Penn State University, USA
Rock Ethics Institute


Plenary Talk

Bridging Community Values and Science to Co-Produce Sustainable Solutions

Although the role of ethics in sustainability science is acknowledged, the dominant vision of the relevance of ethical considerations is insufficiently robust. Scientific research is seen as delineating sustainable options and the likely impacts of the various choices; ethical analysis comes in only afterwards to assist decisionmakers in determining how to equitably rank the various options.

The dominant vision proposes too sharp a distinction between scientific activities and ethical and values deliberation. Ethical and value judgments are not limited to the policy-making arena, but often shape scientific research itself. Many decisions made in the course of scientific research are coupled ethical-epistemic choices in the sense that their consequences can be judged both from the perspective of epistemic values (values relating to how knowledge is obtained) as well as from the perspective of ethical values (such as concern for justice or ecosystem welfare).

Sustainable solutions for communities require attention not only to the needs but also the values of those communities. Doing so involves addressing a series of questions, including: what are the most effective strategies for identifying relevant non-epistemic values and for ensuring that stakeholder values are being included in the development of decision support science?; what are some of the most effective ways to address value trade-offs in the design of scientific models?; how best to address issues of equity?

Drawing from work on climate adaptation decision support, I illustrate the importance of and techniques for working closely with relevant communities to identify central values that correlate to decision points throughout the decision support scientific research process.