Civic Science for Sustainability: Reframing the Role of Experts, Policy-Makers and Citizens in Environmental Governance

At the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, the science and technology communities, along with other nonstate actors, were singled out as major partners in the quest for sustainability. This is in line with calls for refashioning scientiac expertise into a more transparent, accountable and democratic enterprise. Participatory, civil, citizen, civic, stakeholder and democratic science are catchwords that signify the ascendancy of participatory paradigm in science policy. The participatory turn to scientiac expert advice can be interpreted as a resistance to the perceived scientization of politics, which implies that political and social issues are better resolved through technical expertise than democratic deliberation. The notion of civic science, which is rather vague and elusive, serves as an umbrella for various attempts to increase public participation in the production and use of scientiac knowledge. Civic science alludes to a changing relationship between science, expert knowledge and citizens in democratic societies. In this perspective, citizens and the public have a stake in the science-politics interface, which can no longer be viewed as an exclusive domain for scientiac experts and policy-makers only. What is the scope for restructuring scientiac expertise in a more democratic fashion? Is it possible, or even desirable, to include citizen participation in the production, validation and application of scientiac knowledge? While there is lip service paid to the need for civic science, the question of how it can be realized is largely unresolved. The rhetoric of civic science, which can be conceived as a response to the dangers of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) disease and the risks of genetically modiaed food, signiaes the heightened public concern about environment issues. Hence, the status of scientiac expert knowledge in democratic societies as well as the role of the citizen in the age of experts has been brought to the fore. Public concern and controversy also surround the application of biotechnology and reproductive technology, the storing of toxic and nuclear waste, climate change and the human genome project.