Enrolling the future and modelling consensus: A co-production critique of Canterbury's water management reforms to regulate diffuse agricultural pollution

Abstract

This paper examines the role of science and predictive modeling in rescaling environmental governance. Drawing theoretical insight from the field of science and technology studies and deploying a critical co-production analytical framework, the paper assembles a discourse of limits, scientific representations of catchment scale diffuse pollution, a 'fast-track' institutional pathway, and identities of scientists and government as knowledge broker and the community as decision-maker. The analysis identifies the paradoxical scripting of 'predictable nature' and 'uncertain nature' and the enrolment of the future as a governance space essential for resolving water resource conflict. The paper illustrates a role for science and modeling well beyond informing and facilitating environmental decision-making to constituting the identities, objects and spaces of governance.