Organized Science, Usable Knowledge, and Multilateral Environmental Governance

2014

Environmental Politics

The interaction between science and policy in transboundary environmental regulation is dynamic. By elaborating on the concepts of boundary organisations and portable representations, I shed light on how science-based policy and policy-relevant science are co-produced. This perspective is then put to use in an analysis of the scientific representation and political regulation of two different environmental issues: ground-level ozone and biodiversity. Portable representations function as a link between experts and policymakers. By means of portable representations, nature is not only measured and represented but also made governable. Portable representations seemed to strengthen the credibility of both scientific assessments and policy. Science makes itself matter by formally separating itself from policy considerations, although the two are at the same time integrated through portable representations from boundary organisations.

Section: Science Meets Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Analysis: Integrating Science and Policy By Separating Themmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representing and regulating nature: boundary organisations, portable representations, and the science–policy interface

2014

Environmental Politics

“…There is also a debate over whether scientific consensus is needed for policy decisions (see Grundmann 2006 andHaas andStevens 2011, for opposing views). In contrast to the dominant understanding that has come to inform the IPCC, an alternative, pragmatic knowledge view has begun to emerge that does not consider scientific consensus to be crucial.…”

Section: Contested Consensusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The exceptional position of the IPCC within climate science and in relation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has yielded a large amount of wide-ranging research that scrutinizes the content of the IPCC's assessments, organization, and influence. Some analysts consider the IPCC a role model for the science-policy relations, while other analysts consider it partly responsible for the erosion of public trust in science (Haas and Stevens 2011, Jasanoff 2010, Wynne 2010.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pathways to deliberative capacity: the role of the IPCC

Berg

2018

Climatic Change

This article explores the arguments for expanding deliberation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scrutinizes their implications for the deliberative capacity of global environmental governance (GEG). An analysis of the IPCC is presented that builds on a systematic literature review and thus a broad set of scientific debates concerning the IPCC. Based on this analysis, two different paths are outlined, one moderate and one radical; these paths ascribe different democratizing functions to the IPCC and rely on different epistemologies. The moderate path emphasizes decision capacity, whereas the radical path strives to create deliberative space and to identify the value inherent in different claims. It is argued that the IPCC cannot accommodate the aspirations of these different pathways in a single assessment. Parallel assessments must be developed in complementary subject areas with different science-policy relations.

“…An example of this is the criticism that has been raised against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which aims to be 'policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive' (IPCC 2016). Despite this ambition, researchers have claimed that this expert organization is designed in a manner that enables governmental control over individual scientists, who are afforded only limited opportunities to influence the agenda of climate change negotiations (Haas and Stevens 2011). Regardless of whether their criticism is valid or exaggerated, they make a point of fundamental importance: if an expert organization is not seen as credible, its knowledge (regardless of how policy-relevant it is) will not be taken into consideration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing international experts: IPBES’s efforts to gain epistemic authority

Gustafsson

Environmental Sociology

2018

What role do organizational preconditions play in the constitution of expertise? This is the guiding question for this paper, which studies how expertise is shaped in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). By organizing the world's experts on biodiversity, IPBES sets out to produce policy-relevant knowledge. However, in contrast to many other international expert bodies such as the IPCC, IPBES assesses not only scientific knowledge, but also other forms of knowledge, including indigenous and local knowledge. In light of IPBES's ambition to become an epistemic authority by synthesizing heterogeneous knowledge forms, it is of great interest to investigate how this expertise is constructed. What does 'expertise' mean for IPBES, and how are experts selected? Based on documents studies, this study explores the organizational structure through which IPBES assesses and selects experts. The analysis finds that the construction of expertise involves scientific as well as political dimensions. In the conclusions, problems are raised that are related to the outcome of this process and may threaten the epistemic authority of IPBES. ARTICLE HISTORY