Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
12.5.2 Some Questions and Challenges
Re-conceptualising landscape ecological science within a collaborative and mul-
tivalent landscape planning paradigm thus destabilises the notion of science
expertise as the 'given' role of landscape ecologists. As landscape scientists in
post-colonial countries have found (Duff et al. 2009 ), engaging with collective
forms of knowledge and practical wisdom requires development of a new humility
and sensitivity to the possibility of multiple ways of knowing.
This raises a number of interesting questions for landscape ecology as it
engages with planning and design. Landscape science is evolving towards a global
discipline, and many of the drivers for knowledge are issues and problems that
exist at a global scale. However, deliberative landscape science in the way we have
described depends significantly upon the local public culture of decision making.
Hence landscape ecology becomes far more context dependent that has been
acknowledged to date, and this has profound implications for reporting and peer
review. For example, how can reflective case studies on collaborative landscape
projects be more widely and 'productively' be brought into the core journals of
landscape ecology? How can scientists maintain credibility for their expertise
while participating in values based deliberation (Cash et al. 2003 )?
Nassauer and Opdam ( 2008 ) argue that design in science can fulfil this goal, but
there is a risk that this continues to privilege science knowledge. A reframing of
the process such that landscape ecological knowledge becomes one of several
sources of knowledge that shapes landscape archetypes and design solutions can
move values from being a sub set within the science endeavour, to become the
framework within which wider deliberation occurs. The objective values of sci-
ence thus become a participant in a conversation, rather than social values
becoming a subset of science knowledge. The relationship is inverted.
One pathway may be to recognise the distinction noted earlier, between internal
and external views. There are interesting precedents in social science reporting for
the way that investigators can reframe their roles and findings to recognise that
new knowledge may be co-produced with local participants. However, this raises
questions for the editors and reviewers of science journals in landscape ecology,
who need to balance demands for science legitimacy with the growing calls for
relevance to place based landscape issues. Whilst there are multidisciplinary
journals that specialise in such contextual science, if it remains marginalised from
the mainstream journals then context sensitive science is unlikely to gain credi-
bility in the discipline.
Finally, as Flyvberg (1998) argues, science knowledge is power. How will the
discipline manage imbalances of social and economic power in landscape eco-
logical projects? How can the increasingly global discipline of landscape ecology
be
accessible
to
the
needs
of
different
types
of
planning
contexts
and
 
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