Dürrenberger, G.

Jaeger, C C.

Kasemir, B.

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Letters to the editoreducation? The first requirement is the political willto channel national resources from the military tosocial needs. African states are rarely threatened bythe neighbouring countries, and yet their militaryexpenditure has increased five-fold over the last cou-ple ofdecades!The three challenges FOIje poses, namely needs-oriented policy, cultural bias and environment suit-able for creativity and innovation, will be successfulonly if science and technology move out ofthe ivorytowers of academia and research institutes to themarket area, where economics become the determin-ing factor, and S&T activities are directed to meet theneeds of the market. The link between S&T policy,trade and economic policies, not forgetting socio-cultural policies, cannot be over-emphasised.Reference1. John W Forje, "Development and technology policy in a chang-ing society: challenges for the African political structures",Science and Public Policy, 22(2), April 1995, pages 121-129.Embedding integrated assessment models in social discourseB Kasemir, C C Jaeger and G DurrenbergerI N TIIEIR PAPER (Science and Public Policy,22(4), August 1995, pages 218-230) SimonShackley and Brian Wynne argue that with regardto climate-related research, criteria for good scienceare not being determined solely from within science.Rather, they emerge through a process of "mutualconstruction" with government policy institutions. Incomments to this paper, Boehmer-Christiansenagrees with this claim but insists that even moreinstitutions are involved than those considered byShackley and Wynne, while:van Asselt with Rotmansshow how the idea of 'mutual construction' can in-spire new modelling strategies (Science and PublicPolicy, 22(6), December 1995, pages 411-413, and414-415).Shackley and Wynne's analysis ofthe situation inclimate research is very much to the point. But whatare the implications of 'mutual construction' for theuse of models, which are major products of climate-related research? Shackley and Wynne draw the con-clusion that:"[if] science alone is unable to provide a suffi-cient basis for underpinning political commit-ment to policy actions, then a public discussionabout the many other possible justificationsfor acting on the issue of climate change isimperative ... "This could be taken to suggest not only that a publicdiscussion about climate change is important, but thatthis discussion and scientific modelling efforts shouldB Kasemir and G Do.rrenberger are at the SwissFederalInstitutefor Enviromnental Scienceand Technology (EAWAG),HwnanEcologyDivision,Ueberlandstr. 133,8600 Duebendorf, Switzer-land Tel: +41 823 55 90; Fax: +41 1 823 53 75; E-mail:kasemir@eawag.ch.CC Jaegeris at DarmstadtUniversity and atEAWAG.124be separate activities. While we strongly support thefirst, we would doubt the second. A public discussionon climate-ehange policy without sufficient scientificinput risks would be highly ineffective, while scien-tific modelling without sufficient input from publicdiscussion risks focusing on irrelevant issues whileignoring questions of interest to the public.If, however, rather than being separated, scientificmodelling and public discussion processes could beintegrated, a comprehensive assessment process withpublic participation might emerge. This would be apublic discussion not only about "the many otherpossible justifications for acting", but also about sci-entific models and adequate ways to use them.We think this strategy is especially promising forintegrated environmental assessment (lEA). We de-fine lEA broadly as procedures to arrive at an in-formed judgement on different courses ofaction withregard to environmental problems; the informationrequired refers to physical, biological, and specifi-cally'human phenomena, including the relevant deci-sion-making processes. In the climate-ehangecontext, the scope ofIEA is an 'end-to-end' integra-tion, from socio-economic causes of emissions, toclimate change, and further to impacts on ecosystemsand human welfare (Parson, 1994). Up to now, lEAhas been pursued mainly as a modelling effort.Ifclimate research shows mutual construction withpolicy agendas, then this is inherited by the climate-related part ofIEA research. But lEA research differsfrom climate research proper in the scope of theexercise. lEA explicitly aims at integrating knowl-edge from different sources for the task of decisionsupport. Because considerations of the policy com-munity and the public is thus