets can also be harnessed to tap “green” demand for sustainably owned and maintained resources, thus further empowering natives.
Please also understand that I am not advocating solely “private” ownership. Community ownership of resources may be quite effective. But government ownership of resources is simply a recipe for those resources to be ripped off – literally or figuratively – by those with the best politcal connections/the powerful, and at the expense of the little guy/disenfranchised.
Some focus on the demand side can also work – if PR light can be shed on the home economy firms colsest to the exploitation. But this is very difficult to do, as one purchaser can easily be replaced by another, and there’s always the Chinese, who really don’t care what we might have to say.
I’m happy to expand/expound further if you’re inclined.