Towards a reflexive turn in the governance of global environmental expertise the cases of the IPCC and the IPBES

The role and design of global expert organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs rethinking. Acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all model does not exist, we suggest a reflexive turn that implies treating the governance of expertise as a matter of political contestation

Who speaks for the future of Earth? How critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene

This paper asks how the social sciences can engage with the idea of the Anthropocene in productive ways. In response to this question we outline an interpretative research agenda that allows critical engagement with the Anthropocene as a socially and culturally bounded object with many possible meanings and political trajectories. In order to facilitate the kind of political mobilization required to meet the complex environmental challenges of our times, we argue that the social sciences should refrain from adjusting to standardized research agendas and templates. A more urgent analytical challenge lies in exposing, challenging and extending the ontological assumptions that inform how we make sense of and respond to a rapidly changing environment. By cultivating environmental research that opens up multiple interpretations of the Anthropocene, the social sciences can help to extend the realm of the possible for environmental politics

Three decades of climate mitigation: why haven't we bent the global emissions curve?

Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990. Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses—covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries—draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve. However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control. Synthesizing the various impediments to mitigation reveals how delivering on the commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement now requires an urgent and unprecedented transformation away from today's carbon- and energy-intensive development paradigm

Revisiting the politics of expertise in light of the Kyoto negotiations on land use change and forestry

  This paper examines the close links between knowledge-making authority and decision making authority in the multilateral negotiations on terrestrial sinks of greenhouse gases. Drawing upon social constructivist science studies and public sphere theories in international relations, the paper traces the communicative contexts in which state actors have struggled to bring meaning to the sink concept and hereby translated the production and validation of knowledge claims into political authority. In particular focus are instances of. epistemic chaos" when the lack of consensual knowledge and shared normative commitments has forced states to publicly interpret and justify what counts as credible carbon cycle expertise and good terrestrial carbon management. The empirical tracing of such justificatory arguments begins at the third conference of the parties (COP3) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto in 1997, and ends at COP 10 in Buenos Aires in 2004. Although scientific expertise emerges a central avenue for political bargaining in this negotiation process, the paper does not interpret expert politics as a mere reflection of material power and dominant state interests. Rather. when approaching authoritative knowledge as a product of social relations, the course and outcome of global climate governance appear more inclusive and open-ended.Original Publication:Eva Lövbrand, , Revisiting the politics of expertise in light of the Kyoto negotiations on land use change and forestry, 2009, Forest Policy and Economics, (11), 5-6, 404-412.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2008.08.007Copyright: Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam.http://www.elsevier.com

Pure science or policy involvement? Ambiguous boundary-work for Swedish carbon cycle science

In theory, the interaction between the worlds of environmental science and policy may seem straightforward. From a realm outside politics and power, scientists provide relevant knowledge about nature upon which informed policy decisions could be based. However, in reality this linear model tends to be replaced by a much more complex relationship where the distinction between facts and values, knowledge and interests is less clear cut. In this paper, I explore links between science, policy and power through an interview study conducted with Swedish carbon cycle scientists and government negotiators to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Drawing on a co-production model of science-policy interplay this paper addresses the implications of a mutually constitutive relationship between carbon cycle science and climate policy. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Run for Your Life : Embodied Environmental Story-telling and Citizenship on the Road to Paris

In December 2015 the United Nations held its Twenty-First climate change conference (COP21) in Paris. While political leaders convened to negotiate a new climate treaty, a diverse landscape of social movements, grassroots organizations, activists and artists assembled to mobilize public support for climate justice. In this paper we draw attention to one example of such non-traditional climate mobilization: Run for Your Life, organized by the Swedish theater company Riksteatern. Framed as a “climate performance,” this initiative enrolled thousands of people to run distances in a relay race for climate justice, starting in Arctic Sweden and arriving in Paris on the first day of COP21. Public events were organized along the way, and the entire race was video recorded and broadcasted online. When signing up, runners were asked to submit their own climate story. Drawing on this archive of personal stories, we examine how Run for Your Life mobilized citizen engagement for climate justice. By paying attention to the multiple ways in which climate change is storied into people's lives, we seek to understand why citizens decide to take climate action and which subject positions are available to them in the broader environmental drama. While the scripting of climate change as a planetary emergency perpetuated by global injustices serves an important function in the politics of climate change, we argue that it is in situated stories of environmental connection that climate change gains personal meaning. Here, kinship and solidarity are articulated, opening up for progressive social change