more openly present inlEA research than in climate research, lEA offersimportant opportunities for making mutual-construc-tion processes conscious. Instead ofignoring or tryingScience and Public Policy April 1996to suppress processes ofmutual construction, they canbe used to generate 'mutual support' of modellingefforts and public debate.We want to stress that not only the climate-relatedpart ofIEA research involves 'mutual construction',but that a similar argument holds for the socio-economic part of lEA-related research. Economicmodelling relevant for lEA, for example, concernscosts and benefits ofalternative CO2 (carbon dioxide)abatement strategies. Such modelling efforts usuallyinvolve the concept of economic equilibrium. It hasbeen one ofthe important achievements ofeconomictheory to demonstrate the existence of economicequilibria under well specified conditions.A related result, however, has often not been con-sidered sufficiently in this context. Linked to the proofof the existence of economic equilibria is the resultthat usually there is not only one equilibrium, butthere exist multiple equilibria (Sonnenschein, 1974).We have argued that the existence ofmultiple equili-bria casts severe doubts on the possibility of mean-ingful cost-benefit analysis concerning differentalternative climate policies (Jaeger and Kasemir,1996).Why are many economic models built withoutacknowledging this possibility ofmultiple equilibria?A possible reason is that, without a unique equilib-rium, models cannot answer questions like "what isthe optimal climate policy strategy?". Even withoutimpressive anecdotal evidence ofmutual constructionsuch as the one Shackley and Wynne obtained forclimate research, it would appear that a similar mutualconstruction between the research agenda of eco-nomic modellers and the interest of decision-makersin optimisation models is quite likely. Disregardingthe possibility of multiple equilibria in socio-economic modelling might playa role parallel to, forinstance, disregarding unlikely though possible cata-strophic climate events and focusing only on bestestimates in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change) scientific assessment of climatechange (see the comment by Houghton, cited inShackley and Wynne's paper, pages 226ff).Science and Public Policy April 1996Letters to the editorMore adequate models might not yield uniqueoptimal strategies. They would be more explanatorythan predictive, and contain elements of irreducibleuncertainty and surprise. Especially for this type ofmodel it would hold true that the most productive wayto use them would be as part ofa wider public debate:models not yielding one recommended strategywould need additional input from human decisions,and they would also not prevent a productive dis-course process by eliminating all but one option aslegitimate. In effect, this would be more compatiblewith the workings of democracies, as democracypresupposes a variety of conflicting, yet legitimateinterpretations. Integrated assessments could then bethe output of environmental discourses informed byboth scientific competence and democratic fairness(see also Renn et ai, 1995).In a planned European research project, namedULYSSES (Urban Lifestyles, Sustainability and In-tegrated Assessment) we therefore intend to conductexperiments on the interaction ofmonitored discoursegroups with lEA models. The discourse group, whichwe call the lEA Jury, will be a microcosm of sociallearning, and will include the concerns ofthe intendedusers of lEA, emphasising the role of ordinary citi-zens. We are very pleased that Shackley and Wynnewill take part in this effort, too, and hope that ULYS-SES will yield results on how to deal productivelywith situations ofmutual construction or mutual sup-port connecting science and public policy.ReferencesC C Jaeger and B Kasernir (1996), "Climatic risks and rationalactors", GlobalEnvironmental Change(in print).E A Parson (1994), "searching for integrated assessment: a pre-liminary investigation of methods and projects in the integratedassessment of climate change", paper presented to the 3rdmeeting of CIESIN-Harvard Commission on Global Environ-mental Change Information Policy, NASA Headquarters, 18February 1994, washington DC.o Renn, T VVebler and P Wiedemann (1995), Fairnessand Com-petencein CitizenPalticipation:EvaluatingModelsforEnviron-mentalDiscourse (K1uwer Academic Publisher, Dordrecht).H Sonnenschein (1974), "Market excess demand functions",Econometrica, 40, pages 549-562.125

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