Doctoral Dissertation Research Science of Science and Innovation Policy: Scientific Knowledge Pproduction for Solving Common Environmental Problems in a Developing Country

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

In industrialized societies, scientists often serve as experts to both government and industry on issues ranging from natural resource management to environmental protection. In contrast, in many developing countries, the position of experts is informal, erratic or invisible. This dissertation asks how scientific research groups differ in terms of their connections to government and industry in a rapidly developing country, Chile, and what impact this has on the nature, purpose and dissemination of their environmental research activities. Intellectual Merit: Network analysis is used to map the flow of environmental knowledge from four communities where it is produced - physicists, ecologists, geologists, and forest scientists - to two types of users - government and industry. These four successful scientific communities occupy very different organizations, from traditional public universities to loosely networked institutes. The interviews provide a better understanding of how these science and non-science communities interact and mutually shape each others' agendas. The PIs also undertake a statistical analysis of submitted and approved research proposals to the Chilean equivalent of the National Science Foundation to examine how political and scientific priorities have shifted in the past 30 years, and how these shifts relate to changing political conditions. Broader Impact: Chile is Latin America's economic success story, yet the country continues to rely on natural resource extraction for economic growth and faces intractable levels of inequality. There is little understanding of the role that can be played by the scientific community in Latin America, despite the doubling of the science budgets in response to science and innovation policies recommended by the World Bank. This research provides empirical evidence on how Chilean scientists relate to science-users in industry and government, whether these relationships favor the production of environmental science in the public interest or impact the forms of disseminating knowledge used, and how scientific interests respond to changing political priorities.