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Building better science-policy interfaces for international environmental governance: assessing potential within the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

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Abstract

This article addresses implementation failure in international environmental governance by considering how different institutional configurations for linking scientific and policy-making processes may help to improve implementation of policies set out in international environmental agreements. While institutional arrangements for interfacing scientific and policy-making processes are emerging as key elements in the structure of international environmental governance, formal understanding regarding their effectiveness is still limited. In an effort to advance that understanding, we propose that science-policy interfaces can be understood as institutions and that implementation failures in international environmental governance may be attributed, in part, to institutional mismatches (sic. Young in Institutions and environmental change: Principal findings, applications, and research, MIT Press, Cambridge 2008) associated with poor design of these institutions. In order to investigate this proposition, we employ three analytical categories—credibility, relevance and legitimacy, drawn from Cash et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci 100(14):8086–8091, (2003), to explore basic characteristics of the institutions proscribed under two approaches to institutional design, which we term linear and collaborative. We then proceed to take a closer look at institutional mismatches that may arise with the operationalisation of the soon to be established Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). We find that, while there are encouraging signs that institutions based on new agreements, such as the IPBES, have the potential to overcome many of the institutional mismatches we have identified, there remain substantial tensions between continuing reliance on the established linear approach and an emerging collaborative approach, which can be expected to continue undermining the credibility, relevance and legitimacy of these institutions, at least in the near future.

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Notes

  1. http://www.cbd.int/2010-target (accessed 24 Jan. 2010).

  2. We note that existence of an appropriate SPI does not ensure more effective environmental governance and are in agreement with van den Hove and Chabason (2009, p. 8) when they argue that, “while the existence of well-functioning SPIs is a necessary condition of biodiversity and ecosystem services governance, it is in no way a sufficient condition.”.

  3. The Busan Outcome is an international environmental governance agreement reached at the “Third ad hoc intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder meeting on an intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services”, which took place in Busan, Republic of Korea, 7–11 June 2010 [see http://www.unep.org/pdf/SMT_Agenda_Item_5-Busan_Outcome.pdf (accessed 26 Mar., 2011)] or Appendix 1 of this article. The terms of the Busan Outcome constitute the official, internationally negotiated basis upon which the operationalisation the IPBES will proceed. They have been endorsed by the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which met in Nagoya, Japan, 18–29 October 2010, in its Decision VI, concerning Agenda item 4.3 [see http://www.cbd.int/cop/cop-10/doc/advance-final-unedited-texts/advance-unedited-version-ipbes-en.doc (accessed 26 Mar. 2011)] and on that basis have been designated by the 65th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, in Assembly Resolution A/C.2/65/L.43, Item 19, p. 4, as the principles that should guide the establishment of the IPBES [see http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/N10/634/99/PDF/N1063499.pdf?OpenElement (accessed 26 Mar., 2011)].

  4. see http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/PDFs/ReportIEG100209.pdf (accessed 13 Feb. 2011).

  5. http://www.unep.org/environmentalgovernance/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=UQnLonMBYKQ%3D&tabid=341&language=en-US (accessed 13 Feb. 2011).

  6. See for example, Jasanoff (1990), Latour (2004), Nowotny et al. (2001), Pielke (2007), Funtowicz and Ravetz (1990), Kates et al. (2001), van den Hove (2007), Farrell (2005).

  7. This reform process was triggered by the 2000 Malmø Ministerial Declaration (UNEP 2000 Governing Council decision SS.VI/1; Annex), which called to review the requirements for a greatly strengthened institutional structure for international environmental governance, and the UN General Assembly resolution on the 2005 World Summit Outcome (General Assembly resolution 60/1 of September 2005, paragraph 169), setting the agenda for a UN system-wide coherence and reform.

  8. On this point see also Farrell (2008).

  9. A/RES/65/162, document A/65/436/Add.7; http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2010/ga11040.doc.htm (accessed 12 Feb. 2011).

  10. A first meeting was held in Putrajaya, Malaysia, in November 2008, a second meeting was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in October 2009, and a third meeting was held in Busan, South Korea, in June 2010. For more information on the IPBES process see http://www.ipbes.net.

  11. A French initiative that, during 2006 and 2007, prompted a series of studies, international and regional meetings, and statements exploring the needs, scope and options of an International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (http://www.imoseb.net); and the Millennium Assessment (MA) follow-up process, which was established as a response to the recommendations of two independent evaluations of the MA.

  12. Different to a systemic type of global change (such as climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion), where changes in the system at any locale can potentially affect its attributes anywhere else and may be caused by singular, distant and unevenly distributed human activities, global changes in biodiversity and ecosystems are for the most part cumulative in nature—an accumulation of changes that are local in domain which occur on a worldwide scale foremost as a consequence of widespread local human activity (e.g. economic development) (Turner et al. 1990).

  13. For example, Karlsson et al. (2007) find, when analysing scientific articles on environmental issues published in peer-reviewed journals that only thirteen per cent of these papers are based on research in ecosystems typical of the South, although such ecosystems account for more than half of the world’s land area.

Abbreviations

CBD:

Convention on Biological Diversity

IMOSEB:

International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity

IPBES:

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

IPCC:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

MA:

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

SBSTTA:

Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice

UN:

United Nations

UNEP:

United Nations Environment Programme

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Acknowledgments

For their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper and other support we thank Sybille van den Hove, Joan Martinez-Alier, Clark Miller, Chad Monfreda, Richard Norgaard, Roger Pielke and two anonymous reviewers. We also thank all who contributed to this paper through informal discussions, especially Martin Sharman, Ivar Baste, Nicolas Kosoy, Jerry Harrison and Peter Herkenrath.

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  1. Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Edifici C, Campus de Bellaterra, 08193, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

    Thomas Koetz & Katharine N. Farrell

  2. UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Monkstone House, City Road, Peterborough, PE1 1JY, UK

    Peter Bridgewater

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Koetz, T., Farrell, K.N. & Bridgewater, P. Building better science-policy interfaces for international environmental governance: assessing potential within the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Int Environ Agreements 12, 1–21 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-011-9152-z

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