A Framework for Using Nanotechnology To Improve Water Quality
| Autor: | Emma Fauss, Michael E. Gorman, Ahson Wardak, Nathan S. Swami |
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| Rok vydání: | 2009 |
| Předmět: |
Precautionary principle
Boundary object Knowledge management business.industry Expert elicitation Nanotechnology Linkage (mechanical) Superordinate goals Field (computer science) law.invention Trading zones Adaptive management Interactional expertise law Order (exchange) Political science business Risk management |
| Popis: | If nanotechnology is to represent societal as well as technical progress, it will have to contribute to the solution of global problems like water quality. This chapter describes a framework for guiding nanotechnology away from risks and toward benefits, and applies it to examples concerning water quality, specifically focusing on silver nanoparticles. The framework includes five major components; the first three of which are necessary capabilities for accomplishing the last two. Ensuring an adequate global supply of water is a superordinate goal because it affects the survival of the human race and therefore should trump the differences that separate us. Water quality could serve as a superordinate goal, linking nanotechnology researchers from different institutions and disciplines with those who have a compelling need. Such linkage will require setting up a series of trading zones involving multiple stakeholders for exchanging ideas, resources, and solutions across different communities and interests. In order to trade, participants will have to develop a reduced common language, or creole and/or a boundary object or technology like a database that participants in the zone share and/or interactional expertise on the part of one or more participants who can discuss research strategy in a field other than their own main expertise, but not do the research. Differences in values can prevent adoption of a superordinate goal. Moral imagination is the equivalent of interactional expertise concerning values. In order to care about someone else’s water supply, you have to see their need as if it were your own and also understand enough about their culture to coevolve appropriate solutions. Developing the three capabilities above will permit adaptive management of tightly coupled human–technological–natural systems. Participants in trading zones around nanotechnology and water quality will have to be in constant dialogue with each other and with the system they are managing, adapting strategies to new data. Adaptive management must be complemented by anticipatory governance. Regulatory systems, for example, need to be more anticipatory, steering a course between the precautionary principle and reactive risk management. Expert elicitation is one method for implementing adaptive management and anticipatory governance. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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