Conference Agenda

It is widely acknowledged in the literature and society that expert advice is necessary for policymakers to devise effective, evidence-based solutions. The position of expertise is especially delicate within the global environmental governance sphere, where values, worldviews and epistemological standpoints can accumulate and breed conflict between stakeholders aiming to address sustainability challenges. However, there is limited substantive evidence on the extent to which expert advice really matters in environmental politics and under which conditions expert knowledge actually leads to action. Scholars from Science and Technology Studies and International Relations have focused at length on these questions yet struggle in providing definitive answers. At this scale, academic discussions range from positions assigning a crucial role to expertise to understandings that view science as epiphenomenal. Supported by evidence from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and its Science-Policy Interface (SPI), this paper approaches these questions by examining the institutional design of advisory processes and power dynamics between science and policy to understand how crucial contextual factors contribute to expertise influencing global environmental governance.

Based on data collected from 2017 to 2022, including participant observation at the 14^th and 15^th Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD and 28 semi-structured interviews with members of the UNCCD SPI and Committee on Science and Technology, our findings identified key aspects of the institutional design that enabled the SPI to successfully inform policymaking on land degradation and desertification. Firstly, the institutional design helped experts to understand policy needs while not compromising the scientific credibility of the reports provided to policymakers. Secondly, it encouraged innovation by including early-career scientists, practitioners from civil society organizations and SPIs for other environmental conventions in their regular meetings and allowing them to participate in or contribute to the preparation of the policy reports. Thirdly, the small size of the expert body was cited as both a way for more voices to be heard and a barrier limiting their capacity. However, the UNCCD SPI overcomes this barrier by hiring external experts to contribute to the preparation of reports. In conclusion, although factors such as institutional design and active expert agency can be enabling factors for expertise to matter, international environmental decision-making and its national-level implementation are ultimately and inevitably subordinated to states’ power and influence. Against this backdrop, international expertise for sustainable development can only take advantage of the rare 'windows of opportunity' that intergovernmental processes concede.

Organizations that bridge the scientific and policy-making communities are often called boundary organizations. The concept has been helpful in explaining their legitimacy, authority, and relevance. Yet, the institutional design of boundary organizations has been neglected to date. States negotiate these organizations’ designs: their rules, procedures, and outputs result from contested, power-laden bargaining. This paper applies the institutional design framework to two prominent boundary organizations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The institutional design literature can offer several insights into the function of boundary organizations. The literature starts with aspects of the problem, such as the distribution of costs and benefits, and uncertainty about other states’ preferences and the state of the world. It connects this problem structure to institutional design choices, including members, centralization of authority, scope, and flexibility mechanisms. Many of these variables are relevant to boundary organizations. They vary in the centralization of authority (experts versus states) and the membership of authors and states. There is varied flexibility to pursue issues of scientific and policy concerns and to scope the assessments.

The study of boundary organizations can add to the institutional design literature. These organizations address the nature of the problem and the gap between science and policy. Boundary organizations address both a real-world problem and also a governance problem. Governance problems, namely the gap between science and policy, may have unique effects on institutional design.

This paper’s comparative method has an additional advantage: it can help separate functional and diffusion mechanisms. Using the institutional design framework, the paper can trace which institutional options appear to be functional responses to the challenges of building science-policy connections for climate change and for biodiversity, respectively. But, the IPCC and IPBES are not entirely separate cases. IPBES negotiators drew from the experiences of the IPCC when negotiating the biodiversity science-policy interface. There may be a case for diffusion. The institutional design framework can help identify which design features may be tailored to the needs of a biodiversity science-policy interface, and which functions may be “borrowed” from its counterpart in climate governance. There may also be implications for the ongoing negotiations for a science-policy interface for chemicals, wastes, and pollution.

