Environmental expertise: conditions and challenges
What kinds of expertise is needed to facilitate and guide the work to meet current global environmental challenges? The context is the growing severity of the current situation where the environmental problems have increased not only in scope (global problems) and breadth (including all sectors) but also in depth (concerns fundamental societal structures). This means that environmental expertise gets a much broader and complex task, where it must navigate – and sometimes also challenge – disciplinary and institutional boundaries. This raises fundamental epistemic and normative questions on credibility, relevance, and legitimacy.
This project will use empirical materials from two recently conducted studies to investigate and compare conditions and challenges in developing an environmental expertise that is scientifically sound and policy relevant. The empirical material consists of already collected material, mainly in form of two recently conducted interview studies of scientific experts in the IPCC and IPBES.
By focusing on two of the most current environmental problems (climate change and biodiversity loss) and two of the most well-known and institutionalized form of environmental expertise (IPBES and IPCC), the project aims to give substantial contributions to current discussions on how to create social robust expertise, that both is scientific legitimate and policy relevant.
This project will use empirical materials from two recently conducted studies to investigate and compare conditions and challenges in developing an environmental expertise that is scientifically sound and policy relevant. The empirical material consists of already collected material, mainly in form of two recently conducted interview studies of scientific experts in the IPCC and IPBES.
By focusing on two of the most current environmental problems (climate change and biodiversity loss) and two of the most well-known and institutionalized form of environmental expertise (IPBES and IPCC), the project aims to give substantial contributions to current discussions on how to create social robust expertise, that both is scientific legitimate and policy relevant.
Final report
Background
The project studies the conditions and challenges in developing scientific expertise on global environmental problems that is both scientifically legitimate and socially relevant. The empirical material consists of material already collected (interviews and documents) by the international expert organizations IPCC (climate) and IPBES (biodiversity).
The project has included two stays abroad and resulted in four papers. Due to the time required for journal review (peer review), there are no published papers at the time of this final report. When accepted, they will be published in open access.
Results
Lidskog, R. Being an expert on global environmental change: opportunities, challenges, and expectations
Today's political and scientific emphasis on the need for social transformation to meet global environmental problems has led to the question of whether this requires a new type of environmental expertise. This paper explores the challenges in making global environmental assessments with a focus on the opportunities and problems faced by the experts involved. By analyzing the experts' experiences of and ideas about advisory practices, the article contributes to the discussion about the future development of global environmental expertise, as well as its intra- and extra-scientific challenges.
Lidskog R. & Standring, A. 2024. Invaluable Invisibility: Academic housekeeping within the IPCC
This paper examines the conditions, motivations and implications for individual scientists who involved in the IPCC. The starting point is the concept of “academic housekeeping” - work that is important to an organization but is rarely made visible, recognized and rewarded. The empirical material consists of an interview study of researchers involved in IPCC assessment work. It discusses the consequences of unrewarded work for individual experts, for expert organizations and for academic institutions. It finds that today it is extremely important to value the often unrecognized expert work (such as creating a good collaborative culture in an interdisciplinary expert organization, to handle conflicts between different expertise) and that it is a responsibility for both expert organizations and universities to do so. If this does not happen, there is a great risk that expert organizations will have problems in recruiting new experts, not least from the social sciences and humanities, which have a partly different incentive structure than the natural sciences.
Lidskog, R. Science for transformative change: IPCC, boundary work and the making of usable knowledge.
There is an extensive discussion going on about what kind of global environmental expertise needs to be developed to (better) guide environmental policy. However, there are few studies on how the experts themselves assess the challenges of making scientific research politically relevant. In this essay, the concept of boundary work is used to analyze which boundaries and distinctions the IPCC experts make; where they draw boundaries between science and politics, between policy relevance and policy prescription, and between certain and uncertain knowledge. By analyzing the experts' experiences and ideas about what makes science relevant for decision-making, the article contributes to the discussion of current and future challenges for the IPCC as well as for other global environmental expertise. An important result is that regardless of how the IPCC adapts to today's changing context and the expert position it occupies, it needs to reflect on its current ways of organizing, conducting and communicating its assessments. If it does not, there is a risk that what it considers to be policy-relevant and useful knowledge differs from what policy-makers demand and need.
