Most administrative decision-makers have a confused perception that there is some kind of conflict between, on the one hand the social and economic goals to which they are committed and the policies to achieve them, and on the other the recurrent upsurge of unforeseen, contradictory biological events and social oppositions. In response, they look to biologists for help and are very often disappointed by the answers they receive. Similarly, biologists show some defiance, whether overtly or indirectly, towards decision-makers. They feel that public awareness of current biological problems is far from what it should be in a well-informed society and that the intellectual appreciation and social status of biology and biologists are not commensurate to the role actually played by the living world in economic development.
The poor reciprocal understanding and loose congruence between society and its biologists result in delays, costs and difficulties that have an increasingly adverse effect upon people and could be avoided. With the overall increase of biological knowledge in the second half of this century, tensions have been rapidly building up. These trends correlate with growing environmental concerns (pollution, degradation of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, water shortages, climatic changes, biological epidemics...) due to increasd global anthropic impacts, to developments of biotechnologies (gene therapy, genetically modified organisms), and the privatized appropriation and mastery of living resources (ecosystems, species and varieties,etc.) In general, the need for more dialogue and collaboration between decision-makers and biologists is mutually recognized. Changes are bound to occur, and the challenge facing societies for the next century is whether they will accord with the values of humanism, justice and democracy, or oppose them.
The reasons and forces underlying the present unsatisfactory situation are certainly many and complex. Not least among them, the inconsistent and, in effect, conflicting teachings imparted to administrative decision-makers and biologists. Administrators emerge from academic systems that prioritise economics, law, management, physical engineering... Their formal biological education dates back to primary and secondary school, and their information on more recent biological advances is mainly provided by the non-formal circuit (media, associations). Biologists, on the other hand, receive a thorough biological training, keep pace with the progress of science and participate in its development. However, for historical reasons, the social sciences, economics and the humanities have often been excluded from biology training programmes in the majority of countries. The trend towards specialization has gone so far as to fragment the field of biology into particular areas (medicine, fundamental biology, pharmacology, agriculture...) and even narrower specific disciplines (physiology, ecology, genetics,...). In consequence, exceptions (individual personalities or circumstances of non-formal education) aside, most biologists do not share the vocabulary and the concerns of administrative decision-makers and are not fully aware of the true needs and expectations of their fellow citizens. This situation noticeably increases the difficulty of reciprocal understanding and reduces communication almost to the point of caricature, with decision-makers asking for advice and expecting an cut-and-dried answer, and biologists responding with uncertainties or seemingly narrow or irrelevant statements. No wonder that such scenarios create frustrations on both sides. Better education is a high hurdle in the way out of present difficulties. Initiatives could be devised to enhance the training and competency of both partners: biology education for administrative decision-makers, and social sciences and citizenship for biologists would be a first step.
The object of this contribution is to outline what is required now at a very general level. The idea is not to produce a specific curriculum or syllabus, but to identify topics of biological literacy that are directly relevant to the administrative decision-making process. Decision-making processes involving both the economy and the management of biosystems and bioproducts are generally related to food, health and industrial products derived from living organisms (wood, textile fibres, medicine, products of fermentation and biotechnologies,...). The question of how to deal with environmental problems (pollution, the degradation of ecosystems and landscapes...) also enters into this complex. Depending on the circumstances, the activities involved may have very different goals and scales, ranging from the daily survival of the individual in conditions of poverty to the profit-making strategies of nations or multinational companies. The decision-making processes and driving forces differ vastly from one case to the other; yet they all interact ultimately on local, regional, national and global levels. Everywhere, the language of management gives the same names to the elements involved in the decision-making process: biological resources, water and energy supplies, investments, cost of labour and techniques.
A biological education program for decision-makers should first explain that the concepts and methodologies applied to mineral or human resources cannot simply be transferred to biosystems, which exhibit their own set of specific properties. Foremost is the aptitude to reproduce true-to-type, which is not true for minerals, and at a pace that relates very directly to species. The second property is the capacity to generate heritable diversity at a low frequency in the course of generations (mutations). The third property is the potential for adaptation to changing environmental conditions. The fourth property is the ability to impact on the environment through biological activities and evolve in response to its changes.
