Russian Climate Politics

When Science Meets Policy

Kenneth A. Loparo, Elana Wilson Rowe

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137310514
• eBook ISBN: 9781137310521
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Russia remains among the top-5 greenhouse gas emitters in the world and thus an important player in the field of international climate politics. To gain a deeper understanding of how Russian climate politics is formed, the changing and somewhat unexpected role scientists and scientific knowledge play in shaping Russian policymaking is explored.

1

Introduction

Abstract: Historical studies have shown how Soviet scientists figured in politics in unexpected ways. However, no comprehensive study of the interplay between scientific expert knowledge and contemporary Russian policymaking has been carried out. This chapter introduces the key questions addressed in this volume: What is the relationship between expert knowledge and politics in Russia today? How does this relationship play out in the formation of Russian climate policy? What key concepts and analytical tools can help us in examining the science–policy interface in Russia? The chapter concludes with a presentation of chapters.

Wilson Rowe, Elana. Russian Climate Politics: When Science Meets Policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137310521.

Alexander Bedritsky, former head of the Russian State Hydrometeorology Service and later president of the World Meteorological Organization, made the following statement on climate change in 2004:

[Human influence] is not as big as it is said to be. Society is captivated by one idea: mainly the reduction of emissions, even though authoritative research has come to the opinion that stopping emissions of greenhouse gases and stabilizing their concentration in the atmosphere at a low level couldn’t prevent climate change … Climate change is a result of complicated natural factors, and humankind in this process has a modest role. (Quoted in Tolstov, 2004)

Such views were in keeping with the Russian media debate at the time. Regularly facing off in leading newspapers, climate sceptics argued that the causes of climate change were natural phenomena, like sun cycles, while International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supporters pointed to increasingly certain conclusions from international assessment exercises about the anthropogenic causes of climate change.

After Russia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2004, the domestic debate over climate science cooled, and the official discourse on the causes of climate change came somewhat closer to international consensus, with a stronger emphasis on the role of greenhouse gas emissions (Wilson Rowe, 2009). To take one recent example, the same Bedritsky, now Russia’s chief climate advisor, has criticized the Kyoto Protocol for not doing enough to curb greenhouse gas emissions (in Humphries, 2010). While climate change scepticism is still alive and well in Russia as in the United States, the balance has certainly shifted in public discourse, towards acceptance of global warming as a fact and a major political challenge.

How has this change in attitude come about? There are many ways of approaching this question and economic and political incentives are an important part of the picture. In the context of understanding Russian climate policy, these concrete incentives have been relatively well-studied. An overlooked dimension needed to fully understand Russia’s climate politics – and approach to other global governance issues more generally – is the influence of scientific claims and experts themselves in the policymaking process. Scholarly work on global governance and in science and technology studies, among other disciplines, has shown the important and varied role played by experts and technocrats in international and national policymaking. Historical studies have revealed how Soviet scientists figured in politics in unexpected ways, for example by playing a decisive role in shaping the nuclear testing policy of the USSR. However, no comprehensive study of the interplay between scientific expert knowledge and contemporary Russian policymaking has been carried out.

This line of question is relevant to understanding progress in international climate change politics more generally. For example, the reception of the scientific knowledge summarized in international climate change assessments, like the IPCC assessments, is often overlooked. As Lahsen (2009, p. 189) notes, ‘huge amounts of time and resources continue to be devoted overwhelmingly to the production and scientific assessment of climate science, while comparatively little attention is being given to whether or not intended audiences are receptive to the information being produced.’ We often envision science, and especially internationally produced scientific assessments, as a shared baseline or input that serves as a basis for international politics. As the Russian case study that follows shows, scientific claims in general and international scientific assessments in particular figure into policymaking in somewhat more surprising and non-linear ways than we might assume. These dynamics are especially understudied outside of North American and European contexts and the Russian case study in this book makes a contribution in this regard.

