Susan Owens: Environment, knowledge and politicsWhat we know about natural environments, and about human interactions with them, has changed a great deal over the past four decades. So too have the ways in which knowledge is produced. Environmental policy, institutions and politics have also changed beyond recognition, and now have global reach.
This seminar will reflect on these changes and their implications. It will then take a critical look at some of the prevailing conventional wisdoms in environmental research - for example, the drive towards interdisciplinarity and the insistence on ‘user engagement´. Finally, it will ask whether what we know affects what we do, and will offer three possible models of the relationship between environmental research and policy.
Susan Owens is Professor of Environment and Policy and Fellow of Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, UK. This year she holds the King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor in Environmental Studies, shared between the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).
Owens has researched and published widely on environmental issues and policy processes, and on interpretations of sustainable development in theory and practice, particularly in the context of land use and environmental planning. She has been a member of the standing Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, UK, since 1998.
She was awarded an OBE for services to sustainable development in 1998 and in 2000 received the Royal Geographical Society´s ‘Back´ Award for contributions to research and policy formulation in this field.
