Combining Science and Policy

I gather the science brought you to work with the government, and then to become part of the government, so the third thing that has to be going on here is having these two communities that you are a part of talk to each other, because the environmental area seems to be very much an area that depends on science and current scientific information, evidence, and so on, but on the other hand, government is politics. What is involved in coordinating these two spheres?

It's interesting because environmental policy is extremely dependent as a policy area, a political area, on science. Good research is needed to go ahead and try to solve the environmental problems we are having. Environmental policy is, in fact, a little bit more nonpolitical than other policy areas. You can see, for example, in the Swedish parliament there is no great difference in the opinion among the different political parties when we are talking about environment.

Now is this a Swedish characteristic, or do you think it's true of other political systems?

I think it's partly Swedish but I would like to say it's more European. We found now, since we're a member of the European Union, that [we are in] the same situation. Of course, how to solve the problem, then you can have different approaches, and you can find different political types of approaches. But the problem and that we have to solve it -- I think that is very much a European way of thinking, and it's not connected to different type of political parties.

You are presently, and have been for several years now, the head of the EPA. What is the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, of Sweden? What is its mission? Is it the same as that in the United States?

No, the Swedish EPA is a little bit different. First of all, I must take the opportunity to say it's the oldest EPA in the world. It was established in 1967, and we cover both nature conservation and environmental protection. We have only one environmental protection agency, and I think it's a good thing to have them integrated. The borders between the blue and the green part, as they are often talking about, are going away, and we can focus on what's happened out in the environment and see what type of solutions do we need to solve different types of problems. It doesn't matter if it's nature conservation or pollution.

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