Dissertation Research in STS: Preventing marine bioinvasions in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand: Science, politics, and institutions across national contexts

项目摘要：STS中的博士论文研究：防止美国、澳大利亚和新西兰的海洋生物入侵：跨国家背景的科学、政治和机构本论文项目探索海洋生物入侵的出现和演变，作为一个科学和政策问题。它研究了影响对这一问题的政策反应的关键因素和过程。这项调查的主要动机是：生物入侵是人类造成的全球变化的关键组成部分，但由于科学、政治和政策的相互作用，生物入侵问题显然没有得到充分的解决。除了它们的现实紧迫性和重要性之外，《生物入侵》还提供了丰富的材料，以研究沿着有争议的政策-科学边界的环境决策的复杂动态。为了了解这些边界和动态如何相互塑造，我对澳大利亚、新西兰和美国的海洋生物入侵科学和政策进行了跨国比较。在全球和地方两级，非土著物种跨越以往生物地理迁移障碍的迅速增加，正在改变海洋生态系统，造成严重和不可逆转的生态后果。在过去的二十年里，科学研究人员和政府机构已经改变了他们对生物入侵带来的风险的看法，认为这些风险比之前所了解的要严重得多。他们对问题的性质、原因、严重程度和影响的认识也发生了变化。然而，在这种不断变化的问题背景下，官方的政府和政策回应基本上保持不变。在相关政策层面和国家政策背景下，政策制定没有充分反映关于生物入侵现象的动态和意义的新的科学见解，尽管科学家和政策制定者普遍承认这一科学知识是相关的、可信的和合法的。智力上的功绩。这项研究考察了两个问题：决定对问题的性质、动态和重要性的科学理解的变化是否反映在相关的政策和管理方法中的过程是什么？政策和实践明显未能对相关科学知识和洞察力的变化做出反应，背后的过程是什么？这些问题是通过分析科学-政治-机构的相互作用如何影响美国、澳大利亚和新西兰的生物入侵政策的制定，以及通过比较各自国家的生物入侵科学和政策制定的动态来解决的。这三个国家之所以被选为案例，是因为它们在生物入侵方面的经验相似，并且有着共同的政策关切历史。但他们在应对生物入侵问题的科学、政策和管理方面也存在显著差异。有关问题的分析是以科学技术社会研究的关键理论见解为基础的。这些问题包括：科学与政策之间的相互影响；围绕科学和政治偏好、做法和优先事项的边界谈判在形成政策和法规的进程和结果方面的重要性；在决策过程中同时产生科学知识和政治秩序如何确保两者的合法性，从而促进更有成效的决策。我对生物入侵政策动态和当前生物入侵政策悖论的探索进一步基于以下假设：生物入侵是一个复杂和多方面的问题，政策过程中的不同行为者对政策的相关性、重要性和各个问题方面的可管理性有不同的看法。因此，在政策决策过程中，对首选政策反应的科学见解可能会受到关于什么是政治和官僚所希望的和可接受的观点的影响；因此，最终的政策结果取决于在生态知情的保护优先事项与政治和官僚定义的政策特权和限制之间谈判权衡的细节。到目前为止在美国和澳大利亚进行的档案和访谈研究已经证实了这些假设的相关性，并验证了它们作为检查和解释生物入侵政策动态的工具的有用性。该提案寻求在新西兰、美国和澳大利亚继续发展这些见解。更广泛的影响这项研究还旨在利用对生物入侵、政策过程和结果的跨国比较的见解，推荐管理科学-政策互动的新方法，以改善环境决策。

Project Summary: Doctoral Dissertation Research in STS: Preventing marine bioinvasions in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand: Science, politics, and institutions across national contextsThis dissertation project explores the emergence and evolution of marine bioinvasions as a scientific and policy issue. It studies key factors and processes shaping policy responses to that problem. The key motivation for this inquiry is: Bioinvasions are a critical component of human-caused global change, yet the bioinvasions issue is conspicuously under-addressed because of how science, politics, and policy interact. In addition to their practical urgency and significance, bioinvasions offer rich material to investigate the complex dynamics of environmental decision-making along contested policy-science boundaries. To understand how these boundaries and dynamics shape each other, I do a cross-national comparison of marine bioinvasions science and policy in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. At global and local scales, the rapidly growing human-mediated movement of non-indigenous species across previous biogeographic barriers to migration is changing marine ecosystems with serious and irreversible ecological consequences. Over the past two decades, scientific researchers and government agencies have shifted in their views of the risks that bioinvasions pose, seeing these as much more serious than previously understood. They have also changed in their understandings of the problems nature, causes, magnitude, and implications. Yet official government and policy responses have largely remained unaltered in this context of a changing problem. Across relevant policy levels and across national policy contexts, policy-making does not adequately reflect new scientific insights about the dynamics and the significance of the bioinvasions phenomenon, although scientists and policy-makers have widely acknowledged this scientific knowledge as relevant, credible, and legitimate. Intellectual Merit. The study examines two questions: What are the processes that determine whether changes in scientific understanding of a problems' nature, dynamics, and significance become reflected in relevant policy and management approaches? And what are the processes behind apparent failures of policy and practice to respond to changes in relevant scientific knowledge and insight? These questions are approached by analyzing how science-politics-institutional interactions are shaping the formulation of bioinvasions policy in the U. S., Australia, and New Zealand, and by comparing respective national dynamics of bioinvasions science and policy-making. The three countries are selected as cases because of their similarities in experience with bioinvasions and shared history of policy concern. But they also have significant differences in scientific, policy and management responses to the bioinvasions problem. .Analysis of relevant issues is grounded in key theoretical insights from the social studies of science and technology. These include: the reciprocal influences between science and policy; the significance of boundary negotiations around scientific and political preferences, practices and priorities in shaping the processes and outcomes of policy and regulation; and how the simultaneous production of scientific knowledge and political order within the process of making policy decisions can ensure the legitimacy of both, and thereby facilitate more productive policy making. My exploration of bioinvasions policy dynamics and the current bioinvasions policy paradox is further grounded in the following hypotheses: Bioinvasions are a complex and multi-faceted problem, and different actors in the policy process have different perceptions regarding the policy relevance, significance, and manageability of various problem facets. In the course of policy decision-making, scientific insights regarding the preferred policy responses can therefore be tempered by views on what is politically and bureaucratically desired and acceptable; the ultimate policy outcomes therefore depend on the particulars of negotiating tradeoffs between ecologically informed conservation priorities, and politically and bureaucratically defined policy prerogatives and constraints. Archival and interview research conducted so far in the U.S. and Australia has confirmed the relevance of these hypotheses, and validated their usefulness as a tool for examining and explaining bioinvasions policy dynamics.This proposal seeks to continue developing these insights in New Zealand, the U.S., and Australia. Broader Impacts The research also aims to use insights from the cross-national comparison of bioinvasions policy processes and outcomes in recommending new ways of managing science-policy interactions to improve environmental decision making.