Commoning Safer Chemicals: Socially Robust Knowledge in Green Chemistry?

• In Event: Commoning Knowledge: Regeneration Through S&T

Abstract

Understanding and managing the environmental health risks of industrial chemicals was once the turf of toxicologists and regulatory-scientific experts. In the 21st century, this knowledge domain attracts a much broader array of chemists, NGOs, businesses, public administrators, and interested citizens—though it remains contested and inequitable in many ways. To those grappling with it in earnest, the dilemma of substituting toxic substances with safer alternatives presents a range of collective challenges: accessing information and know-how; establishing or defending principles and practices of ‘green chemistry’ and ‘alternatives assessment’; and finding alignment among diverse actors, whose own interests (such as intellectual property rights) may present barriers to the flow of knowledge. By observing and participating in an extended peer community engaged with these challenges, we have followed collaborative efforts to produce knowledge for advancing safer chemistry—including open-source methodologies for chemical hazard assessment, open-access tools and databases, and open standards for transparency of product chemical ingredients. We present a case study of the formation and development of a multifaceted knowledge commons concerned with understanding chemical hazards and how to reduce them. We ask whether, and how, this emerging commons can function as a stable site for producing socially robust knowledge, and how the commons may become legitimate and authoritative—both for its own participants and for external actor groups. How the processes of ‘commoning’ play out in the contested chemicals policy arena is of great interest for efforts to develop knowledge commons that are motivated by other socially complex environmental issues.

Authors

• Akos Kokai, University of California at Berkeley

• Alastair Iles, UC Berkeley