To Örebro University

The concept and phenomena of biodiversity point at and argue for the interrelatedness of nature and society. That humans and society are a part of nature, and that nature is altered and threatened by the organization of modern society. When the concept of biodiversity was introduced within biology, it was argued that conservation biologists had the knowledge needed to conserve nature and reverse the destruction of biodiversity, thus they were described to hold the key to the future through the power of scientific knowledge. However, this argument forgets the social dimension of biodiversity. To conserve nature and reverse the destruction of biodiversity we also need knowledge of the social dimensions of biodiversity. Thus, environmental sociologists hold a complementary key to the future through the power of social scientific knowledge.

Research has shown a great distrust among youths toward political representatives, who they demand should “listen to the science.” However, less research has been done on youths’ own trust in science. This study explores and explains how youths who are environmentally active in two different environmental youth organizations relate to science in social media, whether they trust science, and how youths’ relation to science creates a discursive context in which they may develop their identity. The study uses the approach of discourse analysis to examine social media content published on Facebook by Fridays for Future Sweden and Fältbiologerna (the Swedish Field Biologists). The study shows (i) how subject positions for scientists and youth are created in relation to one another based on different expressions of youths’ trust in science and(ii) how environmental youth organizations, by identifying with science, make youths important actors in the discourse on climate change.

By studying the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as a community of practice and learning space for academic identity development, this paper studies the creation of environmental expertise within expert organizations. The study focuses its analysis on how IPBES through its fellowship programme contributes to academic identity development among early-career researchers, including providing new contextual references to understand what it means to engage in and balance biodiversity research, teaching, and service. The study is based on interviews with early-career researchers who participated in the production of the IPBES’s Global Assessment Report. The study shows how the IPBES fellowship programme, by introducing its fellows into the organization’s community of practice simultaneously, contributes to their academic identity development and the creation and maintenance of the boundaries of environmental expertise. The analysis further shows how the fellows develop an academic identity that unites two different communities of practice of equal importance for their understanding of what they are supposed to do as academics and widens their understanding of what it means to be a successful academic.

Organizations conducting global environmental assessments (GEAs) face the challenge of not only producing trustworthy and policy-relevant knowledge but also recruiting and training experts to conduct these GEAs. These experts must acquire the skills and competencies needed to produce knowledge assessments. By adopting an institutional approach, this paper explores IPBES’s epistemic infrastructure that aims to communicate and form the expertise that is needed to conduct its assessments. The empirical material consists of IPBES’s educational material, which teaches new experts how to perform the assessment. The analysis finds three crucial tasks that experts introduced in the assessments are expected to learn and perform. The paper concludes by discussing the broader importance of the findings that organizations that conduct GEAs are not passive intermediaries of knowledge but instead, through their epistemic infrastructure, generate ways to understand and navigate the world, both for those who create and those who receive the assessment report.

The Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has played an important role in assessing knowledge and raising awareness of biodiversity loss, and it is now also mandated to assess and support processes of transformative change. This perspective paper argues that the transformative change assessment entails key elements of transformative agency, which, along with the performative role of IPBES, makes it relevant to re-conceptualize the organization as a transformative agent. This new role will change IPBES and brings attention to risks related to undermining the credibility, relevance and legitimacy of IPBES, but it also brings opportunities for innovations that may strengthen the organization, including furthering public reasoning, acknowledging ambiguities and disagreements, ensuring scientific autonomy and balancing governmental power in the organization. As IPBES takes on the fundamental challenge of transformative change, critical scrutiny and democratic debate regarding its function as a political actor are more important than ever.

Almost three decades have passed since the publishing of the last, and only, special issue on the sociology-environmental nexus in this journal. Since then, few of the articles published in Sociologisk Forskning have addressed climate change at all or in any substantial way. This silence could be interpreted as a quiet statement that sociology does not need to concern itself with climate change. However, no such line of argument is suggested in this special issue “Climate crisis”, which (re)presents current Swedish sociological research on climate change. Many of the authors take a similar stance that (environmental) sociology should not shy away from the climate crisis and the societal project of transformative change. Rather, sociologic research should study empirical cases of climate transitions or transformations, and contribute suggestions, as well as explanations, to how such changes can be accelerated.

The IPCC has been successful at building its scientific authority, but it will require institutional reform for staying relevant to new and changing political contexts. Exploring a range of alternative future pathways for the IPCC can help guide crucial decisions about redefining its purpose.

This chapter argues that Early Career Researchers (ECRs) can contribute to the IPCC in two major ways. First, ECRs can contribute unique skills and competences to the assessment process. Second, ECRs can share the workload with senior researchers and thus enhance the quality of the assessment. By reviewing the IPCC’s Scholarship Programme and the role of Chapter Scientists, this chapter explores the potentials and challenges of introducing ECRs into the IPCC, and for the Panel to engage in capacity building to enhance the quality of the assessment. The review shows how the organisational setup of the Scholarship Programme and the Chapter Scientist role allows the IPCC to informally engage in capacity building without diverting from its mandate that does not include capacity building. Even so, ECRs remains an untapped source of expertise that, through active and strategic work, can contribute to the future development of the IPCC.

Med utgångspunkt i Ylva Ugglas arbeten om miljörepresentanten kommer denna text att vända den analytiska blicken mot miljösociologin, dvs. det fält inom vilket Ugglas studier har genomförts och som även är det fällt inom vilket författaren till denna text är verksam. Det analytiska fokuset förflyttas samtidigt från de enskilda aktörer som agerar som miljörepresentanter till miljösociologin som fält och till det eventuella ansvar och de möjligheter som detta fällt skapar i termer av miljörepresentation. Genom att låta analysen utvecklas till en form av disciplinär självreflektion ämnar texten bidra till att problematisera miljösociologins egen roll som representant för naturen samt diskutera vikten av mångfald inom denna representation, både för naturens och disciplinens framtids skull.