Ensuring and evaluating compliance with policy: politics and the monitoring of climate emissions and...

Ensuring and evaluating compliance with policy: politics and the

monitoring of climate emissions and climate change in the UK

Steve Yearley and Eugénia RodriguesISSTI Retreat 2013

The Politics of Monitoring

The MenuOn the sociology of monitoring

The Politics of Monitoring project

Monitoring climate emissions and climate change


On the Sociology of MonitoringThis section has two aims:

• a) to highlight how central environmental monitoring in fact is to many forms of environmental activity and intervention

and • b) to indicate how the practice and role of monitoring can be

beneficially understood in STS terms.


The Centrality of MonitoringConsider the case of risks. All social scientists are now familiar with the notion of environmental risk and risk management.

But the establishing and management of risks is always tied to practices of monitoring. Without environmental monitoring there can be no risk calculations.

The irony is that nearly all the sociological attention has focused on the risks and none on the monitoring.


The Meaning of Monitoring’s CentralitySo far we have argued that monitoring is conceptually and empirically key to environmental practice and policy.

And that it has been overlooked.

But is that because it is so straightforward as to be trivial? Is there anything sociologically interesting about monitoring?


Understanding Monitoring from STS

Monitoring is a form of observation and thus subject to all the complexities celebrated in the science studies literature and the philosophy of science:

For example monitoring (like observation) is theory laden ~ see the example of the early “correction” of detection of the Antarctic ozone “hole”.


STS and Monitoring: Interpretability and Corrigibility

Because monitoring consists of observations, these observations may appear democratic in the sense that “anyone” could do it.

Scope for “upstreaming”

But people’s observations are widely known to be corrigible: for example, what colour are rivers and lakes … blue?


Corrigibility and InterpretabilityMonitoring is also surrounded by routines and protocols. Rivers have to be sampled in a particular way since contamination of the container or prolonged storage can itself affect water quality.

Legal provisions typically state that the significance of contamination depends on how long it lasts, so the availability of one polluted sample is of limited value.


Interpretability, Corrigibility & Controversy

One might expect direct monitoring to resolve issues, but for the reasons given above (theory laden-ness, interpretability and corrigibility) it commonly does not.

Instead, environmental disputes can turn into disputes over the observations used in monitoring.

This may occur too in cases of citizen-monitoring.


Monitoring and the SensesBeck and others assert that there has been an “alienation” of the senses: radioactive hazards cannot be felt; the senses are devalued.

But the senses are still very much in play: disputes over monitoring observations would not matter if the senses had become obsolete. Even their obsolescence can be disputed in specific cases.


Monitoring: between Observation and Surveillance

Thus, one part of what makes monitoring interesting for sociologists arises from its links to observation.

But we should not neglect the connection to another topic of current sociological and political-science concern: surveillance. As Lyon and others have reminded us, monitoring is a key aspect of the surveillance which is today pervasive.


Discipline and MonitorMonitoring as the state’s gaze, though ironically the call is frequently for more (and more extensive) monitoring.

Monitoring as self-disciplining: the availability of on-line carbon footprints and other daily ways to monitor your “performance”.


Disciplining and Self-MonitoringMonitoring promotes self-conscious awareness;

but it may generate a form of obligation to use self-disciplining techniques … and even come to be resisted, in line with ideas about reflexive selves.


Monitoring’s Unintended ConsequencesSelf-disciplining may not work out as intended; people may follow disciplines erratically.

Firms and agencies are driven to follow mandated monitoring but they may follow the letter of the law, not the “spirit” (collecting material for recycling but not actually recycling it; importing biofuels and ignoring local production).


The Politics of Monitoring Project

For us, monitoring is the practice of gathering and analysing information in order to track policy problems, and to measure the impact of policy interventions on such problems.

Monitoring is central to the policy process: policy makers need to gather information in order to chart the nature and scale of policy problems, to assess the impact of policy interventions, and to respond to others’ claims about the issues at stake.


Monitoring Project TeamThe Politics of Monitoring: Information, Indicators and Targets in Climate Change, Defence and Immigration Policy.

Christina Boswell + Graham Spinardi & Colin Fleming+ Eugénia Rodrigues & Steve Yearley


Politics and Immigration Monitoring

An odd kind of social fact.

Who is monitoring this and doing claims-making: Home Office, UKBA, Daily Mail, UKIP …

Consequentialist vs. rights-based arguments.


A Typology of Policy Monitoring

Subject of monitoring

Inputs Outputs ProcessType ofmonitoring system

Police and patrol Monitoring supply of qualified labourAuditing expenditure

Regular bureaucratic data on, e.g., poverty, CO2 emissions, crime

Audits and evaluations of, e.g. procurement practices

Fire alarm

Exposés of waste through media or parliamentary oversight

Independent reports or commissions identifying social problems

Bureaucratic or practitioner whistle-blowing


The Politics of Monitoring ProjectFramed in terms of hypotheses:

• Politicisation & public opinion: salience & outputs; • Political economy and interests;• International diffusion of norms and standards;

• The quality of the ‘information environment’ – availability of information, secrecy and so on;

• The nature of the ‘organisational environment’ – who holds one to account.


The UK’s Monitoring of Climate Emissions and Climate Change

The Politics of Monitoring: Information, Indicators and Targets in Climate Change.

Emissions and impacts.

Emissions largely delegated to CCC, now chaired by John Selwyn Gummer, Baron Deben.


Monitoring Climate Emissions

Tying to the mast …


Climate Emissions and Climate Change

Emissions and treaties vs. emissions and targets vs. emissions and consequences.

What counts as the UK’s emissions?

If emissions are centralised, the monitoring of effects is much more open.


Monitoring Climate Change

Dispersed and multi-agency.

Attribution can be contentious.

Geographical and temporal separation of emissions and impacts.


ConclusionOn the sociology of monitoring

The Politics of Monitoring project

Monitoring climate emissions and climate change

Ensuring and evaluating compliance with policy: politics and the monitoring of climate emissions and...

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