Biodiversity and Agricultural Landscapes: Can the Wicked Policy

Problems Be Solved?
ANDREW BRENNAN12

This is the pre-publication draft of a paper that appears in

Pacific Conservation Biology 10, 2 (2004): 124 - 143

© Andrew Brennan 2003

1
Philosophy Discipline, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia.
Email: abrennan@cyllene.uwa.edu.au.
2
Philosophy Program, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia.
 Conservation issues for agricultural landscapes are typical examples of 'wicked' public policy problems:
that is, ones in which questions are not clearly defined, and there is apparent conflict between different
sets of values, all of which are legitimate. The paper argues that how to protect intrinsic value in nature is
itself a wicked policy problem, complicated by the fact that at least three different senses of "intrinsic value"
are easily confused. The challenge for policy in Australian agriculture is how to protect remaining natural
values by processes that are fair to stakeholders, governed by scientific credibility and sensitive to the
plurality of values held by groups within the community. The paper argues that scientists themselves can
play an important role not just in problem definition, but also in helping set the agenda for action that will
be effective in preserving natural diversity.

Keywords: Biodiversity, scientific credibility, public policy, intrinsic value, salinity policy

INTRODUCTION citizens of a single nation-state – even countries that are

This paper attempts to map a conceptual framework
within which to think about the conservation of
biodiversity and the management of natural resources.
The focus is on those Australian landscapes and
environments where agriculture, or agribusiness, is
carried on. As will be shown, many of the issues facing
agricultural policy are not purely technical; the
scientists, economists and other specialists who work in
this field have been called on to provide more than
optimal solutions to well-defined technical problems.
Ecologists and zoologists who have been active in
bringing Australia’s environmental problems to public
attention are already aware that they fulfil more than a
purely scientific role in the broader community. Indeed,
the very notions in which public discourse is phrased –
terms like “harm”, “disease”, “biodiversity”, “natural”,
“pollution”, “scarcity” – have no agreed scientific
definition.
Urgency is given to the present investigation in the
light of the fact that a plethora of policies, strategies and
legislative instruments over the last twenty years –
aimed at conserving biodiversity – have apparently been
highly ineffective. It is therefore an open question
whether Australia will be able to protect its remaining
endemic fauna and flora from the kind of damage which
has typified the two centuries of European occupation of
the land. Linked to this question is a profound puzzle.
Why, in the light of so many initiatives to counter
species loss, land degradation and the threats to
terrestrial ecosystems, has the Australian environment
continued to show signs of marked decline in key
features? Although the present paper has no definitive
answer to the puzzle, the framework developed here
diagnoses some of the factors that may have contributed
to the problematic situation and provides a basis for
practical steps to reverse the decline in the quality of
Australia’s natural environment.
POLICIES, ETHICS AND WICKED PROBLEMS
Communities of human beings can be thought of as
nested structures containing further sub-communities.
While some common patterns of behaviour, shared
values and dispositions will be widespread over some
large populations – for instance, those who are all
not very populous show clear subdivisions into sub-
communities marked by political, religious, ethical and
other differences. Such differences show up in many
ways, for example by adoption of different rituals,
different styles of dress, divergent forms of language,
distinct notions of identity, different understandings –
and networks – of obligation and so on. When a large
community has to make major policy decisions, the
process leading to these will typically reveal the
existence of divergent concerns and values among its
subgroups. A major problem in such cases is finding
agreement in language so that dialogue and
communication move forward despite the presence of a
plurality of perspectives, ambitions, anxieties and
values.
Many environmental problems are “wicked” (Rittel
and Webber 1973); that is they involve competition
among many different kinds of goods and a multitude of
perfectly legitimate interests. Rittel and Webber argued
that to take wicked problems as having true or false,
optimal or sub-optimal answers is to invite confusion,
namely the confusion between problems that can be
clearly defined and readily solved, and problems that
require compromise, balance and trading across
legitimate values. Since wicked problems cannot be
clearly defined, it is hard – if not impossible – to tell
when they have been resolved. Since wicked problems
involve the competition between multiple goods and
different – but perfectly legitimate – values, it is not
helpful to regard them as having right or wrong
answers. The emergence during the twentieth century
of new forms of environmental ethics has helped give
substance to the idea that there are values in nature
worth preserving for their own sake, not just for their
usefulness to humans. However, the moral crusade to
protect centres of intrinsic value in nature – whether
individuals, species, landscapes or systems – has run
into direct conflict with the commodification of nature
associated with economic rationalism and the
anthropocentric basis of many existing legal and
political instruments and institutions. In the resulting
debates, opponents may find themselves locked into
mutual denunciation and misunderstanding – features
typical of wicked problem situations. Agricultural
scientists, ecologists and zoologists are in difficult
territory here. While they would like to draw on the
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
enthusiasm of conservation organizations, the
conceptual resources of philosophy and the modelling
skills of economists, they can instead find themselves
under friendly fire from all directions. Finding a
language acceptable to many or all interests is not itself
a trivial matter. To begin with, it may be useful to
clarify some notions about value itself.
Values in nature – instrumental and non-
instrumental
It is common to regard many debates and arguments
about value in terms of clashes of rights. For example,
farmers may claim a right to clear their land, while
some of their neighbours demand a right to enjoy a
healthy and biotically diverse landscape. Conservation
groups and radical environmentalists are sometimes
accused of talking as if nature has rights – though in fact
there have been few systematic attempts to make sense
of the idea of rights for natural things apart from certain
animals (for a systematic attempt to establish that
animals have rights, see Regan 1983, and for a review
of the main positions in environmental ethics see
Brennan and Lo 2002). Rights talk, however, is
ambiguous and not the most basic level of ethical
discourse. Many moral systems can make no sense of
the notion of rights at all, which is why Jeremy
Bentham famously dismissed all talk about rights as
“nonsense on stilts” (Bentham 1789). A utilitarian
theory – which counts action as right when it has a good
outcome – will generally be sceptical of the idea of
rights, preferring instead to think about actions in terms
of whether they promote welfare, pleasure or the
satisfaction of preferences. Non-utilitarian theorists who
are willing to ascribe rights to humans are also generally
unwilling to ascribe rights to nature or its parts (for
more details see Taylor (1986)). Either kind of theory,
however, can still make sense of values being of
different kinds and being attached to more than just
human beings. For example, in the utilitarianism of
Peter Singer, the outcomes of our actions need to be
morally valued in terms of preferences, pleasures, pains
and suffering for any sentient being, not just those of
humans (Singer 1975; 1993). When Singer uses the
phrase “animal rights” this is, for him – though not for
Regan – merely a façon de parler.
One way of putting Singer’s moral position is to say
that, for him, the experiences of some non-human
beings have value or disvalue. The pain of a rat is
something about which we should be morally
concerned, he argues. By arguing in this way, he
extends the kind of view which was held by G. E.
Moore that the only intrinsically valuable things in the
world were human experiences (Moore 1903).
Certainly, there seem to be some experiences which
humans value for their own sake – the experience of
being with family and friends, the challenge of a
sporting competition, the attempt to learn a piece of
music, the taste of a fresh strawberry, and so on. To call
such experiences intrinsically valuable is just to claim
that they are valuable in themselves, without
considering any further end they serve. While Moore’s
conception of value was targeted exclusively on human
50
experience, Singer (1993) extends the notion to animal
experience especially the experience of pain and
suffering. “If a being suffers”, he writes, “there can be
no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering
into consideration” (p.50). For him, then, pain is bad in
itself whether suffered by a human or an animal.
What about things and people, rather than
experiences? Valuable things may include human
beings, higher animals, and abstract phenomena like
education, justice, honour, truth and love. For such
things, we can ask to what extent these have value as a
means to some further end – instrumental value – and to
what extent they are of non-instrumental value. To
avoid confusion, it is important to separate out different
meanings and get clear on notions like intrinsic,
extrinsic, objective and subjective. These distinctions
are not often made clearly in the literature of either
environmental philosophy or environmental economics.
Here are some definitions:
(i) x has non-instrumental value: x has value
independent of its usefulness, that is regardless of
whether x is a means to some other end. Human
beings are the prime example of things of non-
instrumental value (e.g., Kant 1785).
(ii) x has non-subjective value (i.e., objective value): x
has value independent of subjects’ attitudes. Some
writers argue that natural objects and processes
have just such value: for example, a world with a
diversity of plant species, but without any valuing
subjects in it, would be objectively valuable in this
sense (e.g., Routley 1973; Rolston 1975).
(iii) x has non-relational value (sometimes called non-
extrinsic value): x has value independent of any
relation x may or may not have to anything else
(Moore 1904). Some writers argue that every
animal has equal value, whether the species to
which it belongs is endangered or not, whether
endemic or not. This would be because each
animal is a centre of life and experience – a
property that depends on no relations to other
things (Regan 1983).
Some writers use the term “intrinsic value” as simply
equivalent to “non-instrumental value”. Using it this
way does not exclude its opposite: trees can be valued
for their own sake even though trees provide timber for
many uses. However, it is easy to slide from sense (i) to
a stronger sense such as (ii) or (iii). Many writers have
argued both for the intrinsic (non-instrumental) value of
nature and for the objectivity of value in nature
(Callicott 1989; Rolston 1989).
Generally, writers who claim that nature, or natural
things, have intrinsic value all agree that “intrinsic”
means at least what is captured in definition (i). Notice
that things which have value in virtue of being rare or
endemic to an area will not have that value in the third,
non-relational sense (even though they may additionally
have intrinsic value in sense (i)). In the context of
conservation, rarity itself is a disvalue. A butterfly
collector may treasure a specimen because of its rarity,
but conservation efforts targeted on the last individuals
