Redclift, Michael; Elizabeth Shove; Barend van de Meulen; and Sujatha Raman. Social Environmental Research in the European Union: Research Networks and New Agendas

International Social Science Review, Summer-Spring, 2003 by A.J. Carlson

Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar, 2000. ix+142 pages. $65.00.

This slender volume is a useful handbook written by professors for other professors and researchers doing work in the emerging field of social environmental research within the European Union. Its genesis came from the 1990 SEER project (socioeconomic environmental research) funded under the First Framework of the EU's Environmental Commission (DG XI). It also represents a summary report by one team of the last two decades of the difficult efforts in Europe to link the social sciences with natural scientists and industrialists intent on creating a "cleaner" versus a "clean" environment. By juxtaposing these terms, the authors signal a move away from the "green" language of the Directorate-General XI (environment) to study, among other things, "the relationship between the human being and nature" toward a more pragmatic agreement in newer proposals to DG XII (research) to provide practical answers for policy-makers. The authors call this a shift "to a demand-driven philosophy that claims to take greater account of citizen and consumer beliefs and needs" (p. 92).

The first three chapters are a compendium of information on how to navigate in the environmental-research world of Europe. This macro-research effort is wisely done by selecting six countries from the fifteen member states of the EU, each of which has very different environmental-research histories. In northern Europe, the Netherlands is clearly in the lead, with 260 staff members committed to environmental studies in some eighty different institutions. The United Kingdom's commitment of 20 million [pounds sterling] after the 1989 White Paper, "Blueprint for a Green Economy," scores highest in available funding for widely dispersed competitive projects. Austria and Finland represent centralized governmental efforts to develop national environmental plans. Meanwhile, in the South, Spain and Greece reflect scattered research efforts by individuals within universities with only recent efforts to mobilize governmental support.

The authors develop interesting case studies at the micro level around "serial operators" who are the familiar barons of research--well-connected and with outstanding credentials--whose names allow a project the best opportunity to be funded. These must be matched with groups of junior researchers who will actually carry on the data collection of the funded projects. The authors bring this "structuration theory" to life with boxed vignettes of interesting researchers' stories drawn from the data surveys done during 1998. For example, a supervisor reported of an assistant: "She's registered for a Ph.D. around it ... if we can get the funding and she is putting in an application today to the university. It will change her life...."

Chapters 4 and 5, the most interesting sections for the general reader, depict the history of "Europeanized" natural-science research since the Euratom Treaty of 1958. The actual pioneer of inquiry into the "environmental-and-climatic problem," however, may be a seminal work on the dynamics of capitalism by Joseph Huber (Die Verlorene Unschuld der Okolgie, Frankfurt am Main: Fisher, 1982--The Loss of Innocence of the Ecological Movement) which, according to the authors, sought a "long-term vision of socioeconomic change with a set of short-term changes associated with technological innovation" (p. 73). Failure of Green parties on election day prompted a new mentality in Europe by the end of the 1980s which tended to emphasize "end-of-pipe" remedial solutions to existing environmental problems as opposed to radical political action. Thus, the authors look to see a more deliberate greening of politics along with "... the gradual emergence of 'green' marketing strategies in industry, coupled with the opening up of a new professional lobby of environmental consultants and engineers" (p. 75).

It seems clear to an American observer that this study illustrates how much further the Europeans are in emphasizing the opportunity of "New Capitalism" to work with newer "green industries" to create a cleaner environment. The division of labor in such projects, even in Europe, is hazardous, nonetheless. The authors underscore that asking younger junior assistants to engage in such interdisciplinary research in a world of disciplinary preoccupation provides for an "uncertain long-term future." And they conclude that, for some specialized researchers, such interdisciplinary work is "more or less marginal."

Here is where the prestige of a project funded by the EU, under the new Fifth Framework guidelines, seems to be most beneficial. It ought to be self-evident that only through multidisciplinary approaches can problems of climate, environment, and policy changes be affected. The authors offer valid evidence that in Austria and Finland governmental "command and control" projects have become somewhat more Europeanized through EU support. Simultaneously, in Spain and Greece the availability of funding for projects that allow social scientists to think "outside the box" in their own universities evidences the growing success of the socio-environmental research movement. Most of the leadership, however, still comes from the two leading exponents of such research in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom as reflected by the fact that all four of the principal authors of this study come from institutions in these two countries. The expenditure of some 526 million European currency units (ECUs)--equivalent to about half a billion U.S. dollars--during 1994-98 by the European Union under the program on Environmental Climate, or a total amount of nearly 0.05 percent of the total EU budget, indicates the seriousness of the new programs from DG XII. One could only wish that the U.S. government would spend a similar proportional amount from its $2 trillion budget on linking social scientists and policy makers with the natural sciences and industry to solve environmental problems in the United States.