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The Paradoxes of Transparency 5 MARE PUBLICATION SERIES 5 Douglas Clyde Wilson The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is the central scientific Douglas Clyde Wilson network within the massive set of bureaucracies that is responsible for Europe’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). While spending the past 25 years failing to sustain Europe’s fish stocks, this management system also became adept at making the lives of its scientists miserable. Now it is being confronted by the complex challenge of an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. If this combination of a multi-national bureaucracy, hard politics, and scientific uncertainty has made it impossible to maintain many individual fish stocks, how are decisions going to be made that consider everything from The Paradoxes of Transparency Paradoxes The sea birds to climate change? The old political saw that “if you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger” has never been put to a test like this! Yet ICES has begun to rise in an impressive way to the scientific challenge of providing advice for an ecosystem approach within the world’s most cumbersome fisheries management system. This book lays out the results of extensive sociological research on ICES and the decision making systems into which it feeds. ICES is finding ways to provide effective advice in the many situations where scientific advice is needed but a clear, simple answer is out of reach. In spite of the difficulties, scientists are beginning to help the various parties concerned with management to deal with facts about nature in ways that are more useful and transparent. Doug Wilson is a Senior Researcher and Research Director at Innovative Fisheries Management – An Aalborg University Research Centre. The Paradoxes of Transparency A clear analysis of an extremely complex domain—a great achievement, beautifully written. 5 The author leads the reader along with clear, well reasoned arguments, documenting, and explaining everything carefully along the way. ISBN 978 90 8964 060 4 James McGoodwin, Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado Science and the Ecosystem This is a very good book. It is original, based on a massive amount of self-generated primary Approach to Fisheries Management data, embedded in relevant theoretical and methodological debates, and superbly written. A work of real scholarship. in Europe Tim Gray, Professor at the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle www.aup.nl A U P A U P aup_mare5_paradoxes.indd 1 26-06-2009 12:45:03 The Paradoxes of Transparency MARE PUBLICATION SERIES MARE is an interdisciplinary social-science institute studying the use and management of marine resources. It was established in 2000 by the Uni- versity of Amsterdam and Wageningen University in the Netherlands. MARE’s mandate is to generate innovative, policy-relevant research on marine and coastal issues that is applicable to both North and South. Its programme is guided by four core themes: fisheries governance, maritime work worlds, integrated coastal zone management (ICZM), and maritime risk. In addition to the publication series, MARE organises conferences and workshops and publishes a social-science journal called Maritime Studies (MAST). Visit the MARE website at http://www.marecentre.nl. series editors Svein Jentoft, University of Tromsø, Norway Maarten Bavinck, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands previously published Leontine E. Visser (ed.), Challenging Coasts. Transdisciplinary Excursions into Integrated Coastal Zone Development, 2004 (isbn 978 90 5356 682 4) Jeremy Boissevain and Tom Selwyn (eds.), Contesting the Foreshore. Tour- ism, Society, and Politics on the Coast, 2004 (isbn 978 90 5356 694 7) Jan Kooiman, Maarten Bavinck, Svein Jentoft, Roger Pullin (eds.), Fish for Life. Interactive Governance for Fisheries, 2005 (isbn 978 90 5356 686 2) Rob van Ginkel, Braving Troubled Waters. Sea Change in a Dutch Fishing Community, 2009 (isbn 978 90 8964 087 1) The Paradoxes of Transparency Science and the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management in Europe Douglas Clyde Wilson MARE Publication Series No. 5 Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Alyne Delaney and Douglas Clyde Wilson Cover design: Neon, design and communications, Sabine Mannel, Amsterdam Lay-out: japes, Amsterdam isbn 978 90 8964 060 4 e-isbn 978 90 4850 813 6 nur 741 © Doug Wilson/Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2009 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright own- er and the author of the book. SERIES FOREWORD As editors of the MARE Publication Series, we are proud to present yet