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Global calls for transformative change in the face of urgent sustainability challenges are growing increasingly loud across science, policy and society. Many of these calls point to the importance of mobilizing organizations and individuals at the science-policy interface towards enabling such change. Especially co-productive or transdisciplinary approaches are seen as promising (Wyborn et al. 2018; Chambers et al. 2021). Moreover, transformations put in the limelight questions of power, justice and equity. This makes transformations inherently political, and they should be treated as such by researchers, practitioners and policymakers (Blythe et al. 2018; Scoones et al. 2020). The corresponding challenge for (transdisciplinary) knowledge processes is to address such political questions openly and visibly.
Many researchers and science-policy organizations are used to relegating this under the safety of their ‘independent status’ and ‘neutrality’, but for science-policy organizations to become transformative, they also need to transform their own way of working (Maas, 2023). In this workshop, we would like to think through opportunities for transforming institutionalized science-policy relations, especially in the context of just transformative change for nature-inclusive societies. Specifically, we think there are three questions many science-policy organizations are facing that can inform such opportunities:
Dealing with multi-level policymaking for transformative change. Transformative change depends on policy on many different and intertwined levels of government. This also means science-policy organizations are active on scales spanning from the very local to the very global. But how can they practically link across national, European, and international levels?
Dealing with societal pluralism. Transformative change asks for engagement by many kinds of actors. Arguably, there is a productive potential in the societal pluralism this entails, a potential which can be stimulated by making visible what norms and values are implied in different perspectives on transformative change. But how can science-policy organizations meaningfully include and accommodate such pluralism in their work?
Dealing with ossified scientific institutions and rigidity in knowledge (co)production. There is a strong inertia in institutionalized ways of working. But who benefits from enduring rigidity, and how to recognize and grasp opportunities for transforming science-policy organizations from ‘within’?
