Science, Democracy and Environmental Policy in Developing Countries: The Case of India

发展中国家的科学、民主和环境政策：印度的案例

• 批准号: 0849584
• 负责人: S. Ravi Rajan
• 金额: $ 18.91万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Cruz
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-04-01 至 2013-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0849584&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Science; Democracy; Environmental; Policy; Developing

The vast majority of research on the interface of risk, science, and democracy has been limited to the advanced industrial nations of North American and Western Europe. This project funded by the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program addresses this gap by focusing on India, the largest democracy in the third world. Three recent controversies are examined that cast light on the social, economic and political contexts that drive the interactions between scientific knowledge, expertise, policy making, and implementation. These controversies are about: a) the processes of environmental impact and hazard analysis in India (studied with the case of the decision about siting a large dam (Tehri) in a seismic Himalayan region); b) policy making on chronic environmental risks such as pollution (approached through the case of the CNG controversy in Delhi); and c) regulating emergent risks (addressed via the case of Bt Cotton controversy). The project undertakes a content analysis of all publicly available data sources on public controversies in each of the three sectors (hazards and impact assessment processes; chronic risk mitigation; and emergent risks). The project addresses two central questions: a) how, and to what extent, is the process and efficacy of public policy on environmental risks in developing country democracies constrained by the "co-production" of science and politics; and b) whether there is something distinctive about contexts such as India or Brazil that offers new insights for STS theory on science advocacy and environmental policy making. The first question is important to scholars of public policy, for whom learning about the interactions between science and politics in the making and implementation of environmental policy in industrializing third world contexts, is a compelling new frontier. The second question is compelling because the sheer fact that policy making, and mobilizing science for it, have, for several decades in India, been embedded in a complex interactive, democratic process that is distinctively different from USA or Western Europe. In addition to these academic and scholarly contributions to STS theory, the project has pressing policy and societal implications. Critically, it is one of the first systematic research projects to help plug the gap in the literature on the role played by scientific expertise in environmental controversies in democracies in the developing world. There are two important reasons that this gap is socially significant. First, while attempting to mitigate the environmental impacts of rapid industrialization, governments in these countries often act upon the advice of expert advisory teams, who, in turn, often select from existing environmental policy regimes in the developed world. The societal consequences of such outcomes are not fully grasped by scholars or policy makers. Second, as a result of a lack of reflective awareness about the efficacy of such regulatory institutions, and especially, of the limits of grafting science based expert judgment strategies onto complex political cultures and socio-economic realities, the ability of such countries to address the environmental risks posed to their citizens, or to meet their global environmental obligations, is arguably diminished.

绝大多数关于风险、科学和民主的研究都局限于北美和西欧的先进工业国家。 这个由科学、技术和社会（STS）计划资助的项目通过关注第三世界最大的民主国家印度来解决这一差距。 最近的三个争议的研究，揭示了社会，经济和政治背景，推动科学知识，专业知识，政策制定和实施之间的相互作用。 这些争议涉及：a）印度的环境影响和危害分析过程（以喜马拉雅地震区大坝（Tehri）选址决策为例进行研究）; B）关于污染等长期环境风险的政策制定（通过德里CNG争议案例进行探讨）;以及c）管理紧急风险（通过Bt棉花争议案例进行探讨）。 该项目对三个部门（灾害和影响评估进程;长期风险缓解;紧急风险）中每个部门的所有公开数据来源进行内容分析。该项目解决了两个核心问题：a）如何，以及在何种程度上，是发展中国家的民主国家的环境风险的公共政策的过程和效率的限制的“共同生产”的科学和政治;和B）是否有一些独特的背景，如印度或巴西，提供了新的见解STS理论的科学宣传和环境政策制定。第一个问题对公共政策学者来说很重要，对他们来说，在第三世界工业化的背景下，了解科学和政治在制定和实施环境政策方面的相互作用是一个引人注目的新领域。第二个问题很有说服力，因为几十年来，印度的政策制定和动员科学已经嵌入了一个复杂的互动民主过程，这与美国或西欧截然不同。除了这些学术和学术贡献STS理论，该项目有紧迫的政策和社会影响。重要的是，这是第一个系统的研究项目，以帮助填补差距在文献中发挥的作用，科学专业知识在环境争议中发挥的作用，在发展中国家的民主国家。有两个重要原因表明这种差距具有社会意义。 首先，在试图减轻快速工业化对环境的影响时，这些国家的政府往往根据专家咨询小组的建议采取行动，而专家咨询小组又往往从发达国家现有的环境政策制度中挑选。 学者或决策者并没有充分理解这些结果的社会后果。 第二，由于缺乏对此类监管机构的有效性的反思意识，特别是缺乏将基于科学的专家判断战略嫁接到复杂的政治文化和社会经济现实中的局限性，这些国家应对其公民面临的环境风险或履行其全球环境义务的能力可能会减弱。