A Transdisciplinary Deliberative Model for Just Research and Policy: Toward Resolving the Crisis of Vanishing Insect Pollinators

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This project seeks to use deliberative processes with a wide range of stake holders to develop an alternative experimental paradigm for field studies to understand the sustainability crisis in honey bees. Scientists agree that what they call Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), is caused by a complex combination of factors, including pesticides, pathogens, parasites and/or poor nutrition yet field research is currently dominated by toxicological practices which emphasize the isolation of individual causal factors and experimental control. Analysis of cumulative and interactive effects of pesticides and other ambient environmental factors?an approach that beekeepers tend to embrace--has been precluded. This 2-year project aims to innovate experimental field research methods so as to better incorporate socio-ecological complexity. They propose to experiment with deliberative strategies for enhancing the influence of non-scientists (beekeepers, farmers, ecologists) on research aimed at understanding CCD. They will facilitate face-to-face deliberations using diverse methodological and conceptual tools for place-based analyses, in conjunction with four pilot field studies of mono-cultural crops and poly-cultural crops, managed with or without ?reduced risk? insecticides. The environmental and agricultural sustainability of the United States is threatened by steep declines in insect pollinators. The proposed activity seeks to make important contributions to environmental problem solving. It also aims to broaden the participation of primarily affected and often-excluded, non-scientific (non-certified) citizens and to include their varieties of expertise in the production of scientific knowledge and policy. It stands to show that a fairer process, wherein a broader array of stakeholders shapes the research that affects their lives, can lead to better science and policy.