Caught up in constant cyclic and renewal processes at the level of the biosphere, living organisms are not a stable resource that one can exploit by simple mining. This presents administrative decision-makers with a very demanding challenge. Beyond these biological problems lie key questions relating to Mankind’s sense of identity, place in these cycles, and perception of environmental and social relationships. Examples drawn from the management of biological resources and risk assessment in the case of GMOs and prions should help to clarify what biological knowledge may be of relevance for the choices facing society and the decisions administrators should be making.
Management of Biological Resources
Let us consider the example of an administrator responsible for the management of biological resources in any country today. His task consists mainly in placing and optimising his decisions within the constellation of three major driving factors: government, biology and economy (Figure 1). The government commissions him to implement a policy, as an expression of the needs (and hopefully the will) of the people. There is usually little biological information directly needed here (but this aspect will be dealt with later). Of course, since the managed objects are living resources, biology constitutes the second point of the triangle, and obviously biological information is required there (at all the various levels of organisation, from molecules to ecosystems, with emphasis on physiology, distribution, diversity and renewal potential of the resources involved). And finally, decisions must be made with a view toward economic benefit (whether a rapidly returning profit or a sustainable long-term gain).
Figure 1: The formal environment of biological management Thus, the basic terms of the decision-making process will be: property, interest rates, quotas and standards/norms. In the hands of a civil servant, some tools are more powerful than others: subsidies and/or taxes, controlled and/or selective access to the diversity of resources. In private enterprise, the same basic tools are used, but in a different manner : since subsidies, taxes and rules of access are determined outside the company, they are less directly exploitable by the private decision-maker. On the other hand, he has more flexibility than the government to decide on investments and to exchange licences or rights rapidly via the market. In both cases, the selectivity of choices is the combined result of social, economic and biological inputs; yet without biology, there is no consistent future in the exercise.
The biology of living organisms (whether useful, such as cereals, or harmful, such as pathogenic viruses) is essential information. And decision-makers would obviously do better if they were fully aware of the nature and the dynamic properties of the objects they manage. This prompts a more thorough examination of the complexity of the relevant biological knowledge and its organisation (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Management of biological resources When considering the driving forces of biological dynamics, biologists emphasise the role selection and drift play on systems, depending upon their reproduction potential and their biological diversity. Their scientific input into the decision-making process will depend upon the context of the object of management: whether it is in the natural environment (in situ : fields, pastures, forests and conservation areas) or in a man-operated artificial ecosystem (ex situ : cells, tissues, germplasm or DNA banks, collections of museums, arboreta, zoological and botanical repositories). Clearly, a key element is the balance of determinism and/or stochasticity in the functioning of the system. In the past, operators were more prone to elaborate procedures in cases where determinism was a prominent feature. By so doing, one has the means to optimise decisions and possibilities to evolve with the circumstances. In a system where stochasticity determines the dynamics, the techniques and types of decisions will be of a different nature, and concepts of probability, uncertainty and risk management will feature prominently in finalising the choices. In brief, an informed decision-maker needs a comprehensive knowledge of the complexity of biosystems. An Integrative Biology education may provide the solution, since it takes into consideration complexity levels, space and time scales, modulations of the system due to environmental factors, to external and internal biological interactions (impacts of hormones or pathogens for instance), and deliberate or unconscious human intervention.
The question of human-driven modulations may serve to introduce the second service which biology provides to decision-making. In Figure 3, the administrative operation is redescribed to focus attention on the values that legitimate decisions in terms of social goals in the perception of the operator and thus on the intended uses of biological resources. Perceptions and values, although not directly involved in the decision-making process, are the coordinates for the panel of socially acceptable choices, and in the long run, they evolve progressively, as does society. Understanding the importance and dynamics of values and perceptions is also necessary for the administrator. Access to such a knowledge is essentially provided by the social sciences. Moreover, developments in psychology (another discipline emanating from biology) and, however remotely, advances in brain and cognitive sciences should also be taken into account whenever management activities have to be implemented and accepted by the public.