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
of a threatened species will aim to protect and enlarge
that population, that is, to make its members less rare.
When people ask: what is valuable in its own right?,
they can be asking about intrinsic value in any of the
three senses given above. The national and
international conventions, legislation and treaties
referring to the intrinsic value of species, ecosystems
and natural processes may be safely regarded as
referring to non-instrumental values (sense (i) above),
but are no doubt taken by some people to refer to value
in a stronger sense. Although legislation may in many
cases reflect the fact that people value natural processes
and things in a non-instrumental way, many statements
about intrinsic value can also be regarded as helping to
spread the idea that nature has value in its own right.
Likewise, the ideas that have inspired environmental
ethics and many people active in conservation
movements have been framed in terms of the non-
instrumental value of natural things and processes,
though not in terms of rights. The forester and game
manager Aldo Leopold (1949) urged, in A Sand County
Almanac, that people should “quit thinking about land
in economic terms” and instead recognize that “a thing
is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability,
and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it
tends otherwise.” (p.224-5). In the preface to the
collection, he commented “that land is a community is
the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved
and respected is an extension of ethics” (op. cit., p.vii-
ix). The vocabulary of “love” and “respect” seems
appropriate to our relation to items that are of non-
instrumental value.
A more recent inspiration for environmentalists is in
the deep ecology platform, formulated by Arne Næss
and George Session in the early 1980s (Næss and
Sessions 1984). The first three statements of the
platform read:
(1) The well-being and flourishing of human and non-
human life have value in themselves (synonyms
intrinsic value, inherent worth). These values are
independent of the usefulness of the non-human
world for human purposes.
(2) Richness and diversity of life-forms contribute to
the realization of these values and are also values
in themselves.
(3) Humans have no right to reduce this richness and
diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
The kind of value identified in points (1) and (2)
certainly draws upon sense (i) of intrinsic value
identified above. That something is of non-instrumental
value gives us a reason – in many cases – to care about
its preservation and to try to ensure its continued
existence. If people are disposed to value naturalness
and biodiversity for their own sakes, this alone gives a
reason why they should be protected, independent of
their usefulness to humans and other forms of life. The
deep ecological platform, in common with other work in
environmental ethics, gives little help in distinguishing
the value of native or endemic species from exotic ones.
Being native or endemic does not contribute to intrinsic
51
value in sense (iii), but is often cited as valuable in one
of the other two senses. It may be that the value of
being native, like the value of being natural itself, is
associated with the fact that some things – individuals,
species and systems – have evolved independent of
human manipulation and interference (see Elliot 1997;
Katz 1997). For those who take this view, although
there could be significant intrinsic value in a diverse
agricultural landscape, this will always be less than the
value of a naturally diverse landscape.
Given that many philosophers, conservationists and
scientists argue that at least some natural things have
value for their own sakes, not just for their utility, it is
not surprising that economic approaches to valuing
nature have come under attack (see Sagoff 1988;
O’Neill 1993; Brennan 1995). The reductive attempt to
reduce all values to preferences and express preferences
in terms of willingness to pay (or accept compensation)
seemed – to the critics of economic approaches – to
threaten the reduction of all value to usefulness. For
Sagoff and the other critics of techniques like contingent
valuation, the pricing of natural “goods and services”
threatens to fictionalize, socialize and commodify
natural things as if they are of no more value than the
toothpaste, watches, shoes and socks available at the
supermarket. To break out of this particular
confrontation, one solution may be for philosophers and
economists to consider ways in which they can forge a
shared vocabulary so they can jointly help solve one of
society’s most pressing concerns: the conservation of
natural diversity in the face of the explosion of
consumer desires and increasing human population.
The tension between environmental ethicists and
economists is one aspect of wider academic rivalries
that might be diminished were disciplinary frameworks
regarded as complementary – not alternatives – in the
approach to wicked problems. Where a problem is
complex, it involves a plurality of competing goods, and
so requires a plurality of approaches. Reductivism is
still a strong tendency within many disciplines. Part of
the excitement of work within a disciplinary framework
is exploring just how many phenomena can be
illuminated within the terms of one discipline alone.
Yet every discipline framework comes with limitations:
there will be questions it cannot put and ideas it cannot
express. This is not a merely academic point. When
discipline-based experts come to grips with
environmental problems they may end up competing
rather than collaborating. A well-designed policy
process has to guard against the dangers of over-
specialism and the tunnel-vision it can induce. There is
always the danger of policy being hijacked by one
disciplinary perspective to the exclusion of others.
OUTLINE OF A FRAMEWORK FOR
BIODIVERSITY POLICY
Salinity in Australia
Salinity is just one aspect of a massive environmental
crisis presently faced by Australia. Over the country as
a whole, the effects of land clearing, grazing, burning,
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
introduction of exotic species and soil compaction have
been enormous. Despite a political rhetoric of care for
conservation and diversity, the rate of native vegetation
clearing has actually increased during the last ten years.
Forty per cent more land was cleared in 1999 than in
1991 (ABS 2002, p.26) and so it is hardly surprising
that the 2001 State of the Environment Report remarks
that “clearance of native vegetation remains the single
most significant threat to terrestrial biodiversity” (SOE
2001a, p 73). Only four countries in the world cleared a
greater area of land than Australia did in 1999, namely
Brazil, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo and Bolivia (SOE 2001b, p.75). Recent massive
land clearance in Queensland and New South Wales
have put pressure on native diversity and wildlife
leading to increasing fragmentation of remnant
vegetation. Salinity in agricultural areas is a result of
clearing native species whose adaptive root systems
enable them to function as effective groundwater
pumps. It now ranks as one of the significant threats to
native biodiversity on the continent.
Australia has recently gone backwards on five of the
six key indicators of progress on environmental matters
– biodiversity preservation, land clearance, land
degradation, the condition of inland waters and
greenhouse gas emissions (ABS 2002). Something
seems amiss with recent land management and it has
been argued that radical changes to use of agricultural
land needs to be considered including setting aside large
areas from productive use (Stirzaker et al. 2000).
Several commentators have described Australia as the
“continent in reverse” (Christoff 2002) or “the laggard
state”, the country that once was at the forefront of
environmental ethics thought, but whose environmental
policy has declined in impact and effectiveness over the
last decade (see Economou 1999; Crowley 1997). In
this context, and given a history of inaction on dryland
salinity, it seems unlikely that present salinity policies
will fare any better than other aspects of conservation
policy in Australia.
The Australian Conservation Foundation describes
Australia’s present economy as hot (fossil-fuel
dependent), heavy (using large volumes of raw
materials and generating large amounts of waste) and
wet (water intensive) (ACF 2000). If, as seems highly
probable, such an economy is ecologically
dysfunctional and unsustainable, how can the country
move to an ecologically sustainable path? A measure of
the problem is shown by looking at it in microcosm.
The state of New South Wales approved clearing of
208,360 ha in the period January 1998 to August 2000,
while having a policy of no net loss of vegetation and
having passed a Native Vegetation Conservation Act in
1997. There are at least 37 clearing situations which are
exempt from the provisions of the legislation (SOE
2001, p.42) and the extent of such clearing is not subject
to any notification procedures, hence is unknown.
The same state has also passed no less than fourteen
acts since 1974 aimed at conserving wilderness,
protection of endangered species, managing water
resources and general environment protection. The
52
state’s landcare program, which is a community-led
program aimed at sustainable management of natural
resources, is supported by no less than ten government
agencies each of which has its own commitment to
sustainable development and management within its
area of responsibility3. Some of these agencies, in turn,
have wide ranges of responsibility, some of which are
devolved onto more than one department4. The
operative principle seems to be that several different
departments will share research into key issues such as
soil acidity, salinity, nutrient management and so on
(LCFS 2003).
The level of State government is immediately below
that of Commonwealth (Federal) government In the
same period (from 1974) in which New South Wales
passed fourteen pieces of environmental protection
legislation, the Commonwealth passed 18 pieces of
protective legislation, although one of these – the
Environmental Protection and Biodiversity
Conservation Act of 1999 – actually replaces five of the
earlier pieces of legislation in the attempt to
“consolidate and streamline the role of the
Commonwealth in environmental protection” (SOE
2001, p.38). In addition to legislation there have also
been numerous policy initiatives and strategies
developed at Federal and State level. These range from
national frameworks for ecologically sustainable
development, landcare and bushcare programs, to more
local coastal management programs, weed strategies,
rivercare and streamwatch programs. To complete the
picture of all the agencies, groups, individuals, policies,
programs and strategies involved in biodiversity
conservation, it would be necessary to add the
contributions of community groups, development and
public health authorities, private sector organizations
and individuals including landholders, firms, industry
associations and, of course, research and scientific
institutions in the country. Finally, local government
would also have to be included given its responsibility
for securing community initiatives and for
implementing many of the sustainability strategies
agreed at higher levels.
3
These are the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and
Natural Resources, the State Forests Department, Environment
Protection Authority, National Parks and Wildlife Service,
NSW Agriculture, Waterways Authority, Department of
Mineral Resources, Department of Education and Training,
Department of Lands and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of
Energy and Utilities.
4
For example, soil loss measurement, erosion, coastal
engineering and conservation of protected lands all fall within
the ambit of the Department of Lands and Rural Affairs.
Coastal lands acquisition, dryland salinity, waterlogging and
drainage, and thirty-four other conservation support functions
are the responsibility of the Department of Infrastructure,
Planning and Natural Resources. Soil acidity, waterlogging,
