Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The political system in the EU is not based on a voting democracy but on a
bargaining system in combination with deliberative democratic principles.
Deliberative can be described as 'collective decision making with the participation
of all who will be affected by the decision or their representatives' in combination
with a 'decision making by means of arguments offered
by
and
to
participants
who are committed to the values of rationality and impartiality' (Elster
1998
: 8).
A prerequisite for a true deliberative process to occur is that it emerges under
the conditions of 'free public reasoning among equals who are governed by the
decisions' (Cohen
1998
: 186).
The underlying science-policy nexus model is a model of 'pure learning'.
It assumes that scientists and policy-makers cooperate through shared concepts and
strategies of innovation. It treats the policy process as a sort of research process,
where the policy programme is viewed as a set of hypotheses about the causal links
between acts and a desirable future state of affairs. And further putting policy into
practice can be seen as a case of social experimentation (Hoppe
2005
: 211).
To ensure that the assessment work performed also serves its bargaining
and deliberative purpose,
consultations
are made an integral part of the EU's IA
procedures so that it at the same time makes decision-makers and the public
aware of likely policy impacts and serves as a tool for communication between
them (EC
2002
: 3).
Conceptualizing Science-Policy Interactions
in SEAMLESS-IF Application
SEAMLESS-IF is designed with a set of procedures and computer tools supplied
by scientists, which can provide 'information' to policy makers, in order to facilitate
the assessment of likely short term impacts of a suggested policy, and the exploration
of alternative strategies for achieving longer-term goals through influencing land
management decisions. The SEAMLESS-IF impact assessment procedures can be
viewed as applications of a specific technology - encapsulation of specific enquiry
methods (simulation models) and data - for the acquisition of new knowledge.
When searching for the domain of intersection between science and policy, we shall
first look at the SEAMLESS-IF impact assessment procedure (technology) and
then the outputs of the procedures (new knowledge).
The SEAMLESS-IF Impact Assessment Procedure
The SEAMLESS-IF impact assessment procedure includes three main phases:
pre-modelling, modelling
and
post-modelling
(Therond et al.
2009)
. During
the
pre-modelling
phase the issue at stake and the associated spatial and temporal
scales are defined. The future driving forces at a given time horizon are anticipated