In other words, key questions fundamental to understanding Russia’s positions on global governance challenges like climate change, and to grasping the nature of Russian domestic politics, remain to be answered: What is the relationship between expert knowledge and politics in Russia today? How does this relationship play out in debates about Russian climate policy? This volume seeks to address these questions, thereby making two interrelated contributions to existing literatures.

Firstly, Russia deserves further attention in the literature on comparative climate politics. Despite post-Soviet industrial decline, Russia is still among the world’s top five emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG). The USSR was the second-largest carbon emitter throughout its existence and Russia’s greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise again, increasing by 10.7 per cent between 1998 and 2010 (Korppoo and Vatanseter, 2012, p. 3). The country has been decisive at times in shaping international climate negotiations – first with its ‘yes’ to the Kyoto Protocol in 2004, which allowed the agreement to enter into force; and, more recently, in 2010 with the firm ‘no’ to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol. While various political and economic incentives and disincentives shaping Russia’s climate politics have been well-analysed elsewhere (see Averchenkov, 2009; Henry and Sundstrom, 2010; ZumBrunnen, 2009; Light, Wong and Charap, 2009; Korppoo, Karas and Grubb, 2006), the dynamics of the science–policy interface have been largely overlooked. Analysing this intriguing aspect of Russia’s climate politics thus contributes to a fuller picture of Russia’s policy in this field and Russian politics more generally.

Second, this book speaks to a central strand of research in science and technology studies (STS): the study of how the products of science travel and gain (or fail to gain) intelligibility and legitimacy in new geographical, institutional or temporal contexts (Jasanoff, 2004). As Jasanoff and Wynne (1998, p. 47) argue, our understanding of how environmental science gains worldwide acceptance remains minimal. We can certainly assert that this process of acceptance goes beyond a straightforward domestic vetting of scientific claims as true or false. More is at stake. Locations where climate politics are addressed are key sites where legitimate knowledge about nature, images of the planet and who gets to speak on its behalf are contested (Miller and Edwards, 2001). Through the lens of how science figures into Russian policymaking, we also can address some cross-cutting issues relevant to Russia’s position on climate change that undergird or go beyond a harder calculus of specific political and economic interests and trade-offs. These issues include Russia’s great power ambitions and perceptions of global governance/politics more broadly.

The chapters in this volume invite the reader to take several angles on the role of experts and expert knowledge in Russian policymaking. The chapters function as multisited ‘thick’ descriptions of the science–policy interface around climate change in Russia. The book explores domestic media debates, national-level policymaking and Russia’s engagement in the international climate work (UN negotiations and climate assessment work). While this book does not aspire to cover exhaustively all aspects of Russian climate politics, these case studies serve as windows on science–policy interactions. Throughout the book, emphasis is on the political deployment of climate science knowledge and climate scientists themselves, although sometimes a broader definition of experts is used and this is clarified in each context (particularly in the graphs in Chapter 3 and with the focus on expert negotiations in Chapter 5). This kind of multisited examination of Russia’s knowledge politics around climate science may serve as a basis for further study of other aspects of Russia’s climate change politics that are also important expert realms but only cursorily mentioned in this book (for example, renewable energy or the implementation of Kyoto measures like Joint Implementation projects).

This introductory chapter opens with some brief reflections on Russian politics more generally. I then move on to a detailed discussion of how science and experts figure in politics to give the reader a sense for the value of directing analytical attention at the often taken-for-granted categories of experts and expert knowledge. Next, four more specific concepts are introduced that have proven useful tools in unpacking the Russia-specific case studies that follow. These include thinking about the reception of scientific knowledge amongst diverse publics, the role that experts play in the diffusion to and reception of knowledge in new locations, the significance of framing (or representation) of policy problems, and some reflections on the importance of identity and history in shaping how specific audiences engage with experts and expert knowledge. I conclude with a brief note on methods and the structure of the book.

