Scientific Information and Natural Resource Politics: Positive and Negative Interactions

This paper focuses on how scientific information can make more effective contributions to the public policy of natural resources and the environment. Scientific information can play a crucial role in reining in special interest politics, but it can also be abused, rendering scientific inputs into the policy process ineffective. Natural resource policy often reflects the politics of sleight of hand: environmental and biodiversity costs of natural-resource exploitation are unclear; scientific findings that challenge existing resource policies are distorted or suppressed; scientific “lessons” are over-simplified or distorted; resource-exploitation doctrines and classifications are only superficially related to scientific principles; resource policy failures are not attributed to the appropriate actors; and scientific uncertainty (on such issues as global warning) is used to rationalize inaction rather than guiding the more constructive strategy of hedging to address risk.