soil structure, salinity, and irrigation advice and design are the
responsibility of NSW Agriculture.
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
The sheer complexity of provision for biodiversity
protection might go some way to explaining why so
many agencies and structures have done so little to
protect the Australian environment in the last decade. A
recent government audit document (ATBA 2002)
argues:
“There is an array of regional frameworks for program
delivery and other administrative purposes. To avoid
unnecessary duplication and confusion, biodiversity
monitoring should reflect an established ecological
framework rather than contemporary administrative
arrangements.” (p.3).
Notice that this recommendation means that
administrative frameworks should be adapted to
scientifically-based structures – such as bioregions,
catchments, ecosystems and the like. This proposal
will be considered later in the context of determining
the roles of the ecological sciences in policy processes.
Policy Processes
Public policy often involves wicked problems, like the
salinity one, where environmental, economic, social and
political issues are all interlinked. Salinity is not just an
issue in terms of the loss of native diversity, leading to a
reduction in the intrinsic value of Australia’s
landscapes. It also impacts on farm profitability,
undermines roads, and can contribute to rural decline
and stagnation. It is not, then, a tractable problem. This
– in contradistinction to a wicked one – would be a
problem where there is not profound uncertainty about
its nature or effects, where a small number of already
well-established interests are involved, and where there
is a good chance of there being a technically-agreed
solution that would command wide assent. Wicked
problems, on the other hand, may impinge on so many
areas of life and be seen from so many different
perspectives, that even the early stages of problem
definition and agenda setting get bogged down in
rhetoric, debate and frustration. It has recently been
suggested that Australia’s salinity problem, combined
with the effects of global climate change, may pose
threats to human health due to an increased spread of
mosquito-borne diseases. For example there is a form of
polyarthritis known as “Ross River virus” which is
endemic in all Australian states. On average around
5000 cases of this non-fatal but highly debilitating
illness are reported each year in Australia (Russell
1998). As salt flats spread under the impact of global
warming, one of the vectors of Ross River virus in
southern Australia – Aedes camptorhynchus – may be
able to extend its breeding populations in many inland
areas hence posing a health threat (Horwitz, Lindsay
and O’Connor 2001). Such speculation draws attention
to the fact that salinity can be seen as a public health
issue just as much as an issue affecting conservation or
the economics of farming and rural communities. There
is then no single answer to the question: What is the
salinity problem? for there is no longer a single problem
to be solved.
Wicked problems will not be susceptible to systematic
analysis and solution like simpler, tractable ones. In
53
spite of this, analysts have tried to depict the general
stages of policy in a systematic way like the following
(based on Anderson et al. 1978):
1. Problem definition. This starts with perception that
an issue exists requiring policy decision. It is seldom
noted in the public policy literature that recognition
of the existence of a problem such as acid rain,
ozone depletion, threats to species, and so on may
depend on scientific findings and expert
interpretation of these.
2. Agenda-setting. At this stage, different interest
groups jockey to have a say in policy formulation
(next stage) and to refine, redefine the problem, or
link it to their other agendas.
3. Policy formulation. Debate, analysis and evaluation
follow the first two stages. Before final policy
formulation occurs, there may be opportunities for
more research, consultancy, and investigative work.
This will almost certainly be true if a wicked
problem is being approached seriously. Around this
stage is when some groups will start to air draft
policies and these can be put up to political, moral
and scientific scrutiny. They can also be tested for
support among interest groups, politicians and the
public.
4. Policy adoption. This means less than it sounds –
simply the statement by a government or agency that
it has made the formal decision to commit to some
policy, regime, treaty, legislation or other course of
action. Adoption of a policy by a government, or a
leader, does not guarantee that it will ever be
implemented, or even reach the stage, for example,
of being drafted into legislation. The policy process
still has some distance to run.
5. Implementation. At this stage, the administrative
agencies of the government consider how best policy
can be effected, putting forward legislative proposals
if necessary. However, powerful interests can at this
stage force modifications or abandonment of the
formally adopted policy. The legislation, for
example, may be weak or may fail to pass through
the relevant legislative body. The courts may rule
against proposed legislation if it is contrary to
existing precedents at law. It is also widely
recognized that an administering authority can itself
obstruct or modify policies that have been formally
approved and officially implemented. Where a
policy has to be implemented through more than one
government agency, its effectiveness may also be
undermined, for instance where agencies interpret it
differently, or fail to agree on effective action in
keeping with the legislation.
6. Outcome evaluation seeks to determine whether the
adopted and implemented policy has in fact worked.
In general, it is claimed that there are two different
approaches to this: intuitive and scientific. The
latter is meant to use scientific methods to arrive at
quantifiable results concerning the environmental,
health, economic and other impacts that policies
have had.
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Policy has no beginning, and no end. The above steps
are thus a linear imposition on a fluid, non-linear
system. Since different policies, once adopted, have
complex interactions with others, it can be virtually
impossible to separate out the effects of one policy from
those of another. The presence of many different
interest groups, competition and hostility between
different government agencies, and the changing
political allegiances within a given society, all add
complexity to the environment within which policy is
devised, implemented and evaluated.
If decisions on salinity and its treatment will affect
many different communities and interest groups at
different levels, it will be helpful to consider just what
kind of policy process would do justice to the complex
of values, interests and needs bound up in this case. An
initial, but inadequate, picture of what is involved is
given in Fig. 1. It shows different sub-communities,
characterized by distinct values, ideologies and so on
bringing their values to the policy process (provided,
that is, they are consulted in such a process). Since the
issue of who is, and who is not, consulted in policy
deliberations is a political matter, this has been
indicated by an extra label. The policy process will,
ideally, provide a forum in which the different
communities’ concerns about health, welfare, education,
aesthetics, sustainability and so forth can be expressed,
clarified and debated.
For some analysts (see, for example, Stone 1997) such
notions as “harm”, “risk” and “rights” are not defined
prior to, and independently of, the policy process, but
rather become articulated and defined only through that
process. This is just what should be expected in the
case of wicked problems which provide scope for
interaction among various kinds of experts, corporate
and governmental interests, as well as the various
communities who are the stakeholders in the issues
under discussion. As Fig. 1 shows, the output of the
policy process can be conceptualised in terms of
decisions at different scales: for simplicity, these have
been reduced to three very general headings, namely
decisions affecting societal/cultural matters, those
connected with technological and economic matters,
and finally those associated with ecological issues, such
as ecosystem health, integrity, sustainability and
biodiversity.
Dangers and inadequacies
While Fig. 1 gives a rough overview of some aspects
of the policy process, it fails to provide a clear picture of
policy dynamics. By the latter is meant the fact that at
any given time many policy discussions will be taking
place, agendas are being continually set, redefined,
modified, and the outputs of previous policy decisions
are themselves among the factors that influence present
discussions. More serious and more difficult to rectify
are the partitions that the diagram itself invokes. If
salinity is an issue that simultaneously affects economic
welfare, socio-cultural values and environmental
systems then how can the policy decisions on this
matter be segregated in the way implied by the
diagram? Following from this question, we can ask
54
how these three realms of effects are related to each
other. As already noted, one factor influencing the
answer is academic disciplines themselves. Whether
these issues are integrated in a pluralistic fashion, or
reduced to just one dimension, may depend on whether
the scientific input to policy is dominated by a particular
group of experts. A second problem arises from the
compartmentalization that arises within government and
conservation agencies themselves. As already seen,
there is no shortage of agencies, mission statements and
legislation aimed at protecting the Australian
environment. Can the over-compartmentalism of
different agencies and the sheer number of parties
involved make it difficult to agree on effective policy?
In recently completed but so far unpublished work
which criticizes failures in the United States
Environmental Protection Agency, Bryan Norton has
been critical of a phenomenon he calls “towering”. This
is the situation in which agencies and departments build
up their own “towers” of expertise, interest and
research, often expressing values and couched in
discourse, that are internal to the agency in question.
This is a disastrous state of affairs, Norton argues, if
environmental problems themselves are wicked. For
example, Norton fears that the growth of environmental
ethics has encouraged the idea that environmental
problems can only be addressed through a moral
crusade. Just as some economists try to force all values
into a single reductive mould (dollar values) so, Norton
argues, environmental ethicists have tried to force all
natural values into comparable units of intrinsic value.
The trouble with both approaches, he argues, is that they
channel attention away from the ways values change
and evolve, embedded in unfolding cultures. The
solution to problems of sustainable development will
involve some compromises, but probably also some
evolution in the values a society professes. At the
agency level, Norton argues, the notion that one kind of
solution – engineering, ecological, economic, or
whatever – is right and others wrong leads to a fruitless
dialogue of the deaf which impedes the processes of
growth and mutual learning.
When agencies at State and Federal level have
overlapping spheres of responsibility, towering seems
like a real risk. Accordingly, a constraint on policy
processes, to reduce the risk of towering, might be that
chains of overlapping responsibility for salinity
management and biodiversity protection should be
eliminated in favour of simple agency structures. A
further suggestion is that administrative and policy
structures should match a particular scientific
understanding of the problem: for example,
administrative structures can be built around ecological
or agro-ecological regions. Although such an
arrangement may seem to reduce overlap in agency
responsibilities, it runs the risk of giving one
perspective too much control of the policy process.
Such an idea is unlikely therefore to work in all cases.
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES 55

