VUB research on cleaner air mobilisation in Brussels
In the past few months, the billboards of CurieuzenAir, the research project involving citizen participation to measure air pollution, have appeared all over Brussels. But the involvement of Brussels residents in the theme of air pollution is not new. A new study of the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban research of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel looks at how the relationships between science, citizen activism and policy-making has evolved over the past 50 years. The analysis shows that scientific expertise has sometimes supported the ambitious actions of citizens, but just as often has defended the status quo.
Da Schio: "Knowledge about air pollution is essential, both to challenge the status quo and to imagine a different urban reality. But science itself does not lead to change, and I say this as a scientist: everything depends on the way stakeholders appropriate and mobilize scientific knowledge. We also need to recognize other forms of knowledge, and be aware of their potential to make a problem visible and address it."
Citizens set the agenda
It is clear from the research that science is not the only form of "usable" knowledge. Lay knowledge and public knowledge have always been essential in putting air pollution on the agenda. Da Schio: "Making a problem visible to a wider audience can in itself be transformative and put pressure on governments to respond."
The study finds that the use of scientific knowledge by social movements and civil society in particular plays a central role in challenging existing priorities or developing counter strategies, often alternating between lay knowledge and more formal scientific knowledge. At the same time, scientific knowledge is also used in perpetuating existing hierarchies.
The research
The study is based on the analysis of newspaper articles and documents kept in the archives of the IEB ( Inter-Environnement Bruxelles https://www.ieb.be). The authors of the study examined three different cases of citizens' mobilization for cleaner air: a mobilization of the residents of the Bourdon neighborhood in Uccle in the late 1980s; the long mobilization against pollution from the incinerator in Neder-Over-Heembeek in the early 1990s, during which Greenpeace climbed the towers of the incinerator; and a lawsuit filed by BRAL and IEB in the summer of 2000 against the municipal, regional and national authorities for ozone related air pollution. The researchers reconstructed the events surrounding these three cases, analyzed the discourse in media sources and archival documents, and shed light on the themes, processes, and events related to air pollution and litigation. They made a detailed reconstruction of the events, focusing on the forms and qualities of scientific expertise mobilized by the different actors and on the strategies used.