Postdoctoral Fellowship -- Knowledge Systems Analysis for Environmental Decision Making: Energy Development in the Four Corners Region of the American Southwest, 1960-2010

在过去的三十年里，不同社会科学领域的政策制定者和研究人员对在环境政策和决策中使用科学知识的传统方法有了透彻的理解和批评。然而，这项工作的集体见解充其量只对美国环境政策中科学知识的生产、审查和应用产生了微乎其微的影响。此外，现有工具没有提供系统的方法来确定环境政策决策的后果。这一研究项目通过开发一个概念框架和一套称为知识系统分析的政策工具来解决这一差距，研究人员和政策制定者可以使用这些工具来指导对环境决策及其结果的系统审查。KSA的发展将通过理论研究和对美国西南部四角地区的煤矿和燃煤发电厂网络的实证分析来进行。经验部分需要对环境和水文影响报表中的预测进行量化审计，并对产生、验证和用于决策的环境知识的规范做法进行定性的社会和体制分析。除了提供创新的政策工具和理论框架外，该奖项还将资助亚利桑那州立大学为专业公共政策学位课程的学生开发KSA教学工具。该项目还将为环境影响评估和确定性建模的实践提供重要的见解，提供关于复杂社会生态系统的管理和复原力的案例研究，并有助于美国西南部部落土地上能源开发的环境历史。最后，这项研究支持博士后研究人员的培训。

Over the past three decades, policymakers and researchers in varied social scientific fields have developed both a thorough understanding and a critique of conventional approaches to the use of scientific knowledge in environmental policy and decisionmaking. However, the collective insights of this work have had, at best, only marginal impacts on the production, review, and application of scientific knowledge in environmental policy in the United States. Moreover, existing tools do not provide systematic ways of identifying the consequences of environmental policy decisions. This research project addresses that gap by developing a conceptual framework and set of policy tools, called Knowledge Systems Analysis, that can be used by researchers and policymakers to guide the systematic review of environmental decisions and their outcomes. The development of KSA will take place through theoretical research, and through empirical analyse of a network of coal mines and coal-fired power plants in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. The empirical component entails a quantitative postaudit of the predictions in environmental and hydrologic impact statements, and a qualitative social and institutional analysis of the normative practices through which environmental knowledge is produced, validated, and used in policy decisionmaking. In addition to producing an innovative policy tool and theoretical framework, this award will fund the development of a KSA pedagogical tool for students in professional public policy degree programs at Arizona State University. The project will also contribute important insights to the practice of environmental impact assessment and deterministic modeling, present a case study on the management and resilience of complex socio-ecological systems, and contribute to the environmental history of energy development on the tribal lands in the American Southwest. Finally, the research supports the training of a postdoctoral researcher.