THE POLICY FRAMEWORK IN MORE DETAIL
Policy and Science
In the early days of public policy theory, it was
assumed that policy-making could be thought of in
“scientific” terms with the participants in such processes
conceived as rational actors (Dror 1968). In the 1950s,
Herbert Simon pointed out that the rational-actor
conception of the human being was undermined by two
factors – namely that our own reasoning capacities are
limited and the world itself is complicated (Simon
1957). As has just been argued above, one public policy
issue – salinity – can have ramifications in many areas
of economic, social and cultural practice. For Simon,
and his immediate followers, the complexity of issues
and the bounded nature of our rationality, meant that we
could aim not at ideal policies, but only at ones that are
good enough (Simon called these “satisficing” choices).
Charles Lindblom went so far as to argue that Simon’s
findings meant that the best policy options available
were only incrementalist and that a rational society
should try to make sure it “muddled through” rather
than engage in dramatic policy shifts and strategies
(Lindblom 1959). Muddling through, however, may be
an inadequate response to critical problems, and the
Dutch attempt to take a more radical approach to policy
will be considered later.

Ideologies, rituals
Obligations
Values and
concerns

Networks
COMMUNITIES
SALINITY

POLICY
PROCESSES

Health
Education
Political
Aesthetics
selection DECISIONS
Cultural
Sustainability
Societal/community/cultural

Sustainability
Economic/technological
Integrity
Ecological
Health

BIODIVERSITY

Fig. 1. The General Policy Scheme.

