Integrated economic and environmental assessment of waste policy instruments

The need for new policy instruments supporting the on-going transition from end-of-pipe waste treatment to resource management has been recognized in European policy. Instruments need to be carefully assessed before implementation to promote the desired changes and avoid problem shifting. Mathematical models may assist policy makers in such assessments. This paper presents a set of soft-linked models for assessing the economic and environmental impacts of policy instruments for both the prevention and management of waste and discusses its strengths and limitations. Consisting of (1) a macro-economic model, (2) a systems engineering model for waste management and (3) a life cycle assessment model for waste management, the set is primarily suited to assessing market-based instruments and environmental regulations. Considerable resources were needed for developing and using the set, and there are clear limits as to what can be addressed. However, if only one of the models had been used, neither the range of instruments nor the scope of impacts would have been possible to cover. Furthermore, soft-linked models allow many disciplines to contribute within one harmonized framework. Such integrated assessments may become increasingly useful for continuing the implementation of policy for sustainable governance of society’s material resources

One world or two? Science-policy interactions in the climate field

This article assesses how science–policy interactions are conceptualized in the social sciences with special reference to climate change and the IPCC. In terms of the dimension of distance (or proximity) between science and policy, we discern two ideal-type cases: a ‘two-worlds’ and a ‘one-world’ perspective. The first understands science and policy as independent spheres separated by a clear gap, while the second perceives science and policy as tightly coupled. These two perspectives, presented here in detail and in various sub-variants in order to show their complexity, appear dominant also in the discussions on how to improve, not only describe, the interaction between science and policy. We argue that this situation of opposing perspectives is not beneficial, nor properly recognized by scholars in the field. In response to this, we present a typology that may serve as a modest and judicious way for thinking about and making more nuanced choices in designing science–policy relations

The participatory turn in radioactive waste management:Deliberation and the social-technical divide

National policies for long-term management of radioactive waste have for decades been driven by technical experts. The pursuit of these technocratic policies led in many countries to conflict with affected communities. Since the late 1990s, however, there has been a turn to more participatory approaches. This participatory turn reflects widespread acknowledgement in the discourse of policy actors and implementing organisations of the importance of social aspects of radioactive waste management and the need to involve citizens and their representatives in the process. This appears to be an important move towards democratisation of this particular field of technological decision making but, despite these developments, technical aspects are still most often brought into the public arena only after technical experts have defined the ‘problem’ and decided upon a ‘solution’. This maintains a notional divide between the treatment of technical and social aspects of radioactive waste management and raises pressing questions about the kind of choice affected communities are given if they are not able to debate fully the technical options. The article aims to contribute to better understanding and addressing this situation by exploring the complex entanglement of the social and the technical in radioactive waste management policy and practice, analysing the contingent configurations that emerge as sociotechnical combinations. Drawing upon empirical examples from four countries that have taken the participatory turn - Belgium, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom – the article describes the different ways in which sociotechnical combinations have been constructed, and discusses their implications for future practice

Bacteriological studies of necrotic dental pulps

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When and how does science matter? : international relations meets science and technology studies

Under what conditions does science influence environmental policy? International Relations (IR) scholars, such as Peter M Haas, have argued that to gain political influence, science should not connect to policy before scientific consensus has been reached. We take this suggestion as a point of departure for investigating how science is and should be connected to policy in international environmental governance. Using insights from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), the contribution of IR is critically discussed, both to present its limitations and, primarily, to further develop the understanding of scientific consensus within IR and the need for separation and connections between science and policy. The organization and performance of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including the various assessments made by scholars from IR and STS, is used as an illustrative case. From the discussion of IR and STS and the role of the IPCC in climate policy, we conclude that the focus within STS on contextual and informal factors could shed light on how science and technology are understood by IR scholars, who focus more on the formal organizational design of the interplay between science and policy

Lost in transformation : The Paris Agreement, the IPCC and the quest for national transformative change

The IPCC stated in its special report on global warming of 1. 5°C (SR15) that meeting the temperature target of the Paris Agreement requires rapid and far-reaching changes across all aspects of society. This is called a need for transformative change. However, what is meant by transformative change? What should be changed, and how should it be changed? These questions are explored in this paper, which is structured in three steps. First, it develops a conceptual meaning of transformative change that is centered on society. Then, it analyses how the IPCC in SR15 understands transformative change. The analysis finds that the proposed pathways to reach the targets of 1.5 and 2°C have a strong technical focus on energy supply, which makes broader and deeper transformative change almost unnecessary. This finding is related to the recently published IPCC report on mitigation. Even if institutional and socio-cultural dimensions of transformative change are better covered in this report, they are insufficiently integrated into the overall assessment of necessary transformative changes. Finally, it turns to the national level, analyzing Sweden's ambition to become the first fossil-free welfare society in the world. The analysis shows, in line with SR15, that Sweden has a restricted focus on changes in energy supply, making transformative change, such as restructuring the economic system and questioning consumption patterns, unnecessary. Based on this analysis of international (the IPCC) and national (Sweden) levels, this paper identifies a need for an elaborated, consistent and deeper understanding of transformative change. It concludes that to be relevant to countries' work to achieve ambitious climate targets, the IPCC should develop a more qualified understanding of transformative change, which requires a better integration of social science research.vetenskapsrådet 2018-0163

Sharing responsibilities, coping with the coronavirus: why Swedish and French response strategies are not that different

This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemi