To Örebro University

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.

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.

“The Swedish forestry model” refers to the forest regime that evolved following the 1993 revision of the Swedish Forestry Act. It is key to Swedish forest politics and used to capture the essence of a sustainable way of managing forests. However, the ideas, institutions and practices comprising the model have not been comprehensively analyzed previously. Addressing this knowledge gap,we use frame analysis and a Pathways approach to investigate the underlying governance model, focusing on the way policy problems are addressed, goals, implementation procedures, outcomes and the resulting pathways to sustainability.Wesuggest that the institutionally embedded response to pressing sustainability challenges and increasing demands is expansion, inclusion and integration: more of everything. The more-of-everything pathway is influenced by ideas of ecological modernization and the optimistic view that existing resources can be increased. Our findings suggest that in effect it prioritizes the economic dimension of sustainability. While broadening out policy formulation it closes down the range of alternative outputs, a shortcoming that hampers its capacity to respond to current sustainability challenges. Consequently, there is a need for a broad public debate regarding not only the role of forests in future society, but also the operationalization of sustainable development.

The main achievements of the debates on deliberative democracy and democratised science are investigated in order to analyse the reasons, meanings and prospects for a democratisation of global environmental policy. A deliberative systems approach, which emphasises the need to explore how processes in societal spheres interact to shape the deliberative qualities of the system as a whole, is adopted. Although science plays a key role in this, its potential to enhance deliberative capacity has hardly been addressed in deliberative theories. The democratisation of science has potential to contribute to the democratisation of global environmental policy, in that it also shapes the potential of deliberative arrangements in the policy sphere. Deliberative arrangements within the policy sphere may stimulate the democratisation of science to different degrees.

The gap between what is known about climate change and the action taken to prevent it has instigated debates around how to reconfigure global environmental assessment organizations to better inform and foster transformative change. One recurring request involves the need for a broader and better inclusion of social scientific knowledge. However, despite such intentions, the inclusion of social scientific research remains limited. How can this be explained? Through a detailed analysis of the IPCC special report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, this article reveals how the institutional conditions of global environmental assessments condition and shape what knowledge is included in these assessments, as well as how this knowledge is represented. It discusses how and why the understanding of social processes and structures remains underdeveloped, despite such knowledge being critical for transformative change. To integrate such knowledge into environmental assessments would require substantial changes to the current epistemic infrastructure used by global environmental assessments. It is therefore time to think beyond global environmental assessments and consider complementary institutional science–policy relations through which social scientific research can assist policy actions to promote deep transformative change.

This article explores the arguments for expanding deliberation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scrutinizes their implications for the deliberative capacity of global environmental governance (GEG). An analysis of the IPCC is presented that builds on a systematic literature review and thus a broad set of scientific debates concerning the IPCC. Based on this analysis, two different paths are outlined, one moderate and one radical; these paths ascribe different democratizing functions to the IPCC and rely on different epistemologies. The moderate path emphasizes decision capacity, whereas the radical path strives to create deliberative space and to identify the value inherent in different claims. It is argued that the IPCC cannot accommodate the aspirations of these different pathways in a single assessment. Parallel assessments must be developed in complementary subject areas with different science-policy relations.

This study examines domestic media’s coverage of foreign wildfires from a climate change perspective. It explores Swedish newspapers’ coverage of wildfires in Australia, the Mediterranean region and the USA during a three-year period (February 2013–March 2016), focusing on how and to what extent climate change is viewed as an underlying cause. A central result is that climate change is mentioned far more often in the case of Australian wildfires than of fires in the other two regions. Another finding is that the climate change issue became more prominent after a severe domestic wildfire in 2014. These observations are also examined qualitatively through a combined frame and discourse study where the importance of foreign news values, the use of foreign sources, cultural proximity/distance, and domestication procedures are analyzed. In conclusion, foreign, domestic, and cultural factors in climate change reporting in relation to extreme events are further discussed.

Continued unsustainability and surpassed planetary boundaries require not only scientific and technological advances, but deep and enduring social and cultural changes. The purpose of this article is to contribute a theoretical approach to understand conditions and constraints for societal change towards sustainable development. In order to break with unsustainable norms, habits, practices, and structures, there is a need for learning for transformation, not only adaption. Based on a critical literature review within the field of learning for sustainable development, our approach is a development of the concept of transformative learning, by integrating three additional dimensions—Institutional Structures, Social Practices, and Conflict Perspectives. This approach acknowledges conflicts on macro, meso, and micro levels, as well as structural and cultural constraints. It contends that transformative learning is processual, interactional, long-term, and cumbersome. It takes place within existing institutions and social practices, while also transcending them. The article adopts an interdisciplinary social science perspective that acknowledges the importance of transformative learning in order for communities, organizations, and individuals to be able to deal with global sustainability problems, acknowledging the societal and personal conflicts involved in such transformation.

Reflexivity and its counterpart— anti-reflexivity— are key concepts in environmental sociology. Reflexivity and similar concepts are presented as means for taking constructive steps towards sustainability in face of the often wicked nature (complex, uncertain, dynamic, value-laden, dilemmatic, ambivalent) of socio-ecological problems and risks. Anti-reflexivity is the suppressing or resisting of reflexivity. This entry discusses definitions of reflexivity, anti-reflexivity and related concepts based on key scholarly work in environmental sociology. From this field of research, reflexivity— or its absence/resistance— is discussed with regards to the system or macro level (society at large, state apparatus, the scientific field or general discourses in the public sphere), the process level (governance networks, decision-making processes), or at the level of individual and collective choices of action (consumption/lifestyle choices, social movements).

Reflexivity is a central concept in environmental sociology, as in environmental social science in general. The concept is often connected to topics such as modernity, governance, expertise, and consumption. Reflexivity is presented as a means for taking constructive steps towards sustainability as it recognizes complexity, uncertainty, dilemmas, and ambivalence. Critical discussion of the conceptual meaning and usage of reflexivity is therefore needed. Is it a useful theoretical concept for understanding various sustainability issues? Is ‘more reflexivity’ relevant and useful advice that environmental sociologists can give in communicating with other disciplines, policymakers, and practitioners? This article explores the conceptual meaning of reflexivity and assesses its relevance for environmental sociology. In particular, it reviews its usages in three research fields; expertise, governance, and citizen-consumers. The paper furthermore discusses the spatial and temporal boundaries of reflexivity. It concludes by discussing how the concept can be a useful analytical concept in environmental sociology, at the same time as it warns against an exaggerated and unreflexive use of the concept.

On 17 to 19th October 2017, twenty-four academics and practitioners with diverse inter- and transdisciplinary experiences gathered for a workshop to collectively reflect on IPBES’ work and performance. The workshop was held at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig. The workshop and this report represent an effort to proactively contribute to IPBES’ ongoing (external) review process. The external review process opens up a window of opportunity towards re-thinking the very purpose of IPBES and identifying new pathways to live up to its initial ambitions, such as to move beyond assessments. The workshop identified a spectrum of potential opportunities, provided visions for the future work of IPBES, and collected insights into how to cope with them. While the workshop focussed on identifying future challenges and possible solutions, all participants underlined the great achievements that IPBES has already accomplished. This report provides a synthesis of the workshop discussions. The main recommendations for the external review were:

 - The external review should seize the opportunity to establish itself in a responsive and future-oriented way so that it not only assesses past performance but also facilitates learning and identifies new pathways for IPBES. It is important that the focus of the review is not just on the extent to which IPBES has fulfilled its ambitions but also on the efficiency with which it has done this, and on the potential unintended effects of decisions.

 - For IPBES to achieve its initial ambitions, strengthening the (mainly global-scale) scientific knowledge base behind assessments is necessary but not yet sufficient. To meet its broader set of goals, it is required to pay critical attention to all aspects of policy support, knowledge generation and capacity-building, including the meaningful participation of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities and the incorporation of local and indigenous knowledge. This will require building synergies between knowledge systems, promoting the engagement of the social sciences and humanities, and addressing current challenges in the nomination and selection procedures for the identification of experts.

 - The external review also opens up space to identify a full range of alternative options and choices that are available when reforming IPBES. The review should engage in real-world dialogues and liaise closely with partners from research, policy and practice as well as with national platforms and local actors.

Inputs of anthropogenic mercury (Hg) to the environment have led to accumulation of Hg in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, contributing to fish Hg concentrations well above the European Union standards in large parts of Fennoscandia. Forestry operations have been reported to increase the concentrations and loads of Hg to surface waters by mobilizing Hg from the soil. This summary of available forestry effect studies reveals considerable variation in treatment effects on total Hg (THg) and methylmercury (MeHg) at different sites, varying from no effect up to manifold concentration increases, especially for the bioavailable MeHg fraction. Since Hg biomagnification depends on trophic structures, forestry impacts on nutrient flows will also influence the Hg in fish. From this, we conclude that recommendations for best management practices in Swedish forestry operations are appropriate from the perspective of mercury contamination. However, the complexity of defining effective policies needs to be recognized.

The experience of public distrust towards science-based risk assessments and regulatory proposals have resulted in proposals for context-sensitive risk communication, transparency in decision processes, public inclusion in regulatory work and new contracts between science and citizens. This is the point of departure for this study; however, rather than focusing on strategies to achieve public trust, this study focuses on the very meaning of trust, that is, its prerequisites and character. By drawing on recent discussions in science and technology studies and social psychology, a perspective is elaborated upon that concerns the relational and emotional characteristics of trust. It is argued that trust is a modality of action motivated by the ego’s emotional apprehension of a certain form of double-confidence, that is, the ego’s confidence in the outer world or the future actions of the alter ego and the ego’s confidence in its own understanding and judgment of the outer world or the alter ego. This means that trust does not develop through information and the uptake of knowledge but through active involvement and sense-making.

A growing number of expert organizations aim to provide knowledge for global environmental policy-making. Recently, there have also been explicit calls for stakeholder engagement at the global level to make scientific knowledge relevant and usable on the ground. The newly established Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is one of the first international expert organizations to have systematically developed a strategy for stakeholder engagement in its own right. In this article, we analyze the emergence of this strategy. Employing the concept “politics of legitimation,” we examine how and for what reasons stakeholder engagement was introduced, justified, and finally endorsed, as well as its effects. The article explores the process of institutionalizing stakeholder engagement, as well as reconstructing the contestation of the operative norms (membership, tasks, and accountability) regulating the rules for this engagement. We conclude by discussing the broader importance of the findings for IPBES, as well as for international expert organizations in general.

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion on the potential for a shift away from modernistic or technocratic approaches to decisionmaking on risk towards more open, inclusive, and deliberative approaches. The authors consider (a) the reasons why some companies have taken the first step in this transition by exploring the potential of more open and communicative approaches to environmental risk management, and (b) the effects that opening up can have, particularly on perceived levels of trust between corporations and stakeholders on matters relating to environmental risk. For the companies surveyed, the nature of their activities, the significance of formative events, and the failure of more traditional forms of risk communication to reduce conflict and to build trust amongst stakeholders have impelled them to experiment with new approaches to risk communication. It is found that, in the short term, such experiments are seen by managers to have had mixed effects: in contexts where trust had already been lost, open engagement can lead to an initial deterioration in relations between companies and stakeholders. However, it is also argued that in the longer term trust can be built through such open engagements. It is suggested, therefore, that opening up and engaging on matters relating to environmental risk may lead to a ‘j-curve effect’, with an initial deterioration in levels of trust being followed by a gradual improvement in levels of credibility and shared understanding over time.

This paper analyses the political process for handling an outbreak of an insect causing human allergic reactions. In the southern part of the Swedish island Gotland in the Baltic Sea, an outbreak of the northern pine processionary moth, Thaumetopoea pinivora,

has occurred. With regard to the human nuisance and long-term effects on the tourist industry, demands have been raised for intervention to reduce and control the insect population. At the same time, there have been warnings against treating the insect

population because there are knowledge gaps concerning the wider ecological consequences, including effects on biodiversity. This paper analyses the political process and its problemsolving

efforts. Of particular interest is how it dealt with the issue of uncertainty. It was found that the uncertainty associated with the issue hindered the development of a shared understanding of the problem and a possible solution. There seems to be a growing need in society to develop the institutional capacity to handle complex issues that cross different sectors, regulatory frameworks and policy targets.

The international regulation of transboundary air pollution in Europe is often considered a success story. The success is usually explained by a close relationship between scientists and policy makers. When looking into other international environmental areas (e.g. climate change, marine pollution), there have generally been larger obstacles in the science-policy relationships. Social scientists have for many years studied the international policy development processes for air pollution and pointed to certain factors of importance in for its success. There have however seldom been opportunities for social scientists, policy makers and scientists to discuss together the interrelations between science and policy in the area.

In order to further evaluate the science policy interactions and discuss possibilities for social scientists to play a role in the further development of air pollution strategies a workshop was organised in Gothenburg, Sweden 5-7 October 2005. The workshop was organised by the Swedish ASTA programme and the EU Network of Excellence ACCENT in collaboration with the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution and the EU CAFE initiative. Approximately 35 participants from 12 countries representing Europe, North America and Japan attended at the workshop. This report compiles the outcome of the workshop. The report is also available at http://asta.ivl.se/

Människor är både olika och söker umgänge på olika sätt. Skillnader i kultur och behov kräver variation i stadsplaneringen och olika stadsformer. Detta för att främja det spontana, offentliga liv, som behövs för att motverka xenofobin.

In southern Gotland in the Baltic Sea, a moth outbreak has caused human nuisance & possible long-term effects on the tourist industry, prompting demands for intervention to reduce the insect population. At the same time, there have been warnings concerning the broader ecological consequences of spraying, not least for biodiversity. Through an interview study using a sample of local residents, their deliberations on the spraying are analyzed. In particular, the analysis focuses on the lay understanding of the situation & how this relates to a scientific understanding of it, its causes, & possible remedies. The study focuses on the narratives residents created to make sense of the situation and guide action, on the risks they associated with different action options, & on how these narratives relate to the expert view of the problem. The analysis shows that trust & distrust should not be seen as dichotomous, but must be more differentiated. Simultaneously, as the residents criticize specific knowledge claims & specific experts, their trust in science can strengthen. Furthermore, the analysis shows that citizen knowledge does not merely passively reflect science. Instead, citizens create meaning and construct knowledge by organizing personal experience and articulated knowledge claims into coherent narratives.

The basis for this article is the growing interest in understanding how the public evaluates risk issues. The empirical case consists of an interview study of residents in an area that has experienced an outbreak of moths that has become a nuisance to humans. The study focuses on the narratives created by the residents to make sense of the situation, the risks they associated with regulatory options, and how these narratives relate to expert opinions of the problem. The analysis shows that the residents criticize specific experts and knowledge claims. This is done, however, without questioning science as such; there is still a belief among the residents that science is an institution that generally produces valid knowledge. The analysis also shows that citizen knowledge does not merely passively reflect science. Instead, citizens create meaning and construct knowledge by organizing personal experiences and knowledge claims into coherent narratives.

For many countries, the IUCN Red List of threatened species is a central instrument in their work to counteract loss of biodiversity. This article analyzes the development of the Red List categories and criteria, how these categories and criteria are used in the construction of global, national, and regional red lists, and how the red lists are employed in policy work. A central finding of the article is that this mix of actors implies many different forms of boundary work. This article also finds that the Red List functions as a portable representation, that is, a context-independent instrument to represent nature. A third finding is that the Red List functions as a link between experts and policy makers. Thus, the Red List is best understood as a boundary object and hybrid practice where the credibility of scientific assessment and a specific policy is mutually strengthened

Expert organizations are often described as facilitators of the interactions between science and policy. In managing this boundary, they must also manage other boundaries, such as those between different knowledge systems and between different categories of actors. However, how this intersectional boundary work is performed, and what it implies, is still unexplored territory. Focusing on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this study contributes knowledge on the intersectionality of boundary work and how it influences the production of global policy-relevant knowledge. This is done by examining how IPBES socializes junior experts to become senior experts. This socialization process makes a number of norms and ideals visible and enables an analysis of how the know- how of boundary work is passed forward from one generation of experts to the next. The study analyzes three boundaries: between senior and junior experts, between science and policy, and between scientific knowledge and indigenous and local knowledge. The findings show how intersectional boundary work is crucial in the creation of expert organizations and policy-relevant knowledge. In the case of IPBES, this study shows how the institutionalization of the organization unintentionally has created restrictions for the boundary work between different knowledge systems.

The concept boundary organization has been introduced to identify and explain a specific way of organizing the interface between science and policy. Although the original meaning of the concept has been criticized, the term has come to be frequently used in studies of knowledge transfer and science-policy relations. This usage constitutes the reason for this paper, which investigates how the concept of boundary organization has come to be used and defined and explores its contribution to the discussion of the organization of the science-policy interplay. The analysis finds that despite its spread and usage, the concept boundary organization does not refer to any specific form of organization and does not per se give any guidance about how to organize science-policy interplay. Instead, boundary organization is mainly used as an empirical label when studying the governance of expertise and the management of science-policy interfaces. This finding is also true for studies of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which describe that organization as a boundary organization without saying anything about what that label means in terms of institutional design and practical implications. However, to label an organization as a boundary organization nevertheless works performatively; it shapes an organization’s identity, may provide legitimacy, and can also stabilize the interactions between it and other organizations. