CAREER: Indicators of Sustainability: Science and Democracy in the Making

Iowa State University, Ames IA

Investigators

Abstract

For much of the past century, policy-relevant measures of human welfare and well-being have focused on national indices of economic wealth and social demographics. In recent years, numerous institutions have begun instead to use indicators of sustainable development so as to incorporate society's dependence on nature into economic and social policies. In the process, these institutions are transforming fundamental aspects of the relationship between scientific measurement and democratic values. The change marks a growing concern for the sustainability of coupled human and natural systems on global scales and shifts the locus of scientific measurement from the nation state to a host of actors in society, including NGOs, industry, local communities, international institutions, and expert communities. With this career development award, the PI proposes to study the construction and policy uptake of indicators of sustainable development as a site for investigating how science and governance change as people grapple with the challenges of globalization and ecological degradation. The PI will develop an integrated research and educational program at Iowa State University. The research component will compare how international organizations, the U.S. and the U.K. put together and use indicators of sustainable development in three areas of environmental policymaking: natural resource depletion; ecosystem services; and agriculture and food security. The educational component will include a graduate training program and undergraduate curriculum development focused on science and technology as human institutions and the readjustments of political concepts-such as agency, authority, identity, sovereignty, and values-that accompany scientific and technological change. The program established using this award will contribute to theoretical developments in the emerging field of science and technology studies and to their uptake into other social science disciplines and into scientific and policy practice. In addition, the program will contribute to the applied interdisciplinary field of the human dimensions of global environmental change as part of Iowa State University's new initiative in science, technology, and public policy for sustainable development.