Decisions related to biological resources management are obviously not the prerogative of the regions and people actively involved in the profit-making global economy of the World Trade Organisation. In many countries, government administrators deal with populations living in accordance with their traditional cultures and often struggling with poverty. In this situation, policies related to biological resources and community survival are closely intermeshed with land uses and appropriation regimes. In schematic terms, these people developed food production, indigenous knowledge and specific cultures on three basic activities : pastoralism, hunting, foraging and forest exploitation (Figure 4). Their enduring traditional structures and trade forms are now confronted to money-dependent economic systems (overall urban or peri-urban), where the rules of land management and the uses of domestic animals and cultivated plants are very different. The points of contact are brewing sites for biological and social conflicts, where, the responsibility of decision-makers is all the more difficult. Obviously, they not only need the confidence of their population, but have to develop an extremely refined and elaborate sense of balance and justice, using both social and biological sciences inputs. To confront the biological problems, they need pertinent training, i.e. a strong background in ecology and some conception of the biological and historical processes that led to current situations.
Figure 3: Values and perceptions in biological resources management Figure 4: Interconnected traditional economic systems Sources of biological information and education
As decision-makers have grown to recognise the pressing need for more accurate and up-to-date biological knowledge, they have begun to bring the same kind of capacity for communication and inquiry to bear upon biological systems that they habitually use for economic assessments. With the years, they have developed a variety of approaches that all fit in the framework presented in figure 1: the first consists in negotiating and financing specific research projects with competitive expert laboratories. From such research operations, usually carried out over precisely limited periods of time, they acquire the information they need, plus relevant biological background and, sometimes, technical expertise for the future. The second approach is to seek direct recourse to specific education and training (short-term specialised, advanced training at non-formal institutions, or longer training courses, often developed by academic institutions). The third approach is to call upon outside help. This option applies the market technique of buying the services of specialised consulting agencies. It has the advantage of accessing biological information through financial exchange, but it does not usually increase the know-how in the administration. The fourth possibility is the most indirect one. It relies on social controls and market feed-back on previously implemented decisions. The arguments cited in favour of controls and feed-back often point out that alternatives to the debated decisions could have been envisaged at an earlier stage, if more thorough biological information had been considered. This is quite often the apparent reasoning behind the texts accompanying court rulings. Undoubtedly, such feedback is highly informative for administrators. However, the information comes very late and may follow in the wake of social difficulties that could have been avoided if a more accurate consideration of biological knowledge had been taken in the first place.
Recent developments concerning genetically modified organisms GMOs, human immunodeficiency viruses or prions provide ample illustration of the various possibilities which are available to administrators to increase their biological knowledge and optimise their decisions.
It should be emphasised at this point that these processes of learning are not of the traditional academic nature. In many universities and for many years, biology has, in general, been presented to students as a qualitative discipline and encyclopaedic endeavour. Even biochemistry, molecular biology and physiology courses were more prone to descriptions of mechanisms than to quantifications of their dynamics. On the other hand: population genetics, population biology, epidemiology and theoretical biology were, by their essence, obliged to teach mathematical concepts and techniques. Because of this tradition, the two complexes of biological training are segregated in different courses. Matters started to improve some 15-20 years ago, when advances in informatics provided biology with the tools to develop data banks and data bases as well as with modelling techniques and computing capacities. While modelling and bioinformatics have acquired some recognition in universities, they are still in their infancy, and their role and importance are bound to increase. The trend will be accelerated by the demands of society, especially that of administrative decision-makers. Indeed, in their profession, they need not only qualitative knowledge, but also testable scenarios of the costs and effects, as well as the indirect consequences of any possible decisions. Quantification, modelling and informatics are precisely the tools that administrative decision-makers use in normal practise. Since their accustomed entry is via these disciplines, it actually facilitates their access to advanced biological information and education, if quantification methods are applied.
Risk perception and assessment In the administrator’s profession, decision-making is accompanied by risks. The examples cited above (GMOs, HIV, prions) well illustrate this situation, as do the examples of hormones, antibiotics or dioxin contents in food. Clearly, extensive biological knowledge is key to a priori or a posteriori risk and crisis management in any economic operation involving living organisms.
Let us first consider, in very broad terms, how administrators make their decisions with respect to risks. They look for an optimised position in a triangle of perceptions, the points of which are: political goals, public response, and judicial framework (Figure 5). They proceed by trying to mobilise biological knowledge in three steps. The first is the accurate definition of the pertinent biosystems (actors, hierarchies, time and spatial scales, human impacts...). In this phase, we again encounter the type of integrated biological knowledge previously called for (cf. Figure 2). The ultimate goal, here, is to be able to target the key elements of the productive biosystem in order to avoid unjustified costs and redundancies. The second step is to identify the risks, i.e. domains of uncertainties, chaotic or stochastic processes, and to correlate them with the concerns of society.
