Week 2

Question 1

What is the linear model of science?

Answer 1

Standard model

Evidence-based decision-making

more science leads to reduced uncertainty, which leads to political action

“Science as a disinterested force that can guide political decision making by providing appropriate facts - so long as it was kept separate from politics”

Question 2

What is the political model of science?

Answer 2

Messy model

Question 3

What does the role of science have to do with environmental conflict?

Answer 3

• assessing human-wildlife impacts
• suggesting and testing alternative mitigation techniques
• helping parties explore trade-offs.

Question 4

What is the challenge in managing environmental conflict?

Answer 4

• unwillingness of parties to engage
• distrust
• striving for unrealistic goals

Question 5

Based on the linear model of science, what are the sources of conservation conflicts?

Answer 5

• distrust
• when science is done to discover a specific outcome

Question 6

What is the big take-away from this lecture?

Answer 6

That an obstacle to achieving shared understanding is not a lack of scientific knowledge, but (to the contrary) a huge body of knowledge that can be assembled and interpreted to yield competing views of a problem and how society should respond.

Question 7

What is scientific bias?

Answer 7

when values and special interest are too closely connected to research

Question 8

Three ways of doing impact assessment

what is the technocratic approach?

Answer 8

• the scientific approach (evidence-based decision-making)
• science and technique is dominated, politics are sidelined but still present.
• attempts to overcome politics through science by attempting to provide objective observations and guidelines
• the technocratic approach places too much emphasis on science

Question 9

Three ways of doing impact assessment

what is the decisionistic approach?

Answer 9

• the political approach to decision making (decision-based evidence-making)
• political and economic interests are in a position to wield considerable influence
• places too much emphasis on politics

Question 10

Three ways of doing impact assessment

what is the pragmatic approach?

Answer 10

• deliberative democracy (English coffee houses - 1650’s)
• debate and discussion aimed at producing reasonable, well-informed opinions
• instead of privileging science over values, it calls for openness and equality of information that is based on multiple sources and models of information