Enabling the IPBES conceptual framework to work across knowledge boundaries

Abstract

The IPBES conceptual framework (CF) serves an instrumental value to translate usable knowledge into policy across spatial scales, alongside a normative function to engage diverse knowledge systems, promoting inclusivity and enhancing legitimacy. It has been argued that the CF operates as a boundary object, a communication and organisation tool for those working across diverse knowledge systems, designed to help them reach shared goals. The paper focuses on this claim, exploring the three core characteristics of a boundary object: interpretive flexibility, material and organisational structure, and the recognition of dissention. We suggest that too much emphasis is placed within the CF upon interpretive flexibility, whilst meeting information needs and the work requirements of all individuals, groups and communities who use the CF are overlooked. By forcing consensus, the IPBES CF ignores the critical dimensions of a boundary object. We argue that embracing the full characteristics of a boundary object will enable the IPBES to support knowledge coproduction and translation across the knowledge systems, better achieving its goal of providing policy advice.

Intersectional boundary work in socializing new experts. The case of IPBES

“…Boundary work has mainly been studied by focusing on a single boundary, e.g., the boundaries between science and policy (e.g., Beck 2012) or between science, indigenous and local knowledge systems (e.g., Dunkley et al 2018). However, we argue that the complexity of the social practice in which boundary work takes place causes boundaries to influence each other, and this intersectionality is scantily researched.…”

“…In what follows, we elaborate on how the processes of expulsion and expansion have played out on a global scale to establish the two boundaries most central to our study: the science-policy boundary and the boundaries between science, indigenous, and local knowledge systems. The elaboration is not an exhaustive systematic review of the literature and the development of the concept of boundary work (for more on the development and analytical use of the concept of boundary work, see, e.g., Powell 2007;Swedlow 2007;Ramírezi-Ollé 2015;Braunstein 2018;Dunkley et al 2018). Instead, we elaborate on how the boundary works of expulsion or expansion have played out to understand the construction of the boundaries of science in relation to both policy and other knowledge systems.…”

“…The boundary work on how to synthesize knowledge systems is described as a central and ongoing effort within IPBES (see, e.g., the discussion on the difference between the concepts 'ecosystem services' and 'nature's contributions to people' (e.g., Díaz et al 2018;Braat 2018;Masood 2018)). However, the conceptual framework has been criticized for resulting in the boundary work of expulsion rather than creating collaboratively produced knowledge (Löfmarck and Lidskog 2017;Dunkley et al 2018). Though acknowledged as having the potential to facilitate a change in how the boundary is drawn between science and indigenous and local knowledge systems, the conceptual framework is argued to not yet have found a way to allow ILK to participate on equal terms with science in the assessment processes and the production of the final reports (Borie and Hulme 2015; Bridgewater 2017).…”

“…In this boundary work, credibility becomes the watchword, and fact-based scientific knowledge claims become the assessment's main body in which other knowledge systems are to be included (cf. Tengö et al 2014;Dunkley et al 2018). Thus, despite ambitious attempts to create an inclusive and collaborative process, boundary work on knowledge systems in IPBES is to a large extent characterized by a hierarchical relation between science and other knowledge systems, i.e., between facts and values, between formalized methods and social experiences, and between degrees of context dependency (cf.…”

“…As shown above, IPBES intends to enable collaborations that expand the boundaries between science and policy and between scientific knowledge and indigenous and local knowledge (cf. Dunkley et al 2018;Timpte et al 2018). This is visible in IPBES' acknowledgment and basic assumption that sustainable management of the earth's biodiversity is dependent on collaborative efforts engaging multiple knowledge systems as well as policy actors on multiple levels.…”