another major work on people and the sea. The topic of Doug Wilson’s important and timely book is the role of natural scientists in fisheries man- agement and environmental governance. Its focus is on the institutions that provide the scientific basis for decision-making with regard to Euro- pean fisheries policy. A prominent organisation in this context is the Inter- national Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which involves twenty member states and serves as the hub of a network of approximately 1600 scientists. The marine environment is difficult to observe so the scientific uncer- tainty is very high. Hence the crafting of scientific advice for an ecosystem approach to fisheries management is a complex challenge. How do scien- tists communicate uncertainty among themselves and with the outside world? And how well does science mix with advice? Wilson lucidly dis- cusses these and other important questions. Drawing on “communicative systems theory” and employing a wide ar- ray of data collection methods, Wilson provides deep insights into the chal- lenges and dilemmas involved in providing scientific advice to a demand- ing political process. Can science really deliver what stakeholders expect and policy makers are asking for, i.e. rapid answers with minimum uncer- tainty to complex issues, without compromising what science is meant to be? These are all pertinent questions for fisheries management but they also have more general relevance. Indeed, fisheries may well provide a test case for our capacity to deal with a range of environmental issues, in which science is called upon to provide the knowledge base necessary for effec- tive and rational collective action. Thus, this book is also a contribution to the Science and Technology Studies that are now enjoying widespread in- terest within academic circles and beyond. Finally this book is valuable in helping to cross the divide between nat- ural and social sciences. It demonstrates how sociology of science perspec- tives and methods can help us understand the contribution of natural sciences, and their representatives, to resolving complex societal issues. Svein Jentoft (Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø, Norway e-mail: [email protected] Maarten Bavinck (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands) e-mail: [email protected] To Prof. Joe Francis Many wonderful people contributed to my formal education, but 20 years is time enough to know which lessons proved the most useful. Others did more to help me learn what to think about, but no one did more to help me learn how to think. Table of contents Abbreviations 13 Preface 15 Acknowledgements 17 1 Introduction 19 1.1 Sensing the need for change 19 1.2 Does science matter in politics? 25 1.3 The case: The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 29 1.4 Research methods 31 1.5 Plan of the book 32 2 Some general theoretical guides for understanding the role of science in society 35 2.1 Three challenges in science and society 35 2.1.1 Science and culture: Pressures to inflate the science boundary 35 2.1.2 Clashing cultures and notions of evidence 38 2.1.3 Uncertainty 39 2.2 Three perspectives on science and decision-making processes 43 2.2.1 Mode Two science 43 2.2.2 Epistemic communities 46 2.2.3 Post-normal science: New forms of scientific practice 48 3 Developing scientific advice for policy 53 3.1 Saliency, credibility and legitimacy 53 3.1.1 What is saliency? 55 3.1.2 What is credibility? 55 3.1.3 What is legitimacy? 56 3.1.4 Saliency, legitimacy and research on risk perception 66 3.2 Boundary organisations and objects 69 3.3 The paradoxes of transparency 79 3.3.1 The paradox of precision and expertise 80 3.3.2 The paradox of quantification and reification 81 3.3.3 The paradox of surveillance 82 3.3.4 The paradox of scale 83 3.4 Summary of the theoretical discussion 87 9 4 The Science Assembly System for European fisheries management 91 4.1 An overview of the advice system 92 4.1.1 The main parts of the system 93 4.1.2 Gathering the data for fisheries advice 96 4.1.3 The National Fisheries Institutes 101 4.1.4 The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 107 4.1.5 Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries 114 4.1.6 DG MARE 118 4.1.7 Priorities for reform 120 4.2 Numbers, words and people: Uncertainty and the science boundary 123 4.3 Conclusion 132 5 Attitudes and working conditions of ICES advisory scientists 135 5.1 Advice provision, career and working conditions 135 5.1.1 Expert group participation 135 5.1.2 Work pressure 139 5.1.3 Research and publications 142 5.1.4 Funding and administration 144 5.1.5 Gender 148 5.2 The precautionary approach
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