Figure 5: Perceptions, risks and management
A good example is the case of GMOs, where three major areas of risk are recognised : (1) the product itself (a living organism or the consequence of its activity); (2) the technologies (to develop, elaborate, produce and manage GMOs); (3) GMOs’ environmental impact. The last step in the process is the assessment of probabilities, which is directly related to the quantitative disciplines of biology discussed above.
Once this path has been paved and walked, administrators make decisions on the management of the risks. In this operation, there are two guiding principles: the lowest ratio of risks /benefits, and the need for a continuous flow of innovations in order for society to survive and develop in a competitive world. This last part of the decision-making activity is not directly related to biological knowledge (except through the cognitive activities of the brain). However, recent developments in the judicial and political consequences of decisions involving biosystems have tended to cause more biological elements to be introduced into these decision-making operations. This brings us back to the earlier discussion about values and perceptions (Fig. 3). Approaching the end of this century, the control exerted by citizens on governments and policies has progressively led to a shift from prevention to precaution. In the name of the latter, the responsibilities and ultimately the culpability of decision-makers have been extended far beyond the actual object of the decisions, to encompass their general impact on society and the nature of their implementations (see the HIV and blood transfusion crisis in France and the recent problems of chemical and hormonal pollutants in food). Consequently, even in the process of risk assessment, administrators will be prone to found their positions on a more accurate biological understanding of risks. In the long run, proper biological education may prepare younger generations of decision-makers to face such tasks. But in the immediate future, there is a call for the services of experts in biology.
Obviously, biologists are willing to provide their expertise. However, the demands of today’s society are not often in tune with the overall range of competencies and capabilities that biologists acquire through higher education and professional activities. In the scientific community, recognition is acquired through disciplinary specialisation and peer-review evaluation. Confronted by the same problem, different biologists may focus on different aspects and issue conflicting views, according to their specific knowledge. They may end up not rendering the service expected. Unfortunately, this academic habit of indulging in discussions among themselves has sometimes been misconstrued in court in order to deny any value to biological information and expertise... If society is has to succeed in building a community of true biological experts for the future, professional qualifications should be carefully debated and defined. Professionals should be trained in both biology and the social sciences and be made aware of their interconnection. Development of this corps will also require a definition of the social responsibilities of its members and as well as of their judicial protection. The question of whether experts are ordinary citizens is easily posed, but the answers are too many and are, at present, lacking a consensus in our societies.
To summarise: the future success of administrators and experts in the management of socio-agro-biosystems is highly dependent upon their biological and social knowledge and awareness. Possibilities to develop these skills and competencies are many and diverse. A fundamental, well integrated background in biology and social sciences is the common feature of these training concepts, within a framework that conjugates the consideration of facts, the reasoning of theories and the exercise of doubts.
Suggestions for improved connections between biological knowledge and decisions-making processes
In order to promote a better reciprocal understanding between biologists and administrative decision-makers and prepare both groups to face adequately the changes of biotechnologies and bioevolutions of the next century, this summary and qualitative survey points to three basic needs: a need for accessible biological information, a need for more accurate and open education, and a need for more vigilant awareness and active citizenship on the part of individuals of the two communities. With a view towards the follow-up of the BioEd 2000 conference, one might conclude by formulating two clusters of suggestions relating to biology and decision-making:
1) New ways to teach and understand biology and society
Education should be concerned with biosystems and the integrative sciences necessary to analyse, formalise and manage their complexities. This will be achieved when syllabuses and curricula of Integrative Biology are developed. By nature, biosystems are diverse and tend to diversify. Social needs are likewise diverse and changing, driven by two different forces: the trend toward globalisation, and the trend towards development of cultural identities and the search for new spaces of freedom. In consequence, the idea of building up a unique and universally acceptable curriculum of Integrative Biology is not the answer to all the challenges. On the contrary, a plurality of non-centralized syllabi has to be elaborated through democratic processes and geared to respond to specific social expectations and biosystems properties. The integrative approaches will succeed in (and in return: benefit from) implementations attuned to local and national situations, structures and demands. These various endeavours share four basic principles:
