Strategic use of scientific information for marine conservation: policy narratives on sea-dumped munitions in the German Seas

To keep pace with the accelerating industrialization of the oceans, marine conservation must address environmental issues where scientific knowledge is limited and evolving. In the German Baltic and North Seas, 1.6 million tons of munitions, dumped after World War II, pose risks to the environment, public health, and economic development. These munitions were not recognized as an environmental problem until 2021, when systematic clearance efforts were initiated. Using the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), this article examines how advocates for munitions clearance used narratives to argue for policy change despite limited scientific information. Analyzing 138 newspaper articles from 2001 to 2021, we show how scientific information functioned alongside other narrative elements. In stories of decline, which depict worsening problems, munitions were portrayed as villains, while metaphors such as the ticking time bomb heightened urgency and supported expressions of scientific certainty. Contrary to previous NPF research suggesting that actors use certainty to support policy stability and uncertainty to drive policy change, we find that both strategies were used by advocates of policy change. Our research illustrates how growing scientific information changes narrative strategies. In the first period, precautionary principle plots, which stress that the possible consequences of inaction justify action without scientific consensus, enabled calls for marine conservation despite uncertainty. In the second period, growing scientific information allowed pro-clearance advocates to emphasize certainty in stories of decline. Together with stories of control, which demonstrate that an issue can be managed, pro-clearance advocates fostered confidence in the necessity and feasibility of munitions clearance.