The role of calculative practices such as goals and indicators in international environmental governance causes concern among many observers, who view them as promoting a reductivist approach to the non-human world and privileging economic understandings of environmental governance above all others. Yet they possess enormous potential to provide insights into the non-human world that could be of great benefit to governance. This article takes seriously critical perspectives of calculative practices, while exploring a weakness in much of the critical literature, namely a failure to examine assumptions about the nature of scientific knowledge and the manner in which it is, and ought to be, taken up by policy makers. I contend that both the design of environmental regimes and critical analyses of these regimes bear the marks of the influence, albeit indirect, of early 20th century views on the superiority of scientific knowledge and its unique capacity to ground decision making. I argue that a richer, more nuanced account of the co-production of ecological metrics such as goals and indicators and their potential contributions to ecosystem governance and sustainability is necessary. With such accounts, scholars and political authorities would be in a better position to address the very real pitfalls and dangers of calculative practices while not feeling compelled to forego these potentially powerful approaches.

中文翻译：

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国际环境治理中的计算实践：指标的（部分）辩护

诸如目标和指标等计算实践在国际环境治理中的作用引起了许多观察家的关注，他们认为它们促进了对非人类世界的还原论方法，并将对环境治理的经济理解置于所有其他之上。然而，它们具有巨大的潜力，可以提供对非人类世界的洞察，这可能对治理大有裨益。本文认真对待计算实践的批判性观点，同时探讨了许多批判性文献中的一个弱点，即未能检查关于科学知识性质的假设以及政策采用和应该采用的方式制造商。我认为环境制度的设计和对这些制度的批判性分析都带有影响的痕迹，th世纪对科学知识的优越性及其对决策制定的独特能力的看法。我认为，有必要对目标和指标等生态指标的共同产生及其对生态系统治理和可持续性的潜在贡献进行更丰富、更细致的描述。有了这样的描述，学者和政治权威将能够更好地解决计算实践中非常真实的陷阱和危险，同时不会感到被迫放弃这些潜在的强大方法。