Lidskog, R. From climate facts to climate risks
All global environmental expertise needs to deal with the issue of knowledge uncertainty, i.e. how to summarize the state of knowledge when it is to some extent tainted with knowledge uncertainty or deals with risk where the expertise not only needs to make epistemic assessments but also normative ones. This article analyzes how the IPCC understands and manages risk and uncertainty in its knowledge assessments. It does so by first discussing its formal and explicit view of risk and uncertainty. The analysis shows that the IPCC has an ambitious and at the same time complicated system for determining and managing risk and uncertainty. It then discusses how the IPCC experts – scientists appointed by the IPCC to carry out their knowledge assessment – view and use this system to determine risk and uncertainty. The analysis shows that there are differences and tensions in the way of looking at knowledge, uncertainty and risk. It finds a decisive difference between those who focus primarily on knowledge security and those who have a pronounced risk perspective, including societal risks. Finally, the paper draws some conclusions about this for the future: what challenges the IPCC will face and needs to address in terms of how it manages and communicates uncertainty and risk in its knowledge assessments.
Results in addition to the publications
The project's primary results are those presented in the papers (described above). In addition to that, the project has led to the establishment of new contacts and collaborations as well as to new research ideas (see below).
New collaborations
The project has given me the opportunity to develop contacts with new research context. It is still unclear how we will collaborate, but in the coming year (2024/25) I will be in contact with and visit the following researchers/research institutes:
• the Institute for Advanced Study, Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (Professor Jens Zinn)
• Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Research unit Politics and sociology Bielefeld University (professor Holger Strassheim)
• Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Leibniz University Hannover (Professor Mathias Frisch)
During my sabbatical, I have also been involved in an international collaboration in writing a research article on the role of expertise in social science and humanities in global environmental assessments (about fifteen researchers are participating in this work).
New research questions
The project has led to several questions that require in-depth studies. The context for global environmental policy is undergoing major changes: increasingly complicated and complex global environmental challenges, an increasing need for deep and broad social transformation to address them, and a more polarized social climate and politics. It places changing and far-reaching demands on environmental expertise. Creating expert knowledge that is both policy relevant and scientifically legitimate is an increasingly important, but difficult challenge.
This changed context and situation means that the need for social science and humanities environmental expertise is increasing, while at the same time it is extremely unclear what its knowledge contribution should look like and how it can relate to natural science and technical expertise that dominates the problem understanding and knowledge overviews of global environmental problems. There is a need for both conceptual and empirical work on what kind of expertise should and can be developed and what epistemic, institutional and normative challenges this poses.
How the results have been disseminated and whether and how the collaboration took place.
The project has included two visiting researcher periods:
Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (October-November 2023). During my stay, I participated in its seminar activities and made contacts. In addition, I gave a lecture at the senior seminar at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, Technical University of Munich, about the project and its theoretical starting points. During my stay at RCC, I was also invited to participate in the conference Sustainability transformations and social sciences: Methodological contributions, challenges, and ways forward, Basel, 3-4 November 2023. In this conference, I gave a talk and was appointed commentator for two of its themes.
Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Research unit Politics and sociology, Faculty of sociology, Bielefeld University (April 2024). During my stay, I participated in its cross-faculty colloquium in science studies and contributed to it with a lecture on global environmental expertise for societal transformation.
The papers written within the framework of this project have been presented at three scientific conferences.
In connection with the article scripts being published, I will spread information about them via ORU's website.
The project studies the conditions and challenges in developing scientific expertise on global environmental problems that is both scientifically legitimate and socially relevant. The empirical material consists of material already collected (interviews and documents) by the international expert organizations IPCC (climate) and IPBES (biodiversity).
The project has included two stays abroad and resulted in four papers. Due to the time required for journal review (peer review), there are no published papers at the time of this final report. When accepted, they will be published in open access.
Results
Lidskog, R. Being an expert on global environmental change: opportunities, challenges, and expectations
Today's political and scientific emphasis on the need for social transformation to meet global environmental problems has led to the question of whether this requires a new type of environmental expertise. This paper explores the challenges in making global environmental assessments with a focus on the opportunities and problems faced by the experts involved. By analyzing the experts' experiences of and ideas about advisory practices, the article contributes to the discussion about the future development of global environmental expertise, as well as its intra- and extra-scientific challenges.
Lidskog R. & Standring, A. 2024. Invaluable Invisibility: Academic housekeeping within the IPCC
This paper examines the conditions, motivations and implications for individual scientists who involved in the IPCC. The starting point is the concept of “academic housekeeping” - work that is important to an organization but is rarely made visible, recognized and rewarded. The empirical material consists of an interview study of researchers involved in IPCC assessment work. It discusses the consequences of unrewarded work for individual experts, for expert organizations and for academic institutions. It finds that today it is extremely important to value the often unrecognized expert work (such as creating a good collaborative culture in an interdisciplinary expert organization, to handle conflicts between different expertise) and that it is a responsibility for both expert organizations and universities to do so. If this does not happen, there is a great risk that expert organizations will have problems in recruiting new experts, not least from the social sciences and humanities, which have a partly different incentive structure than the natural sciences.
