Stephen Bocking

Ecologists and Environmental Politics: A History of Contemporary Ecology

Ecologists, like other scientist, have for decades debated their role in society. While some have argued that ecologists should participate in environmental politics, others have focused their attention strictly on scientific issues. In this book, Stephen Bocking explores the context of this debate by recounting the history of ecology in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada since the 1940s. Bocking tells this history through four case studies: the origins and early research of the nature conservancy in Great Britain; the development of ecology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennesee; the work of the Hubbard Brook ecosystem study in New Hampshire; and research in fisheries ecology at the University of Toronto and the Ontario provincial government in Canada. In each institution, ecologists influenced the development of their discipline, and Bocking explains their work. By comparing these case studies, Bocking demonstrates how the places of contemporary science - laboratories, landscapes, and funding agencies - and its purposes, as expressed through the political roles of expertise and specific managerial and regulatory responsibilities, have shaped contemporary ecology and its application to pressing environmental problems.

Protecting the rain barrel: Discourses and the roles of science in a suburban environmental controversy

Abstract Urban expansion has been for several decades a matter of environmental concern. In this controversy in Toronto, Canada, environmental activists, developers and government agencies employed scientific evidence and authority to support their claims, and, more generally, their distinctive discourses, regarding the impact of suburban development on a local landscape feature: the Oak Ridges Moraine. Environmentalists argued that science demonstrated the distinctive identity and value of the moraine, that development would irreparably harm it and that a precautionary approach was therefore necessary. In contrast, developers invoked science to argue that there was no proof that development would damage the moraine, and that, with proper management, it could proceed safely. While science helped place the environmental impacts of development on the public agenda, the controversy also demonstrated how framing the debate in terms of science-based discourses can result in neglect of the essential political dimensions of suburban expansion.

Constructing Urban Expertise Professional and Political Authority in Toronto, 1940-1970

Between 1940 and 1970, the population of the Toronto metropolitan region increased rapidly. This imposed new infrastructure demands, particularly for sewer, water supply, and transportation systems, and encouraged comprehensive approaches to planning and flood control. Several forms of expertise emerged to guide responses to these demands, of which three are considered here: engineering of urban services, planning of new communities, and watershed conservation. Each form of expertise had close ties to public- or private-sector institutions; collectively, they reinforced prevailing views concerning the public interest and the role of technocratic expertise. They also demonstrated how a city’s expert and political orders could be constitutive of each other, with the planning and building of infrastructure by government and the private sector creating the contexts for applying expertise, which, in turn, justified expansion of the city’s administrative functions.

Science, Salmon, and Sea Lice: Constructing Practice and Place in an Environmental Controversy

Over the last three decades salmon aquaculture has become both a significant coastal industry and a focus of controversy regarding its environmental impacts. Both circumstances have also provoked a great deal of environmental research. This article examines one episode in the history of this research. The Broughton Archipelago is a region of islands and channels on the Pacific coast of Canada, densely populated with salmon farms. Beginning in 2001 this region attracted researchers from several institutions, who examined the ecology of the farms, and particularly the possibility that they release large numbers of parasites (known as sea lice), which then infect wild salmon. This local research community drew on aspects of the regional environment, including its ecological conditions, and opportunities for surveys, field experiments, and ecological modeling, to construct methods that were both situated in this place, yet intended to be persuasive to audiences outside the region. Knowledge of this environment was also influenced by knowledge from elsewhere, including the results of European research on sea lice, and various disciplinary perspectives. Research results were invoked to support opposing views of the impacts of salmon farms, as well as contrasting perspectives on the region’s identity. Sea lice themselves, within the context of the ecosystem that gave them meaning, were objectified as the ecological link between salmon farms and the environment, and the basis for research and debate over these farms. This historical episode therefore demonstrates the inseparability of scientific practice, knowledge and place, particularly in the context of controversy.

Over-fishing in the Great Lakes: the context and history of the controversy

Abstract The issue of over-fishing has spawned controversy in the Laurentian Great Lakes since the early 1800s. Aboriginal, domestic, commercial food, aquacultural and recreational fisheries have experienced a number of different types of over-fishing that have contributed to the fishing-up sequence in the lakes. Some effects of fish habitat destruction by many environmental abuses interacted synergistically with inappropriate fishing practices. The fish communities near larger settled areas ‘hit the wall’ ecologically beginning in the late 1800s. The fisheries of the whole basin ‘hit the wall’ politically in the period 1955–1968. Since 1968, a managerial transformation to an ecosystem approach has occurred, from a modern progressive approach to a new self-organizing redevelopment approach in which biotic and abiotic interests are more balanced than previously. Controversy continues as emergent grass-roots regimes seek alternatives to remnant and senescent institutional arrangements or seek partnership ar...

Mobile knowledge and the media: The movement of scientific information in the context of environmental controversy.