 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Inspired by the failure of rationalistic policy models,
other theorists took an overtly sociological and political
look at what happened in real policy situations. For
example, Carol Weiss argued that information, of any
kind, is embedded in theories, models or other
explanatory frameworks. These in turn always operate
in conjunction with interests (that is, self-interested
desires for power, wealth, status, etc.) and ideologies
(fundamental political, religious and moral beliefs).
Weiss’ III model (Information, Interests, Ideology)
implies that scientific information, no matter how
reliable, will always be processed, used and
manipulated in conjunction with ideologies and interests
(Weiss 1983). Pierre Horwitz and Michael Calver make
an accusation of just such manipulation of policy in
connection with one contemporary Australian case,
namely the way the regional forest agreement for
Western Australia was negotiated (Horwitz and Calver
1998). Using a modified version of some of Horwitz
and Calver’s ideas, there may be a way to save a place
for good science in policy processes and use it to temper
the extent to which ideologies and interest can drive
policy issues. If it is to be used in this way, however,
scientists themselves may have to reconceive some of
their roles in public debate and policy formulation.
As already seen, different communities of interests
will be stakeholders in public policy processes. In the
case of salinity in Australia, the number of stakeholders
is likely to be very large and a process of multiple levels
and stages would seem to be appropriate in this case.
For ease of exposition, however, the focus will be on
just one or two aspects of the technical, scientific and
economic inputs to any stage of such a process. The
expectation is that a group of communities will be able
to accept and live with a policy provided they have had
appropriate input to the process(es) leading to the policy
decision. Weiss’ observation, however, is that some
stakeholder groups will usually try to hijack the process
for their own ends, pushing their own interests,
dominating and setting the agenda. Notice that
processes will only function effectively if, in general,
those who participate in them do so sincerely, that is
matching their deeds to their words, and provided that
participants are able to trust each other. Although the
ethics of sincerity and trust are not often mentioned in
the public policy literature, it is in fact reasonably easy
to test for both of these and we can even imagine
putting penalties in place to make it unprofitable for
participants to abuse the process.
Assuming a reasonable degree of sincerity and trust
among those involved in the process, two problems
remain as shown in Fig. 2. The first is how to ensure
that the information going into the process itself is
technically reliable or scientifically credible. Since
natural and social sciences are fundamental in the
planning, management and working of contemporary
industrial societies, how can we be sure that credible
information is used in formulating policy
recommendations, strategies and the decisions that are
ultimately implemented? Second, given that
stakeholders are liable to try to advance their own
interests, how can it be ensured that the entire policy
56
process is not a sham? Put another way, if societies are
determined to reach the best available policy decisions,
how can they strive to approach what Jürgen Habermas
has called the “ideal discourse” situation (Habermas
1984), that is, one in which participants consciously
avoid manipulation of each other, strategic manoeuvring
and strategies that confuse the issues?
A Role for Credible Science
The last two questions are actually linked. Credible
science, and the role of qualified scientists and experts
in policy processes, is not separate from questions about
the manipulation of process or the manipulation of
stakeholders. To see this, however, we need to be clear
on what makes a scientific position credible, or what
confers credibility on the pronouncements of a
particular scientific or technical expert. Scientists
themselves are a resource here. Drawing on their
practice, we can ask – for example – about the role of
peer review in determining whether a position or a view
has scientific credibility. When it comes to journal
publications or selecting conference papers, work is
regularly assessed by reference to peer review, among
other criteria. Horwitz and Calver (1998) argue that peer
review is one of several criteria that can be used to
assess public processes. Although they do not state their
criteria, Horwitz and Calver proposed four questions
whose answers might suggest particular criteria.
Here is a slightly modified version of their questions:
(i) Has the process involved relevantly qualified
scientists, what are their allegiances and are these
balanced across the range of stakeholder interests
which apply?
(ii) Has the process provided a framework for, or
facilitated in another way, recognizably scientific
debate and thereby structurally facilitated the
resolution of scientific disagreements?
(iii) Has the process used scientific norms of peer
review, publication and conferences?
(iv) Has the process involved an explicit methodology
from which conclusions can be justifiably drawn?
That the criteria developed from these questions are
robust, and may in fact be used by scientists themselves,
is suggested by a small pilot study undertaken in Hong
Kong with a group of environmental scientists in 2001
(see Table 1). These results, however, would need to be
confirmed in a larger study before much reliance could
be placed on them. Nothing in the study, however,
contradicts the idea that peer review and other criteria
that are in keeping with scientific practice itself can play
a role in providing credible information for policy
debates.
As can be seen from Table 1, four criteria stood out as
favoured by significant numbers of the scientists:
• The data have been collected using appropriate
methodology
• The information has been collected and analysed by
scientifically qualified people
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES 57

• The source of funding for the research would not have
biased the scientists putting forward the data
• The information has been subject to peer review
These all scored an average score of better than 6 (out
of a maximum of 7). Four other criteria also proved
highly popular scoring a mean of better than 5:
• The scientists providing information have no
connection with commercial interests
• The data have been published in reputable
publications
• The scientists providing the information are
recognized international authorities in the field
• The data have been published
To find ways of using these criteria to design policy
institutions that will protect processes from
manipulation is not a trivial matter. What is important
for the philosophy of policy and of natural resource
management is that we can formulate tentative criteria
such as these, and consider ways of making sure the
information used in policy processes meets them. The
establishment of expert review panels or independent
review bodies, for example, may be one way of
ensuring that only credible information is provided to
policy participants. The active involvement of qualified
and reputable experts at all stages of the policy process
may be another factor that would help filter out
unreliable information.

Social sciences

Economics
CREDIBLE INFORMATION

Natural Sciences SINCERITY

PROCESSES DECISIONS

Fairness?

Stakeholders TRUST

Manipulation of process?

Habermas: ‘ideal discourse’?

Fig. 2. Partial framework for credible policy process

.
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES 58

Table 1. Criteria for scientific credibility1.

N Mean SD²
The data have been collected using appropriate methodology 17 6.76 0.44
The information has been collected and analysed by scientifically qualified people 17 6.24 1.03
The source of funding for the research would not have biased the scientist putting forward
17 6.12 0.99
the data
The information has been subject to peer review 17 6.06 1.09
The scientists providing information have no connection with commercial interests 17 5.65 1.62
The data have been published in reputable publications 17 5.59 1.54
The scientists providing the information are recognized international authorities in the field 17 5.18 1.51
The data have been published 16 5.13 1.59
If the information is concerned with risk, it involves extrapolation from statistically well
17 4.82 1.59
established data
The scientists providing the information work at reputable universities or research centres 17 4.82 1.91
If risk estimates are given by an individual or team, then that individual’s or team’s
17 4.71 1.49
previous estimates of risk is a guide to the credibility of their present work
The data have been presented at international conferences 17 4.00 1.80
The data corroborate my own research findings 17 2.76 1.64
The information is consistent with widely-accepted theories 17 2.71 1.40
The data are compatible with information I already have 17 2.71 1.45
1
Survey of seventeen environmental scientists from Hong Kong Universities, 2001, using 7-point scale (7=strongly agree, 1=strongly
disagree). ²SD, Standard deviation.

