Making the IPBES conceptual framework: a Rosetta Stone?

At the international level, institutions of global expert advice responsible for the provision of policy-relevant knowledge are in increasing demand. In particular, since the creation of the Assessment panel on Ozone in the early 1980s, global environmental assessments (GEAs) have become increasingly relied upon with the most prominent example being the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 1988) and, more recently, IPBES. Mitchell and colleagues define assessments “as formal efforts to assemble selected knowledge with a view toward making it publicly available in a form intended to be useful for decision making” (Mitchell et al., 2006: 3). Underlying these organizations is the assumption that scientific knowledge and experts have a key role to play to address pressing environmental issues such as climate change or biodiversity loss. In doing so, GEAs contribute to the definition of the “problem” at stake while delineating whose knowledge and expertise should be included in conducting assessments. Implicitly or explicitly, they operate with particular conceptual frameworks which play an important role in delineating what counts as useful or policy-relevant knowledge. According to its own terms, IPBES aims to “strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development”.1 In order to address this ambitious objective, IPBES has adopted a conceptual framework to be used in all functions of its mandate, currently organized around four functions including providing: (1) assessments, (2) policy-support tools, (3) knowledge generation and (4) capacity-building. Science-policy interface (SPI) research has been flourishing. SPIs are generally conceived as “social processes which encompass relations between scientists and other actors in the policy process, and which allow for exchanges, co-evolution, and joint construction of knowledge with the aim of enriching decision-making” (van den Hove, 2007: 824). Organizations such as IPBES, which contribute to the organization and management of science-policy relations are often referred to as “boundary organizations” (Guston, 2001). This concept underlines the hybrid nature of these institutions which bring together heterogeneous actors from both the “science” and “policy” worlds (e.g. scientists, experts, civil servants). It also emphasizes that boundaries between science and policy are not given in advance and builds on Gieryn’s concept of “boundary work” (1983) to scrutinize the ways in which such boundaries are institutionalized. It is therefore an invitation to study the specific ways in which knowledge is constructed as “policy-relevant”. Far from seeing science and policy as being linked with linear processes, literature on boundary organizations stresses that science can never unconditionally speak “truth to power” (e.g. Koetz et al., 2012). So far, much literature on GEAs has focused on analyzing how these organizations can achieve “credibility, relevance and legitimacy” (e.g. Clark et al., 2006; Farrell et al., 2001), and these criteria have become guiding objectives for IPBES. But what happens when a fundamental tension emerges about the content and the concepts themselves? This chapter presents the process leading to the development of the IPBES conceptual framework (CF) as well as the content of this framework. It focuses particularly on the main controversies that have characterized its development, between experts, governmental delegations, and other IPBES stakeholders. The goal of the IPBES CF is to provide a common heuristic tool to facilitate the participation of the diverse actors participating in IPBES and coordinate their activities. Yet the process has been animated by numerous debates and politico-epistemic struggles – the development of this framework was controversial and diverse discourses regarding how to articulate relations between nature and society were highlighted. In analyzing the role of discourses in policy processes, Vivien Schmidt distinguishes two kinds of discourses: coordinative discourse among “policy actors engaged in creating, arguing, bargaining, and reaching agreement on public policies in the policy sphere” and the “communicative” discourse “between political actors and the public engaged in presenting, contesting, deliberating, and legitimating such policies. Coordinative discourse led to discursive communities and communicative discourse is framed for the broader public” (Schmidt, 2008). In our case, IPBES CF can be conceived as material support for “coordinative discourse”, with the aim of creating a shared vision and acting as a standardization device. Following its adoption, IPBES CF was referred to as a “Rosetta Stone”, a metaphor which suggests that this framework can also serve as an instrument to perform a form of “communicative discourse”. In other words, beyond its coordinative role, IPBES CF is also used to construct the public identity of IPBES and ensure its credibility in front of multiple audiences. From a symbolic standpoint (e.g. Hilgartner, 2004), IPBES CF can therefore also be seen as an important element through which IPBES is attempting to achieve global credibility. The chapter is structured as follows: after a short description of IPBES CF, we briefly outline the history of previous conceptual frameworks used in biodiversity and ecosystem service assessments. We then focus on the genesis of IPBES CF, to highlight the tensions and controversies that arose during its emergence, from 2012 to late 2013. Finally, we conclude by discussing what might be expected from IPBES CF in light of the controversies that punctuated its development, and reflect on its innovative nature. The results presented in this chapter are based on a range of different primary and secondary sources. They include the results of a research program on ecosystem services which analyzed the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment process; an analysis of comments received on the first draft proposal for an IPBES CF; a range of interviews (10) conducted with experts who participated in the development of IPBES CF; participant observations collected during two IPBES plenary sessions (IPBES-1, January 2013; IPBES-2, December 2013) and United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) documents disseminated for those plenaries.