The IPCC has integrated a set principles of justice to his AR6 working group II report on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. The recognition of the relevance of principles of justice in AR6 (distributive justice, procedural justice and recognition) is understood as a condition for effective, plausible and fair adaptation processes, as well as a key element of a resilient ecological transformation model. Regardless of the importance of the conceptual innovation presented by the IPCC and of the recognition of justice for the definition of solution spaces to avoid catastrophic risks and impacts, the approach raises important questions about the normative nature of climate justice, the meaning and content of the principles of justice and its relation with the development of institutional capacities to operationalize and evaluate national climate change strategies and policies. This paper analyzes the climate justice approach developed in the AR6 to identify its conceptual limits and for establishing an analytical basis for a more integrated model from a multilevel governance perspective. Among the main problems that emerge from the IPCC climate justice approach, the following will be the central concern for our argument: 1) confusion between types and principles of justice; 2) limited definition regarding the specific normative content of climate justice principles and their reach; 3) decoupling of the principles of justice and the development of institutional capacities and flows of financial resources to developing countries; 4) lack of clarity to identify how local and indigenous knowledge should be integrated into risk management and adaptation strategies and the limits of this process; 5) non reference to global justice obligations; 6) absence of principles of restorative and retributive justice, particularly in relation to adaptation, losses and damages; 7) relevance of previous injustices and victimization; 8) disconnection between the principles of climate justice and the broader socio-ecological demands, expectations and conflicts expressed through the conception of environmental justice and the right to a healthy environment, which can explain the preexistence of must of the risks and vulnerabilities that could be multiplied as a consequence of climate variations and impacts in the Anthopocene.

Gene drives are a proposed biotechnological intervention that could provide unprecedented biological control for addressing key challenges in global sustainable development by providing an effective countermeasure to invasive alien species, agricultural pests or disease vectors. Gene drives also raise complex biosafety challenges and face scrutiny due to an allegedly-outsized involvement of certain philanthropic- and military funders. Against this background, this text is the first to provide a systematic account of the organizational structure that underpins global gene drive research. Applying social network analysis to data on co-authorship and research funding, I show that global gene drive research has limited organizational and geographical diversity and is firmly dominated by elite US-based organizations, with organizations from developing countries either playing marginal roles or being excluded altogether. Additionally, a tentative analysis of financial transfers suggests that an overwhelming share of global research funding passes from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Imperial College London; and from the US National Institutes of Health to various first- and second-tier US research universities. Overall, the organizational structure implies a considerable legitimacy deficit in global scientific collaboration on a controversial novel biotechnology with significant biosafety risks yet potentially transformative impacts on key challenges of sustainable development.

Researchers interested in steering mechanisms for a sustainability transformation call for new governance models that recognise the role of different actors, including specifically the private sector in leading impact and change. One example exists in form of various sustainability and clean-tech innovation networks and start-up accelerators. These innovation ecosystems are designed to pursue a broader purpose of supporting the creation of businesses that define their existence based on addressing social and environmental sustainability issues beyond returning a profit.

Key questions, however, are whether such networks intentionally target multiple, interconnected sustainability challenges, or whether they instead rely on "silo-based" thinking by focusing only on solutions for specific sustainability issues and concerns? To what extent do these networks and their ventures recognise the interlinkages, synergies, tensions, and tradeoffs between different sustainability issues?

This paper aims to develop understanding and insight into whether and how “purpose-driven innovation ecosystems” are steering new business activities towards addressing complex interconnected sustainability issues. Based on research conducted through 36 semi-structured interviews, of which 12 were with members of clean tech incubators and accelerators, and 24 with CEOs and entrepreneurs of various sustainability start-ups and ventures located in the Metro Vancouver regional district, this research examines the different driving forces and barriers, assumptions, and limitations of such informal governance mechanisms among private sector actors.

Findings suggest respondents acknowledge the strong socio-economic, cultural, and ecological environments as critical factors in shaping people’s interests and motivations for developing new businesses designed to address critical sustainability issues and challenges. While there is a clear emphasis on addressing particularly climate change and other environmental issues in the resource-based sectors of the province, respondents are also aware of the need for tackling social issues and challenges, e.g., by driving equality, diversity and inclusion of women and indigenous communities. Therefore, nexus thinking of socio-ecological concerns is typically either implied or an explicit concern for many start-ups and the innovation ecosystem supporting them.

However, respondents also raised concerns about barriers and challenges affecting the success chances of this wider ecosystem, including a lack of funding certainty, weakening access to skills, staff, finance, and regulatory barriers as well as competition and duplication of efforts. Mindsets and expectations also differed between entrepreneurs and financiers, regarding the timeframes, scale, and returns on investments targeted.

Knowledge of these factors contributes to literature on sustainability transformations, earth system governance, and purpose-driven business models.