@Article{Lahsen:2009:PoCaSi,
               author = "Lahsen, Myanna Hvid",
          affiliation = "{Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)}",
                title = "A science-policy interface in the global south: the politics of 
                         carbon sinks and science in Brazil",
              journal = "Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology",
                 year = "2009",
               volume = "97  ",
               number = "3-4 ",
                pages = "339--372  ",
             keywords = "amazonian rain-forest, tropical deforestation, epistemic 
                         communities, climate-change, civil-society, atmosphere, world, 
                         co2, environment, greenhouse.",
             abstract = "The IPCC and other global environmental assessment processes 
                         stress the need for national scientific participation to ensure 
                         decision makers' trust in the associated scientific conclusions 
                         and political agendas. The underpinning assumption is that the 
                         relationship between scientists and decision makers at the 
                         national level is characterized by trust and interpretive synergy. 
                         Drawing on ethnographic research in Brazil, this article 
                         challenges that assumption through a case study of the policy 
                         uptake of divergent scientific interpretations as to whether or 
                         not the Amazon is a net carbon sink. It shows that the carbon sink 
                         issue became a site for struggles between important Brazilian 
                         scientists and decision-makers with central authority over the 
                         definition of the country's official position in international 
                         climate negotiations. In a geopolitically charged scientific 
                         controversy involving scientific evidence bearing on the Kyoto 
                         Protocol, Brazilian decision makers studied revealed critical 
                         distance from national scientists advancing evidence that the 
                         Amazon is a net carbon sink. As such, the decision-makers' 
                         interpretations were at odds also with dominant framings in the 
                         Brazilian media and closer to those of American scientists 
                         involved in carbon cycle research in the Amazon. Seeking to 
                         explain this disconnect, the paper discusses the divergent policy 
                         preferences of key scientists and decision-makers involved, and 
                         the correlations of these preferences with interpretations of the 
                         available scientific evidence. It identifies the continued impact 
                         of a national political tradition of limited participation in 
                         decision making and suggests that this tradition-while 
                         increasingly challenged by countervailing democratizing trends-is 
                         reinforced by key Brazilian decision makers' constructions of 
                         science as a medium through which rich countries maintain 
                         political advantage. Reflecting this, key Brazilian 
                         decision-makers justified rejecting national scientists' 
                         interpretations of the Amazon as a significant overall carbon sink 
                         by suggesting that the scientists' scientific training and 
                         associated foreign interactions bias them in favor of foreign 
                         interests, compromising their ability to accurately identify 
                         national interests. The paper situates its analysis in terms of 
                         theories of the science-policy interface and argues for greater 
                         attention to the role of culturally and politically laden 
                         understandings of science and the role of science in policy and 
                         geopolitics.",
                  doi = "10.1007/s10584-009-9610-6",
                  url = "http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-009-9610-6",
                 issn = "1558-8432 and 1558-8424",
             language = "en",
           targetfile = "10.1007_s10584-009-9610-6.pdf",
        urlaccessdate = "12 maio 2024"
}