Lidskog, R. Science for transformative change: IPCC, boundary work and the making of usable knowledge.
There is an extensive discussion going on about what kind of global environmental expertise needs to be developed to (better) guide environmental policy. However, there are few studies on how the experts themselves assess the challenges of making scientific research politically relevant. In this essay, the concept of boundary work is used to analyze which boundaries and distinctions the IPCC experts make; where they draw boundaries between science and politics, between policy relevance and policy prescription, and between certain and uncertain knowledge. By analyzing the experts' experiences and ideas about what makes science relevant for decision-making, the article contributes to the discussion of current and future challenges for the IPCC as well as for other global environmental expertise. An important result is that regardless of how the IPCC adapts to today's changing context and the expert position it occupies, it needs to reflect on its current ways of organizing, conducting and communicating its assessments. If it does not, there is a risk that what it considers to be policy-relevant and useful knowledge differs from what policy-makers demand and need.
Lidskog, R. From climate facts to climate risks
All global environmental expertise needs to deal with the issue of knowledge uncertainty, i.e. how to summarize the state of knowledge when it is to some extent tainted with knowledge uncertainty or deals with risk where the expertise not only needs to make epistemic assessments but also normative ones. This article analyzes how the IPCC understands and manages risk and uncertainty in its knowledge assessments. It does so by first discussing its formal and explicit view of risk and uncertainty. The analysis shows that the IPCC has an ambitious and at the same time complicated system for determining and managing risk and uncertainty. It then discusses how the IPCC experts – scientists appointed by the IPCC to carry out their knowledge assessment – view and use this system to determine risk and uncertainty. The analysis shows that there are differences and tensions in the way of looking at knowledge, uncertainty and risk. It finds a decisive difference between those who focus primarily on knowledge security and those who have a pronounced risk perspective, including societal risks. Finally, the paper draws some conclusions about this for the future: what challenges the IPCC will face and needs to address in terms of how it manages and communicates uncertainty and risk in its knowledge assessments.
Results in addition to the publications
The project's primary results are those presented in the papers (described above). In addition to that, the project has led to the establishment of new contacts and collaborations as well as to new research ideas (see below).
New collaborations
The project has given me the opportunity to develop contacts with new research context. It is still unclear how we will collaborate, but in the coming year (2024/25) I will be in contact with and visit the following researchers/research institutes:
• the Institute for Advanced Study, Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (Professor Jens Zinn)
• Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Research unit Politics and sociology Bielefeld University (professor Holger Strassheim)
• Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Leibniz University Hannover (Professor Mathias Frisch)
During my sabbatical, I have also been involved in an international collaboration in writing a research article on the role of expertise in social science and humanities in global environmental assessments (about fifteen researchers are participating in this work).
New research questions
The project has led to several questions that require in-depth studies. The context for global environmental policy is undergoing major changes: increasingly complicated and complex global environmental challenges, an increasing need for deep and broad social transformation to address them, and a more polarized social climate and politics. It places changing and far-reaching demands on environmental expertise. Creating expert knowledge that is both policy relevant and scientifically legitimate is an increasingly important, but difficult challenge.
This changed context and situation means that the need for social science and humanities environmental expertise is increasing, while at the same time it is extremely unclear what its knowledge contribution should look like and how it can relate to natural science and technical expertise that dominates the problem understanding and knowledge overviews of global environmental problems. There is a need for both conceptual and empirical work on what kind of expertise should and can be developed and what epistemic, institutional and normative challenges this poses.
How the results have been disseminated and whether and how the collaboration took place.
The project has included two visiting researcher periods:
Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (October-November 2023). During my stay, I participated in its seminar activities and made contacts. In addition, I gave a lecture at the senior seminar at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, Technical University of Munich, about the project and its theoretical starting points. During my stay at RCC, I was also invited to participate in the conference Sustainability transformations and social sciences: Methodological contributions, challenges, and ways forward, Basel, 3-4 November 2023. In this conference, I gave a talk and was appointed commentator for two of its themes.
Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Research unit Politics and sociology, Faculty of sociology, Bielefeld University (April 2024). During my stay, I participated in its cross-faculty colloquium in science studies and contributed to it with a lecture on global environmental expertise for societal transformation.
The papers written within the framework of this project have been presented at three scientific conferences.
In connection with the article scripts being published, I will spread information about them via ORU's website.