Reflections on Russian politics

The role that scientists and experts envision for themselves in policymaking is of course shaped by the political system itself. Russia’s centralized form of governance, where power rests primarily with key individuals like President Putin and their allies, may have fewer points of entry for establishing interfaces between experts and policymakers. This may make experts’ contact with the world of policy more dramatic.

To take one illustrative example, one Russian climate scientist interviewed by the author in 2008 gave an example of this from the pre-Kyoto ratification period when Russia’s overall political commitments relating to climate change were still unclear. This scientist explained that a chief economic advisor to the president, Andrei Illarionov, had dismissed international climate science as ‘charlatanism’; so that ‘for experts to stand up to this chief advisor and oppose was something that took guts … Like in all countries science is political in some ways, getting funding, saying the right thing, not wanting to jeopardize revenue sources’ (Interview 3a). In this situation, taking a stand on an interpretation of climate change science involved taking issue with a powerful person – a right-hand man of the president, no less.

At the same time, accounts that present Russia as a straightforward authoritarian state overlook the complexity of Russian politics and easily overestimate the centrality and power of Russia’s main men. In thinking about the Russian state, Richard Sakwa’s (2010) conceptualization of Russia as a dual state brings to the forefront some of the tensions and dynamism of political processes that the idea of Russia as an authoritarian or semi-authoritarian state obscures. In sum, Sakwa suggests that we think of Russian politics as a struggle or interplay between two systems – the formal constitutional order termed the ‘normative state’ and ‘a second world of informal relations, factional conflict and para-constitutional political practices’ called the ‘administrative regime’ (Sakwa, 2010, p. 185). This conceptualization of Russian politics helps us see the niches and interstices where experts may play a role.

Experts and expert knowledge in politics

The policy debate around climate science is a complex mix of statements and arguments about what we know and what we should value (Dessler and Parsons, 2010) and scientists and scientific findings have featured prominently in this discussion. This mix of statements is not an accident. Politicians and policy actors prefer to have science on their side, as a way of giving their arguments the added ballast of impartiality (Dessler and Parsons, 2010, p. 56). Unsurprisingly, the relevance and validity of climate science has been actively debated by politicians in many countries, most notably the USA, Australia and Russia (Harrison and Sundstrom, 2010; Harrison, 2010). In the USA, for example, this public debate around climate science has resulted in nearly 24 per cent of Americans surveyed rejecting or expressing strong doubt about the reality of global warming (Yale Project, 2012).

It is convenient to refer to this meeting of scientific findings and experts that speak for them and the world of policymaking as the ‘science–policy interface’. However, we should keep in mind that this handy term is a simplification that can be criticized for various reasons. This division builds on a notion that is often challenged in scholarly writings but is widespread in popular perception: that scientists play a political role (when they choose to) by always ‘speaking truth to power’ and their ‘statements’ either being picked up (or ignored) by strategically selective politicians. In fact, the idea of a science–policy interface draws the line between science and politics much more distinctly than such a division exists in practice, as many studies in the history and sociology of science have shown. For example, while we generally understand politics as a site of negotiation and contention, the ‘science’ side of the interface often escapes deeper scrutiny. Sociologists of science have long pointed to ways in which all science is shaped by politics and to the constructed, consensual and negotiated nature of scientific knowledge (see, for example Barnes et al., 1996; Demeritt, 2001; Collins and Pinch, 1998; Shapin and Schaffer, 1985). Science is produced in human institutions that are ‘deeply engaged in the practice of ordering social and political worlds’ (Miller and Edwards, 2001, p. 5). Thus, the tidy term ‘science–policy interface’ may conceal too much of the fascinating messiness of both the production of scientific knowledge and the rough-and-tumble world of politics and policymaking.

