IPBES, an inclusive institution? Challenging the integration of stakeholders in a science-policy interface

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The International Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was launched in 2012. Its objective is to strengthen the science-policy interface for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being, and sustainable development. Nonstate Actors (NSAs) participated in the inception of the platform and are also assumed to play a key role in its coming assessments and reports. In order to encourage NSAs to participate and self-organize, an institutional process has been led by the Secretariat in collaboration with two main organizations: Diversitas-International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). We look at the construction of this stakeholder participation process and its effectiveness. To what degree is the stakeholder engagement effective and what are the different forms of involvement? What methods are used by the IPBES's Secretariat and its mandated organizations to encourage stakeholder participation in the Platform? A social network analysis survey revealed four categories of actors in the group of stakeholders: organizers, connected, closely-knit, and peripheral. The ethnographic approach analyzed the way in which the IPBES secretariat organized the stakeholders' days, managed them, and controlled them. Thanks to these two methods, we analyzed the relational structure of the group of stakeholders and their contours of involvement and showed that these two dimensions can combine in a different way. The idea of a group of stakeholders, promoted by IPBES, is accompanied by a leadership/participation model that tends to enroll the stakeholders involved but may conversely marginalize some dissenting voices.

Weighting the World: IPBES and the Struggle over Biocultural Diversity

“…Research into intergovernmental assessment bodies, like IPBES, has focused on sociohistorical emergence (Charvolin and Ollivier 2017;Granjou et al 2013;Vadrot 2014aVadrot , 2014b; the relationship between science and politics (Brand and Vadrot 2013;Compagnon and LePrestre 2016;Gustafsson and Lidskog 2018;Hrabanski and Pesche 2016;Morin et al 2017;Turnhout et al 2014Turnhout et al , 2016; and the structural, geographical, and disciplinary makeup of the organization and its products (Duperray et al 2016;Esguerra et al 2017; Kovács and Pataki 2016;Montana 2017;Montana and Borie 2016;Oubenal et al 2017;Timpte et al 2018;Vadrot et al 2018aVadrot et al , 2018b. The intertwinement between science and politics, and how to characterize it, is a central scholarly focus in IPBES and IPCC scholarship (see, e.g., Haas 2004;Hoppe et al 2013;Miller 2004;Shackley and Wynne 1996;Skodvin 2000).…”

Why are social sciences and humanities needed in the works of IPBES? A systematic review of the literature

“…Arpin et al. 2016 ; Esguerra, Beck, and Lidskog 2017 ; Tremblay, Vandewalle, and Wittmer 2016 ; Oubenal, Hrabanski, and Pesche 2017 ). Tengö et al.…”

Networking the environment: social network analysis in environmental management and local ecological knowledge studies

“…Their results show that, although some nonrelational variables can help explain individual engagement, the individuals' social environment has a stronger explanatory power, thus bringing a new understanding of the social dynamics underpinning environmental movements. Last, Oubenal et al (2017) propose a study of the advice network among the participants in the stakeholders' days of the International Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which took place in Turkey in 2013. Using discourse analysis combined with ethnographic observations and SNA, they studied the structure of the participants' community and the patterns of information exchanges between these participants in relation to the types of involvement, i.e., collaborative or dissenting voicing, that the participants displayed.…”