GLOBAL CLIMATE PROTECTION POLICY - THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC ADVICE .2.

Close links between science, technology and politics in environmental policy are more often asserted than demonstrated empirically. This pap er attempts to do this for climate change policy by analysing the role played by the international institutions of science and their advice in the preparation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC ). The emergence and nature of this scientific advice are analysed in Part 1. Part 2 traces subsequent political impacts and argues that res earch institutions tend to produce ambiguous advice, while politics wi ll use scientific uncertainty to advance other agendas. The scientific bodies set up in the 1980s to advise governments on climate change po licy emerged from the globally coordinated research community which ac ted primarily as a lobby for its own research agendas dedicated to the modelling of planet Earth and the development of alternative energy s ources. Reactions to the energy policy implications of early advice, a s well as the political agendas which attached themselves to it, led t o the demise of an independent advisory body of scientists and its rep lacement by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 19 88. The paper offers a tentative explanation of the IPCC process and d iscusses the implications for international environmental policy. IPCC advice was necessarily ambivalent and too weak, by itself, to initiat e an active global environmental policy. International negotiations re sulted in a research-intensive international treaty reflecting scienti fic uncertainty rather than environmental precaution. The primary inte rest of research is the creation of concern in order to demonstrate po licy relevance and attract funding. Policy relevance, and therefore th e need for scientific advice, decline rapidly once a problem is actual ly dealt with by regulatory, technological or behavioural change.