Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy

  • Edward A. Parson
Oxford University Press: 2003. 396 pp. $65
Tough talking: effective scientific backing helped Mostafa Tolba forge the basis of the Montreal Protocol. Credit: P. DEJONG/AP

When a scientific finding emerges from the field or laboratory, it undergoes a profound transition, changing from a well-formulated, discipline-bound construct into a dynamic and perhaps unruly component of a complex and interactive social system. The societal value of science and technology is created at the interface between laboratory and society, residing in neither alone, to paraphrase my friend Daniel Sarewitz. There is no direct and necessary linkage between the structure of physical reality and the manner in which society applies its scientific understanding of that structure. Rather, the social application of scientific knowledge and technological achievement is mediated through the formation and execution of policies.

Two new books, both entitled Protecting the Ozone Layer, chronicle the stratospheric phenomenon of ozone depletion as a window to explore the complex and dynamic relationships between science, technology and public policy. Although no small chore, as they have a combined length of almost 1,000 pages, I encourage readers to tackle both books, as their complementarity is fortuitous and sometimes quite illuminating.

Drawing on such fields as international-relations theory and political sociology, Edward Parson outlines the formulation and implementation of the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances and its subsequent annexes, in terms of constructs such as epistemic communities and transnational issue networks. This provides the theoretical basis for his account of how scientific assessments, as distinct from scientific results per se, contribute to the development and maturation of adaptive policy regimes. Anderson and Sarma, on the other hand, offer a historical account based primarily on documentation and the recollections of key players in the ozone-treaty process.

Protecting the Ozone Layer: The United Nations History

  • S. O. Anderson &
  • K. M. Sarma
Earthscan: 2002. 544 pp. $65, £40

Parson weaves a convincing account of the dynamic conditions that caused the initial slow progression of ozone negotiations between 1978 and 1986, and that then underpinned the swift consolidation of the Montreal Protocol by 1988. Briefly, he argues that scientific findings, considered alone, have little influence on the process of policy formulation. Rather, scientific results acquire credibility, salience and legitimacy only when compiled and interpreted in the context of a formalized, multi-party assessment process. As he writes, assessments “make key scientific statements and their implications common knowledge among policy actors” in the sense “that all parties know them, all know that all know them, and so on”. In this way, assessments serve to bound and delimit the domain of reasonable negotiation and, once established, hasten regime formation.

Parson also argues that the formalized assessment structure resulted in a powerful institutional impetus to move negotiations forward. This was so effective that Mostafa Tolba, then director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), was able to “browbeat” recalcitrant delegations into agreeing with provisions that were to become the Montreal Protocol.

Anderson and Sarma put forward a different view: that it was Tolba's truly exceptional leadership qualities that clinched the negotiations. Indeed, Sarma and Anderson's book is full of wonderful vignettes that demonstrate the creativity and dedication of the government scientists and civil servants who worked for over a decade to create a workable global environmental-management regime. In this context, many of the individuals quoted or paraphrased cite the importance of informal groups and of a strong and inclusive consensus process that tended to override legalistic hair-splitting. So, did the institutional setting empower the actors, or did an exceptional group of actors combine to stretch the bounds of game-theoretic interpretation?

Both books do a good job of describing the evolution of stratospheric science and its relation to ozone depletion, chronicling the accomplishments of Sidney Chapman, G. M. B. Dobson, Lester Machta, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland, along with other pioneers of atmospheric science. They also describe how various stakeholder communities drew from this science base to support their positions and negotiations. I found myself wondering whether history would have been significantly different if industry had chosen an alternative field of battle and engaged the ozone-depletion debate from the perspective of cancer epidemiology, rather than atmospheric chemistry. Epidemiological studies show a rising incidence of melanoma, but evidence linking these skin cancers to increasing ultraviolet radiation, as the ozone layer was depleted, is complex and equivocal, and might have made a far less compelling case.

Neither book focuses heavily on the predicted and/or postulated effects of ozone depletion, merely noting, as Parson put it, that the policy debate was “pervaded by a general sense that effects did not matter”. How and why were these effects kept off the table? This seems to be a missed opportunity to tell a potentially powerful story about the socio-political construction of scientific assessments.

Like all good writing, these books leave the reader wishing for more: For example, I would have liked the authors to pick apart and compare the story of ozone diplomacy with that of other complex, science-based environmental-management issues, such as the various UNEP regional seas agreements, the Bonn Convention for the protection of the Rhine, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Although not global in scope, these and other environmental regimes are also hypercomplex amalgams of scientific information, assessment process and political deliberation. Did ozone diplomacy follow well-established models of behaviour, break completely with past exercises in regime formation, or do a little of both?

Both versions of Protecting the Ozone Layer demonstrate that the path between scientific findings and policy formulation is anything but transparent, direct or linear. Instead, the relationship is mediated through a complex web of social, institutional and individual factors, acquiring context and meaning as they are embedded in larger narratives.