What applies to experts in natural science can also be
applied to technical inputs from social scientists
including economists. In these areas, there are also
clear standards for what counts as technical
qualifications, what counts as methodologically
appropriate research methods and so on. We thus seem
to have found the basis for designing processes that
have some degree of technical and scientific credibility.
These remarks gesture towards a way in which credible
science and credible expert testimony can be used to
safeguard against certain manipulations of policy and of
people. This linkage between the two is shown by the
large block arrow in Fig. 3. The establishment of
mechanisms to protect processes from being
manipulated by information that is not technically
credible stops short of ensuring Habermas’ ideal
discourse situation is reached, but provides some
protection from appeal to bogus “experts”. The addition
of mechanisms that check for sincerity and trust, and of
those that might rule out unethical and unfair
manipulation of process, would perhaps make additional
impacts on the way processes are in fact conducted in
Australia and other countries. None of this, however, is
enough: far more needs to be done to flesh out what an
appropriate legal and political framework for salinity
policy should look like.
POLICY FRAMEWORKS FOR WICKED
PROBLEMS
A Dutch Alternative to Muddling Through
Fig. 3 makes space for the need to establish an
appropriate legal and political framework for the policy
process and also gestures towards one issue that has
repercussions for the discussion of dryland salinity.
This concerns the case of high uncertainty or what has
been called “post-normal science” (Funtowicz and
Ravetz 2003). According to Funtowicz and Ravetz,
where systems uncertainty is present and risks are high
but unquantifiable by technical means, issues should be
discussed by “an ‘extended peer community’ consisting
not merely of persons with some form or other of
institutional accreditation but rather of all those with a
desire to participate in the resolution of the issue”.
Such devices as “citizens’ juries”, focus groups and
“consensus conferences” are – they claim – forms of
just such post-normal deliberation where inclusive
dialogue replaces “rigid demonstration”.
Whether the notion of and “extended peer group” is
appropriate, the Funtowicz and Ravetz suggestions pose
a more general question about the role of science in
policy and its capacity to influence problem definition
and agenda setting. Norton’s concerns about towering
are echoed by Paul de Jongh, who writes about the
Dutch success in achieving integrated approaches to
policy by contrasting it with a former state in which
“Governments develop policies and bureaucracies to
address each specific problem or problem areas – such
as waste, or pollution of the air, the water, the soil.
After a while this leads to an inefficient duplication of
effort. It resembles a hiking trip in which everyone is
carrying his or her own equipment….. In the policy
field that means separate bureaucracies for air, soil,
water, toxics and so on. Each has its own scientists and
budgets: each issue has its own corresponding laws and
regulations”(de Jongh and Captain 1999, p.7).
The Dutch dealt with this problem by means of a
radical approach to environmental quality. Norton
argues that the Dutch strategy of building a plan for
long-term sustainability through their 1989 National
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP) can be commended
as a model. Given that towering and reduplication may
also be problems for Australia it may be worth
considering how the Dutch experiment fared.
The Dutch first developed a new way of talking about
environmental problems: instead of concentrating on
effects on media, such as pollution effects on air, soils
and waters, they instead classified the sources of the
impacts in terms of economic activities, such as power
generation, pig farming, and so on. Once causes are
identified, integrated management has a chance because
different agencies can concentrate on where they can
influence the causal chain. In keeping with this
strategy, the NEPP grouped thousands of companies
into just a few groups – refineries, transport, agriculture,
and so on. If we were to follow this practice in the
approach to characterizing salinity, land clearing and
other pressures on Australia’s environment, then it
would be necessary to look at the role of pastoralists,
arable farming, mining, power supply and so on in
contributing to the effects already described above.
Changing the focus from effect to cause means
changing from thinking about what is wrong to the
much more pertinent question: what are we doing
wrong? Once a society becomes aware of what is being
done wrongly, the people, institutions and companies
from each causally contributory group can be
deliberately involved in the environmental planning
process. This also meant, in the Dutch case, finding
ways of talking that could be understood and agreed on
by the different groups. This focus on finding new ways
of talking goes with the emphasis on policy processes
rather than outcomes. As one commentator remarked,
the NEPP was “70% process and 30% substance”.
A second important feature of the Dutch planning
framework was the selection of a suitable time span for
planning – one generation, that is 25 years. Such a time
scale makes major changes conceivable yet the fact that
citizens are talking about the period in which the
children of many of them will grow up gives a sense of
urgency as well. Sustainable development is thus
concretely linked to the condition of the land that people
would like to pass on to their own children.
Norton comments that part of the NEPP’s success lay
in the fact that it replaced confrontational politics with
inclusive, integrated approaches. While Australian and
USA environmental policies seem to fluctuate according
to the priorities of the government in power at a
particular level, the Dutch managed to make progress in
the face of political change. One factor that emerges
from Norton’s description is the significant role given to
one particular scientific body, the RIVM, the National
Institute for Health and the Environment. It was the
RIVM which conducted the early studies which
projected the 25 year effects of “business as usual” with
the anticipated pollution abatement regime in place.
Their model showed that pollution in the Netherlands
would have to be cut by seventy to ninety per cent if
environmental quality was protected over the 25 year
timescale.
59
In working out how to develop a radical new
approach RIVM made a very significant move.
Although it already possessed considerable scientific
expertise, the institute also drew in the expertise of all
the major scientific institutes of the country in framing
its scenarios. The result was that its declarations
appeared as a national consensus of Dutch scientists.
As a result, “junk science” repudiating the findings
could not get much leverage in public debates. It strikes
me that this kind of scientific consensus building was
probably a factor in ensuring that co-operation replaced
conflict. To be fair, strong support for the NEPP from
the Queen in her Christmas-day speech to the nation
should probably also be mentioned as factor in building
national agreement that enough was enough and that
change was needed.
Applications to Australia?
For Norton, adaptive management means wide
participation, explicit acknowledgment of plural values,
and community-based and bioregional management (see
Norton and Steinemann 2001, Norton 2002 ch. 27). In
Australia, there may be signs that some of these trends
will emerge in the new attempts to integrate total
catchment management (through a series of committees)
with bioregional planning.
Yet what is to stop these new initiatives joining
previous ones as rhetoric without action, administration
without results? It has been suggested that Australia
needs to focus more on implementation than simply on
agenda setting and policy formulation (Crowley 1997).
Crowley seems to think that study of the large-scale
failures in policy implementation would draw attention
to the weaknesses in existing policies, strategies,
regulation and institutions. Nonetheless Crowley is
pessimistic about the chances of dislodging what she
calls “an emergent amoralism” in Australia and the
success of economic rationalism in asserting the market
above all other policy concerns. Meanwhile, zoologists
and wildlife ecologists have suggested that a revolution
in farming practice is necessary with an immediate halt
to land clearing and the substitution of kangaroos for
sheep in the rangelands (Lunney and Dickman 2002, see
also Grigg et al. 1995). But how is such a revolution to
come about?
At the heart of many of Australia’s problems lies
attachment to “property rights” and the freedoms of
landholders to do as they want with their land. Some
commentators suggest that Australia is only belatedly
coming of age, reaching at last the stage when the
individualism and freedom of the new frontier is giving
way slowly to the civic responsibility and recognition of
mutual interdependence that characterizes mature rural
society (Reeve 2002a, 2002b). Reeve points out the
self-deceptions and contradictions that underlie the
modern rural ideologies in Australia.
“The settlement of rural Australia” he writes, “was
built on government land survey, government
construction of roads, railways, bridges, bores,
irrigation channels and dams,….. – the infant rural
society was nurtured in the cradle of beneficent
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES 60

