Minera 37: 103-108, 1990 19 1999 Khover Acadensc Publahers Printed in The Nesherlands CLIMATE COALITIONS: THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE, Iyrropucrion CCusare cHaxce or global warming, an impending threat suspected by scientists for at least @ decade and a half, has become the focus of political as well as media discourses since the mid-1980s, As such it has also advanced to being a paradigmatic case for the study of a new configuration of the interface between science and policy, as well as of novel forms of the interaction between national science cultures and policies and international or cross-national science policies. ‘Given the global dimension of the threat of an irreversible anthropogenic elimate change—voiced by scientists in 1979 at the First World Climate Conterence—major resources have been mobilised primarily in the European states, North America and Tapan, but also in other less industrialised countries, in order to improve and deepen the knowledge base. At the same time, national governments have entered ctoss- national and supranational negotiations, even on the basis of as yet incomplete knowledge about the exact causes, scope and consequences of climate change. These imply far-reaching commitments to limit the emissions of the so-called grecnhouse gases held to be responsible which, in turn, have substantial repercussions on energy consumption. Both the substantial expenditures on research and the supranational commitments 10 climate protection have put this issue high on political and media agendas. The resulting exposure t public attention of all actors involved, and the inereased need of legitimacy for scientific inquiry and political action, invited close coupling of scicace ‘and policy-making rarely experienced on the same scale in other scicnce-driven policy issues, These developments, therefore, provide an opportunity for some of the long standing convictions about the relationship between scientific knowledge and policy- making to be re-examined and corroborated. Likewise, new insights can be gained about the impacts of knowledge on the policy process, about different sources of knovsledge and their respective legitimacies, and about both the cultural (national) boundedness as well as the internationality of scientific knowledge and its interaction with national policies. “The papers presented in this special issue emanate from a comprehensive research woject analysing the development of climate change research, and the interaction of entific expertise and policy-making in four European countries—England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden—as well as on the European level. Thus, the project combined national case studies with cross-national comparative analyses and a study of the formulation of climate protection policy on EU level. For reasons of space not all the results can be presented in this collection, but the papers selected, in our view, contain the most pertinent findings of the project as a whole. Rather than providing abstracts of the papers to follow it seems appropriate to list some of the major findings ‘of the project, not all of which are contained in the papers — Contrary to the inerasible notion that science and politics are connected in linear and sequential fashion, a closer study of the interaction shows that they are connected in much more complex ways. Above all, it has to be recognised that science is not @ neutral arbiter delivering factual knowledge to policy-makers, but rather patticipates in the framing of problems, thereby determining which aspects of an issue come into the purview of political choice in the first place.104 Introduction — The climate change issue appears to be global in nature and thus perceived identically everywhere by a universal science. However, the study reveated that the isque is perceived in different ways in each country examined. National science and political systems develop different perspectives and strategies of action because their disciplinary traditions shaping the scientific perception differ, different cultural and ideological frameworks shape the issue, as well as different links to other issues at different times which may either enhance er block ways of dealing with them these ‘come about through discourse coalitions among government agencies, industrial lobbies, environmental movements and the media, which also differ from country 10 ‘country. ‘— Apart from the ntany differences, there are similarities and convergences among the obsetved countries. In all the countries, forms of scientific assessment have been ‘developed which successfully communicate climate change to governments, Various forms of hybrid institutions and in-house research installations have heen established, Which provide an internal interface between science and administration and work out ‘official consensual platforms in addressing climate change. — Climate science and climate protection policy are usually characterised as paradigmatic cases of the globalisaion of science and policy-making. This characterisa- tion may conceal the complexities implied as the process of globalisation is driven by different and sometimes contradictory forces: commercial, political and scientific. Thus, the climate change issue becomes the transmission device for many different social ‘coneerns, and acts a8 an agent of change in numerous arenas of world politics. ‘There have heen tepested cals for te soctal sciences to participate an] cooperate in climate research, but these have been extended mostly trom the perspective of the natural sciences, From this perspective, social science knowledge is instrumental and Subsidiary to the findings of climate research; examples are studies of the economic impact of elimate change, migration and land use studies. Already the Human Dimonsion of Global Change Program has effected important contributions from the social sciences and made headway in organising an interdisicplinary dialogue between the two cultures. Climate change thus also has an important integrative function for the However, the project from which the following papers are drawn is one of the few attempts to assume a meta-analytical viewpoint, and to take the interaction between the production of Knowledge on climate change and policy-making about climate protection as a problem of interacting discourses, and of the management of expert knowledge to be transferred among different domains. This perspective receives litle if any attention in the communications on climate change, and yet all those involved should by now have gathered enough experience about the dynamics of these ‘communications which have proven to be beyond their control: public attention produced and sustained by the media tends 10 be shorter than what is nceded © provide the legitimacy for long-term policies, scientific warnings are blown up and result in overteactions, only to be contradicted by an ensuing backlash which undercuts the eredibility of the sciences, etc. The papers waich follow are an attempt to address these issues, University of Bielefeld Perer Wensoarr Nove The pigee (lie Gigs Reach and is Tegner ino Emivorewal rolls CIRCHTER) ss funky the Europea Cone, Breen Gene Guokes seach and Deepens) Bigcgrae Dom te Research theme (SHman Dinca: of Eavsonmental Changs’: Conte. No. ENS-CT96 O27) The felling paper rele the utnor ws on should no be siibutd tothe Etopess Gramineae pruclaty gate to the programme's soem ober Dr ages Liberator, for ter bp ad ave