Rescaling knowledge and embracing uncertainty: A co-production critique of New Zealand's water quality policy reforms

Abstract

This paper uses the STS-inspired co-production analytical framework articulated in States of Knowledge: the co-production of science and social order (Jasanoff, 2004). It presents a critique of water policy reforms in New Zealand’s South Island region of Canterbury where collaborative water quality limit-setting is taking place. The research identifies that the roles of the state, science and the community have changed significantly through a discourse of limits, predictive representations of catchment-scale cumulative effects, a politically-expedient institutional pathway, and recast identities that constitute ‘the community’ as decision-maker with the state and science as ‘knowledge brokers’. The analysis reveals the enactment of ‘predictable nature’ that is essential for state decision-making in tension with ‘uncertain nature’ which allows scientists to retain their epistemic authority. The analysis highlights the extent of the reordering of nature and society that is necessary to conduct collaboration and regulate diffuse pollution to address water quality.