government support. Yet the farming populace has a property rights is well entrenched, it can be hard to
deep and abiding mistrust of government intervention in convince rural landholders that by insisting on absolute
their affairs.” rights to their own property they in effect deny the
rights of others. A landowner in a recharge area who
He goes on:
exploits the right to remove vegetation, for example,
“Agriculture is only possible in much of Australia
denies the right of a neighbour in a discharge area to be
because of the intellectual efforts of the scientists who
free from rising water tables; to affirm the rights of
bred new varieties of wheat, who discovered and
owners to clear land is also to deny the rights of the
devised solutions for trace element deficiencies and
wider community to enjoy the benefits of healthy and
major pest threats. Yet many farmers continue to
diverse ecosystems.
devalue ‘book learning’ compared to ‘the school of
hard knocks’.” (Reeve 2002a, p.16) These points about conceptions of land ownership and
the ideology of absolute rights are important in the
The remarkable prestige and power that some rural
present context given the continuing popularity of
landholders – the pastoralists – have enjoyed in
appeals to absolute property rights in Australia and
Australia is a remarkable sociological phenomenon,
demands that rural landholders should actually have
given the fact that they often pay only nominal sums for
strengthened property rights (National Farmers’
grazing rights over vast areas (McAllister and Geno
Federation 2002, Anderson 2002). Some analysts (for
2001; Taylor 1997). The elite holders of land under
example, Reeve 2002a, 2002b) argue that as long as the
pastoral lease in much of Australia have talked and
issue of property rights is not confronted, talk of a duty
acted as if they had absolute freehold (Holmes and Day
of care for the land, integrated catchment management
1995) and this in turn has reinforced the view that
or the need to protect ecosystem services will get
freehold farmers themselves should have the freedom to
nowhere. An owner’s “duty of care”, for example,
use their land as they see fit. The absolute right of
cannot be tightly defined given the range of
farmers is an ideology found elsewhere, for example in
circumstances it is meant to cover.
the United States (Bromley and Hodge 1990; Centner
1990) and Germany (McHenry 1996). In such
situations, where the ideology and rhetoric of absolute

Social sciences

CREDIBLE INFORMATION Economics

Natural Sciences SINCERITY

Law?

Uncertainty
Post-Normal
Science PROCESSES DECISIONS

Politics/ethics?

Fairness
Stakeholders TRUST

Manipulation of process?

Habermas: ‘ideal discourse’

Fig. 3. General framework for credible policy process.

