Resolving Conflicts Arising from the Privatization of Environmental Data (2001)

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STAKEHOLDER VIEWPOINTS 15 2 Stakeholder Viewpoints The five primary stakeholder groups concerned with environmental data and information are scientists, private-sector organizations, government agencies, policy makers, and the general public. Each of these stakeholder groups generates and/or uses environmental data for different purposes, according to different methodologies, and processed to different levels (see Box 1.1). This chapter describes the motivations, rewards, and mode of operation of the five environmental stakeholder groups and identifies the data policies that enhance or detract from their ability to achieve their goals. SCIENTIST VIEWS The goal of scientists is shared understanding among their peers. Most environmental scientists are also motivated to some degree by an ideal that shared understanding will improve the lot of all human beings and the health of the planet. Tangible rewards to scientists (e.g., tenure, salary increases, and continued research support) all derive directly from their reputation among peers for creativity, scholarship, and integrity and indirectly from the significance, productivity, and relevance to society of the field in which they work (see Appendix A). Achieving the goal of shared understanding begins with obtaining the relevant observations, synthesizing them with information from other sources, and performing the quality control and cross-validation necessary to ensure that the resulting information product is reliable and credible. Scientific knowledge comes from challenges by other scientists that test the strength of the evidence, both during peer review in the publication process, and afterwards as the data are used in other 

STAKEHOLDER VIEWPOINTS 16 syntheses or research purposes. Such uses require that data be available without restriction, at reasonable prices (see Box 2.1). The nature of scientific understanding is such that it is not possible to predict reliably what data will be needed in the future. Data from unexpected sources can turn out to be very important. For example, when atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements were beginning to be taken in the late 1950s, no one realized that ice cores would provide a means of extending that climate record back in time.1 Science is a collective enterprise in the sense that the work of one set of specialists serves as input to the work of other specialists.2 Nowhere is this more true than in the environmental sciences, because researchers are driven by practical reasons to collaborate. • The environmental sciences are observational in nature and require a wide range of data from a diverse array of disciplines, taken at different temporal and spatial scales, often repeatedly over time. Controlled experiments are difficult or even impossible and existing data are often reanalyzed with new scientific objectives in mind. This puts a premium on the quality of data and surrounding information, which goes beyond the immediate purpose of data collection. • Because nature is complex, no single instrument or observer can adequately describe the phenomena being studied. Many of these phenomena cross national borders and cannot be studied without partners in other countries.3 1Although ice cores have been drilled since the 1950s, collecting ice cores to address questions of climate change and global warming did not begin until the Danish-Swiss- U.S. Greenland Ice Sheet Project in 1981. See R.B.Alley, 2000, The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Changes, and Our Future. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 240 pp. 2G.Franck, 1999, Scientific communication—A vanity fair? Science, v. 286, p. 53–55. 3Environmental scientists have had a long history of international collaboration. Weather data have been exchanged around the world for nearly 100 years. The International Geophysical Year of 1957–58 led to the collection and exchange of a wide variety of earth, ocean, atmosphere, polar, and solar terrestrial data among the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan. It also launched the World Data Center System, which archives and disseminates environmental data to the global scientific community. More recently, programs such as the World Climate Research Program and the International Geosphere 

STAKEHOLDER VIEWPOINTS 17 • The observations are expensive because they involve the design and deployment of specialized instruments in networks of ground stations, or on aircraft, ships, or satellites. As a result, data collectors seek to avoid duplicating the efforts of others and collaborate to save time, money, and other resources. • Many environmental research questions require the use of all available data, past and present. Retrospective data are available through an extensive network of data centers (e.g., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center), although scientists commonly obtain data directly from colleagues when it is easier or faster. Collections of reliable data are irreplaceable resources that are used repeatedly for purposes that are often unforeseen at the time of acquisition.4 The environmental sciences also differ from other branches of science in that they require access to continuous records to detect and monitor changes in the environment. Gaps in the long-term record may make some variations go undetected and others difficult to interpret. Biosphere Program were established to document and understand the changes in the environment that are becoming apparent on a global scale. 4In many fields, data usage peaks immediately after data collection, then grows again as the data become part of the historical record of the condition of the environment. Such retrospective data are useful for a wide variety of scientific and public-policy purposes. Examples of the importance of long-term archives in the scientific enterprise are given in USGCRP, 1999, Global Change Science Requirements for Long-Term Archiving, Report from a workshop, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, October 28–30, 1998, 78 pp. 

STAKEHOLDER VIEWPOINTS 18 BOX 2.1 DATA POLICIES RELEVANT TO SCIENCE The environmental science community relies on policies guaranteeing full and open access to government data. Key U.S. policies governing scientific access to data include the following: • OMB Circular A-130, Management of Federal Information Resources (1994).a Federal information is disseminated to the public on an unrestricted basis for no more than the cost of preparing a product for dissemination and distributing it to the public (incremental cost). Private contractors disseminating federal information may not impose restrictions that undercut the agencies' discharge of their information dissemination responsibilities. • Policy Statements on Data Management for Global Change Research (1991).b Data should be provided to global change researchers on a full and open basis (i.e., without discrimination and for no more than the marginal cost of filling a specific user request). Data policies related to international scientific programs generally specify full and open access.c However, some national or intergovernmental policies are more restrictive. If enforced, these could prevent scientists from publishing data used in an analysis, using the data for multiple purposes or sharing data with colleagues; yet all of these activities are needed to advance science. An example of a restrictive policy is the European Union Database Directive.d The directive (1) prevents the unauthorized use of substantial amounts of a database for 15 years without permission and/or payment and (2) extends intellectual property protection to facts, which are not protected under any copyright law. The concerns of the scientific community regarding database legislation proposed in previous congresses include the following: • Scientific facts may be covered by the legislation, and therefore are no longer widely available as a basis for further research. • Government-produced data may receive unintentional intellectual property protection, and thus effectively be removed from the public domain. • Traditional full and open access policies could be replaced by pay-per- use policies, which would make data less affordable (especially to scientists in developing countries) and limit the volume of data used in research projects.