This paper examines the role of the news media in transnational flows of knowledge. Its focus is on salmon aquaculture, an industry operating in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. To examine the movement of knowledge from Europe to Canada, a sample of 323 news stories mentioning European aquaculture was drawn from 1261 stories about aquaculture published in Canadian newspapers between 1982 and 2007. Their analysis demonstrates the role of the media in selectively moving and shaping scientific knowledge. This role has been influenced by numerous factors, including journalistic norms, source strategies, and the assertion of trust, relevance and scientific credibility. This analysis corrects the common assumption in the internet era that information flows freely: new technology has not obviated the role of social factors. The media’s role in the movement of knowledge also has implications for the geography of science, and for the status of science as a situated practice.

A Disciplined Geography: Aviation, Science, and the Cold War in Northern Canada, 1945–1960

Near Lac Bienville in northern Quebec, Nicholas Polunin reflected on recent events. Just a few days before, the botanist had attended an Oxford encaenia, enjoying ceremonies, celebrations, and chats with the Churchills and other notables. But now, after flights across the Atlantic and into the Arctic, there he was, on 8 July 1946, alone in a leaky tent, about to begin a summer of collecting. “Such is modern life,” he wrote, “and in this age of science and speed we must accustom ourselves to such vicissitudes.”1 Polunin was struck not just by the contrasting amenities of Oxford and northern Quebec, but by the differences between this trip and his previous expeditions to Canada. He had last visited in 1936—a voyage that required several weeks cruising up the Labrador coast and was limited to areas accessible by ship. In contrast, in 1946 he planned to travel widely across the eastern Arctic, sharing space on Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) survey aircraft. The contrast exemplified the advantage that air travel offered to Arctic scientists. “Conquering” space and time, aircraft made the region more accessible, rendering it no longer the preserve of hardy explorer-scientists.2 Yet travel by aircraft had other consequences as well for the relation between technology and the practice of science. In this article, I examine the

Alpheus Spring Packard and cave fauna in the evolution debate

ConclusionPackard attempted to incorporate cave fauna into a general theory of evolution that would be consistent with the principle of recapitulation, and would have as the primary mechanism the inheritance of the effects of the environment. Beyond this, he also attempted to demonstrate that the evolution of cave fauna was consistent with progressive evolution. The use he made of comparative anatomy and embryology places him within the tradition of classical morphology that was dominant through much of the last half of the nineteenth century, but of waning importance by the time of Packards death in 1905. The importance Packard gave to cave fauna as evidence for Lamarckian evolution stimulated interest in the phenomenon; this interest, and references to cave fauna in the scientific literature, declined after his death. Since then, the importance of cave fauna in evolutionary theory has declined from their status as the star evidence in Packards theory to their present status as a difficult anomaly within the modern synthetic theory.

Policy by analogy: precautionary principle, science and polybrominated diphenyl ethers

Through the acquisition of scientific data, knowledge is gained about the environmental fate and human exposure of chemical substances. From this knowledge, the risk of using chemicals can be assessed. As a means of facilitating the regulatory process, risk assessments can also compare the substance under investigation to other substances that display similar behaviour or structure, especially when the risk assessment involves a substance for which few data exist. For instance, similarities can be drawn between a number of poorly studied chemical substances and those that are currently listed as chemicals of concern. We suggest that policy can be guided, in part, by analogy. By taking advantage of knowledge obtained for the PCBs in the past, we can better implement precautionary measures with respect to similar substances, such as the PBDEs, and do so more quickly and appropriately.

Science and Society: The Structures of Scientific Advice

Scientiac advice has rarely seemed so essential, yet so fragile. Action on climate change, transboundary air pollution, and other concerns requires expert guidance. But research budgets are under pressure and scientiac advice is being outsourced, even as environmental issues remain wrapped in uncertainty and ignorance. The political contexts of scientiac advice have also shifted. Scientists’ deanitions of what counts as good advice are no longer sufacient: their counsel must now not only meet scientiac standards, but be perceived as relevant, legitimate, and accountable—an evolution in expectations that exempliaes the blurring of the boundaries between science and society. These expectations illustrate the essential dilemma of science advisors: to serve as a constructive and trusted partner to policy makers, while maintaining professional independence. The three books under review provide diverse perspectives on this dilemma. In The Politics of Scientiac Advice: Institutional Design for Quality Assurance, edited by Justus Lentsch and Peter Weingart, the authors examine scientiac advice across a wide range of issues and national cultures, exploring how demands for relevance and legitimacy relate to the design of institutional mechanisms for constructing, delivering, and evaluating advice. Governing the Air: The Dynamics of Science, Policy, and Citizen Interaction, edited by Rolf Lidskog and Göran Sundqvist, has a more speciac focus, presenting historical and contemporary perspectives on the governance of air quality in Europe. Finally, in Science Without Boundaries: Interdisciplinarity in Research, Society, and Politics, Willy Østreng provides a more personal view, examining the virtues and challenges of interdisciplinary science, testing his ideas against his experience directing a polar research project. Together, these books provide an excellent overview of current thought regarding science and politics in the international environmental arena.