 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Since common law recognizes no duty of care for
the environment, such a duty is not legally enforceable.
Integrated catchment management can be planned
around a table but its implementation would involve
restrictions on property rights that risk wakening “the
slumbering dragon of absolutist and libertarian
rhetoric” (Reeve 2002a). Whether landholders can
continue clearing will depend on what are counted as
property rights and on whether the community itself is
believed to have the right to enjoy ecological integrity,
endemic fauna and flora, or ecosystem services.
What is to be done in the face of such intractable
problems? How can we clarify the moral and ethical
situation regarding care for nature, the existence of
rights to a healthy, clean and biodiverse environment?
How can policy processes be adapted to meeting the
challenge of doing better in the future than we have
done in the past?
A partial prescription
Many of the ideas are to hand that will help establish
a productive framework within which to think of the
issues raised so far. Credible science has a central role
to play, so it has been argued, in setting an appropriate
framework for managing and discussing wicked policy
problems; economists, philosophers and other academic
disciplines need to find ways to communicate rather
than denounce each others’ perspectives, and no one
perspective should be allowed to dominate the policy
process; government agencies and policies should be
simplified and chains of overlapping responsibilities
should be replaced by simpler organizational structures
which reduce the likelihood of towering. Existing
scientific criteria for judging the quality of technical
ideas can be adapted to policy processes so that such
processes have a clear methodology and can render
account to the public understood as an extended peer
group. A suitable planning time scale can be adopted
allowing a realistic chance of revising the property
regimes and outmoded conceptions of absolute land
ownership.
These ideas have all been individually proposed but
their joint implementation would take some real
political will. It would be easy to add to them by
putting some further conditions on policy processes –
conditions which are often not met in real national or
international planning forums. For example, the
Johannesburg summit of 2002 was the first one that
brought business groups, governments and NGOs
together in a consultative and planning process. Why
had these three groups not met sooner in the face of
environmental disasters? Well known studies in
anthropology and cultural theory confirm the
importance of ensuring that all three of these groups are
represented at all levels in policy processes. For
example, Mary Douglas and other writers including
Aaron Wildavsky, Steve Rayner and Michael
Thompson have developed a model of “mindsets”,
“cities” or “cultural biases” which classifies mindsets in
terms of a two-dimensional space defined by what they
call “grid” and “group” (Douglas 1992). Group
perspectives vary according to whether an individual is
61
oriented towards individualism or collectivism. Low
group, or individualist, perspectives involve a number
of attitudes such as regarding fairness as a matter of
equal opportunity, that nature is robust and thinking that
problems are likely to be due to other people. High
group – collectivist – perspectives regard fairness as
equality of outcome, that nature is fragile and think that
problems are likely to be due to the system, not to
individuals. Douglas’ other dimension – grid – refers to
the rule orientation that people have. Those who accept
a high degree of structure regard fairness as equality
before a system of laws, think that nature is robust only
within certain limits and believe social problems are due
to deviation from established precedent.
Those with a high group/high grid mentality are what
Douglas calls “hierarchists”. The three groups who met
together at the Johannesburg Summit belong to these
different camps – entrepreneurs with low group/low
grid attitudes, communards (from conservation and
human development organizations) with high group/low
grid orientation and the hierarchists (the governments
concerned with regulation and precedent). For each of
these world views the same problems present very
different threats and opportunities. In approaching the
definition and policy formulation stages for wicked
environmental problems like salinity, these very
different perspectives on the problem need to be
consulted and their interests given weight in the process
(see Rayner 1999).
Other work that has suggestive implications for policy
processes includes David Bella’s suggestion that many
organizations give more credence to information that
favours the ambitions, growth or survival of the
organization than to information that is critical of the
organization itself. This, he argues, need not be the
result of deliberate manipulation of information.
Rather, organizations systematically but unknowingly
distort information so that “good news” floats up to the
higher levels and is in turn fed back to the middle levels.
Those who produce “bad news” – whether or not it is
true or credible – tend to be marginalized; their opinions
referred back for more research or set aside in other
ways (see Bella 1996). Bella’s analysis allows that, in
some cases, no-one in an organization may set out
deliberately to bias results: the biasing comes about
despite reasonable intentions all round. Individuals who
represent organizations in policy processes can then
argue that they acted in good faith, supplying what they
sincerely believe to be reliable information. Once some
additional factors – such as, self-deception, dishonesty,
good old-fashioned prejudice, department rivalries,
personal feuds and other human failings – are included
in the reckoning, it is not surprising that organizations
themselves will on occasion pursue agendas in public
policy debates that are not based on credible
information. The suggestions made about credible
science earlier in the present paper, if incorporated into
processes, would go some way towards limiting
organizational bias of this kind.
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Natural Scientists in the Policy Process
To air suggestions of this kind is to put forward ideas
that may well take root in time and be given shape
through adoption in various policy regimes. Yet, where
natural biodiversity is waning, where high intrinsic
value is being lost, and where economic decline, and
social and cultural problems are also looming nearby,
there is pressure for urgent action. In the face of such
crises, can the natural sciences and scientists themselves
have a role that can help speed up laggardly processes
and guide them in sensible directions?
The ideas about scientific and technical credibility
stated previously already give science and scientists a
Natural sciences
ENLIGHTENING
Problem discovery
Conceptual means for
thought/solutions
Provides basic aims and
questions for policy and politics
BASIC SCIENCE
Deals with changing and
uncertain knowledge
Often faces profound
uncertainty
Following Susskind (1994), Roll-Hansen notes the
importance of science in issue definition, fact finding,
bargaining and regime strengthening. Given that policy
processes take place over long time scales, science also
has a role in issue redefinition, policy evaluation, and
the confirmation or disconfirmation of earlier
conjectures and hypotheses. However, science cannot
play an authoritative role in such work if science does
no more than represent the self-interest of scientists
themselves. Just such a limited view of science is
encouraged by post-modern sociological analyses which
often portray scientists as just one other group of
stakeholders with an interest in increasing their research
budgets by exaggerating threats or dangers to health or
the environment.
What can science, and scientists, do in the face of
such sociological deconstruction of their work? Roll-
Hansen thinks that natural scientists should stick to
those ideals which will enable science to serve society
as a whole, not the narrow self-interests of scientists or
their patrons. These ideals include the commitment to
follow theories and arguments to their best conclusions,
and maintenance of methodologies which track truth
and are able to discover and correct mistakes.
Deconstructive social science studies claim that
scientific truth is no more than widely held, agreed
beliefs. Stripped of any commitment to methodological
62
very special role in policy processes. To adjust the
agencies, regulations and debates on environmental
policy to ecological rather than political boundaries is
already to recognize a special authority on the part of
natural science within the policy process. This
suggestion is taken much further in some recent work
(Roll-Hansen 2002) which argues that modern
scientifically-based societies should give scientists a
major role in forming, defining and framing policy.
Roll-Hansen argues that a main task of science is to
provide sound advice for political decision-making.
Science, however, can be seen in two guises, each
associated with very different social roles:
INSTRUMENTAL
Servant in the execution of
policy
Means of solving problems that
may originate outside science
APPLIED SCIENCE
Works best where knowledge
is stable and uncertainty is
calculable
ideals, such a picture encourages the view that scientific
consensus may reflect no more than the self-interest of
scientists themselves. Roll-Hansen believes that science
in an important sense tracks the truth about the world.
For him, good science is critical, committed to both
enlightening and instrumental roles in society, and
thrives on free and open discourse that is not tied to
fashion, alarmism or other such trends.
Roll-Hansen rejects the old idea of experts being “on
tap and not on top”, and hence merely servants in
political and policy processes. In a modern industrial
society he sees the social and political agenda being set
by science which has a role to play at all levels of policy
discussion. By implication he also rejects Habermas’
classification of sciences as technical (natural sciences),
hermeneutic (humanities) and emancipatory (social
sciences). It is the “emancipatory” social sciences, he
thinks, that are keen to describe the natural sciences in
ways that keep them as servants of the political process
and having no business to question social aims or the
definition of issues.
Scientists as more than technical experts
Roll-Hansen has not only set out a vision of how
science can operate in policy processes; he also
recommends moral ideals for scientists themselves, ones
whose adoption will in some cases transform existing
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
roles. It should be noted that these ideals are not
followed in regular scientific practice. For example,
some research has shown that scientists do sometimes
regard media exposure as a way of praising their own
research, criticising competitors for grants and generally
using the “extended peer group” to campaign for their
own interests. This is explicitly stated by a scientist
interviewed by Esa Väliverronen (Väliverronen 2001).
Väliverronen proposes that a “weakening in the peer
review process” is linked to the changes in “knowledge
production” associated with post-normal science and its
extended peer review group. As research focuses on
trans-disciplinary areas, a wider review partly through
the media, becomes appropriate and the media have
taken on board part of the role that traditionally has
belong to those funding research (Väliverronen 1993;
1998).
In fact Väliverronen regards scientists as playing at
least five different public roles according to five
different “frames” for organizing the discussion of
issues and setting boundaries to their discussion. In
summary, Väliverronen proposes the following:
FRAME FUNCTIONS ROLE FOR
SCIENTISTS
Popularisation Presenting new Populariser
research results
Social problem Interpreting new Interpreter
phenomena and
problems
Environmental Making and Adviser/
policy commenting on Advocate
policy claims
Legitimation Raising funds, Promoter
promoting research
Rendering account Manager
for use of public
funds
Science criticism Commenting on Critic
research findings
According to this classification, the media can play an
important role in framing environmental policy issues,
but so of course can scientists themselves. Science
journalism, so Väliverronen argues, tends to adopt a
science-centred approach to topics where the map of the
area being discussed is heavily influenced by scientists’
own perceptions of what a problem is, which aspects of
it are worthy of argument, and what kind of solutions it
is amenable to. While Väliverronen does not try to
apply Roll-Hansen’s bifurcation of science into two
kinds, it seems unlikely that all science journalism deals
only with basic science and that all media framing of
issues relates only to instrumental and applied science.
Analysing Finnish newspaper reports on “forest
death” between 1980 and 1995, Väliverronen found that
63
60% of those involved in defining the issue were
scientists and just over 20% were government officials.
This seems to confirm other findings for the U.K. and
Germany (see Barrier-Lynn 1991) which show that
scientists have a major influence on public opinion at
the stage of problem definition. In later stages of public
discussion, industry, environmental movements and
government tend to rely on their own scientific experts.
The ensuing public debates often amount to little more
than dialogues of the deaf where one side’s ‘expert’
disagrees with the other side’s ‘expert’. After enough of
such debates, it would not be surprising if the public
become cynical about the authority of science itself.
In the case of “forest death”, such cynicism gets
support: although there is no doubt that acid rain has
damaged river and lake systems in Europe, there is no
corresponding evidence that it has contributed to forest
damage, let alone forest death. If science is indeed to be
recognized as trustworthy, then scientific experts may
need to think carefully before taking an issue before the
public – especially one where they have a professional
or monetary interest. Here Roll-Hansen’s warning has
force: where new issues are being raised, and profound
uncertainty exists, then sensible policy requires
something better than just lining up experts on each
side. The Dutch experience cited earlier suggests one
way in which this danger can be avoided, using high
levels of consensus to bring awareness of the issues to
members of the community, independent of whether
they are individualists, hierarchists or communards. If
towering can be avoided then such consensus may be
easier to obtain. Conversely, such consensus may itself
go some way towards reducing the tempations of
towering.
There appear, then, to be good reasons for scientists
themselves to consider how best they can contribute to
framing policies, setting agendas and helping structure
the articulation and solution of wicked problems such as
salinity. The fact that scientists work for agencies that
practise towering, that they sometimes use the media to
advance their own sectional interests, that they are
contracted to work for organisations who control the
dissemination of research results – such realities can
obstruct the development of a wider role for the
scientist. It looks as if there is a choice to be made here,
with scientists themselves being able to determine the
roles they will play in future in policy debates. To
undertake a wider role, they may have to adopt strict
moral standards and commitments relating to their
work, their public statements and their ways of gaining
research funding. To adopt these standards would be to
recognise that natural scientists have a special part to
play in defining, exploring and managing issues that are
not simply technical. In this extended role, the natural
sciences can be just as emancipatory and interpretive as
any other branch of knowledge, and can play a part not
only in providing insight into the intrinsic value of
natural diversity but also in ensuring its preservation.
 BRENNAN: BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Ted Lefroy and David Pannell for
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to
the editor of this journal. Generous help in preparing
the final version was given by Nils Roll-Hansen, Julia
Tao, Ho-Mun Chan, Y.S. Lo, and Christina Voigt. I
owe a particular debt to Bryan Norton for giving me
access to so far unpublished writing. Research for this
paper was funded by a research enhancement grant from
the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, City
University of Hong Kong, 2003, and by an earlier City
University research grant number 9010002 (Ethics,
Science and the Law: A Multidimensional Approach to
Environmental Protection and Quality of Life Issues in
an Urban Framework). A special debt is owed to Julia
Tao, principal investigator for the Ethics, Science and
Law project, and director of the Governance in Asia
Research Centre at City University. Thanks also to
Rudolf Wu for enlisting participants in the survey of
Hong Kong environmental scientists and to the other
members of the City University Ethics, Science and
Law research team for providing a uniquely supportive,
stimulating and friendly environment for undertaking
the research on science policy and credibility.
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