Nonetheless, the term remains useful shorthand for flagging a realm of interaction that we find to be of particular interest. It draws attention to the moments in which science is actively deployed as part of social, economic or political arguments. This particular meeting space has been perhaps most thoroughly examined in science and technology studies (STS) and, to a lesser extent, in international relations (IR), although the aims of inquiry in each discipline vary. What they share is an interest in how scientific knowledge is deployed ‘downstream’ in social and political settings, and why and how it gains traction in particular contexts. This stands in contrast to more ‘upstream’ concerns about how scientific knowledge is produced in laboratories and how it is funded in the first place. There are a number of approaches that could help us unpack the science–policy interface and four of them that are actively used in the chapters that follow are presented here.

Focusing on the reception of scientific knowledge is basically an argument about the importance of seeing how scientific knowledge or arguments, or how scientists themselves, figure into political debates in various contexts. Understandings of scientific facts do not remain stable as they travel – they are changed by traversing a distance and by coming in contact with various publics. Livingstone, in his work on the geography of scientific knowledge, emphasizes the importance of following ideas as they travel: ‘because people encounter representations differently in different circumstances … reception must also be temporally and spatially situated’ (2003, p. 11). Analysing the reception of scientific knowledge entails paying attention to how the products of science reach new audiences and how they gain (or fail to gain) legitimacy in these new settings (Jasanoff, 2004, p. 5).

International scientific assessments, like the IPCC and the ACIA, are often popularly perceived as a way of inserting some ‘truths’ into the political fray and reconciling divergent national perceptions of global problems that may hinder international policy consensus. Empirical studies have shown, however, that this is not the case: the interpretation and use of international scientific assessments in domestic politics are highly variable. To take one example, in a comparative study of the implementation of acid-rain amelioration policies in the UK and the Netherlands, Hajer (1995) found that, despite equal access to an internationally vetted set of scientific data, policymakers interpreted these data in highly differing ways.

Internationally produced expert knowledge may also be rejected outright. The reception of international science at the national level gives rise to issues of trust and credibility (Miller, 2006, perhaps particularly amongst countries that may not have been instrumental in the agenda-setting stage of an international scientific effort. For example, internationally produced climate science was met with suspicion by Brazilian policymakers, who felt that international science was tailored to advance the interests and agendas of other, more powerful, countries (Lahsen, 2004). A study of India showed that the majority of IPCC experts interviewed felt that they had little influence on the general IPCC agenda (Kandlikar and Sagar, 1999; Biermann, 2002). Similarly, the concept of sustainable development and various efforts organized around it initially received a rough reception from Russian policymakers, who saw it as a Western oriented concept designed to promote Western interests and dominance (Shaw and Oldfield, 2006). Clearly, then, the reception of international assessments in national politics is a problematic and intriguing process that merits further attention.

Second, and in relation to thinking about how knowledge travels, we need to analyse the role of experts in the movement and acceptance of scientific knowledge. One of the most-cited explanations for how such international science travels and gains purchase in domestic politics involves the idea of ‘epistemic communities’. This concept has given rise to a good deal of research about knowledge–policy interactions in international politics. An epistemic community is understood as a group of experts working in a particular arena and claiming to possess policy-relevant knowledge in that field. Haas (1992) ascribed the influence of such epistemic communities to the willingness and ability of experts to engage and enrol governments around the world in binding protocols that address problems that transcend state borders, such as climate change or transboundary pollutants. In other words, experts involved in international activity are meant to act as agents of knowledge diffusion or informational entrepreneurs, proactively disseminating internationally ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Environmental and Science Politics in Russia
• 3  Russian Framings of Global Climate Change
• 4  Russias Domestic Politics of Climate Change
• 5  Russia in International Climate Politics
• 6  The Shared Terrain of Science and Politics
• Appendix 1:  Anonymized Overview of Interviewees in Interview Set
• Appendix 2:  Anonymized Overview of Interviewees in Interview Set
• Appendix 3:  Chapter 3 Primary Sources from Rossiskaya Gazeta (RG) (organized by year)
• References
• Index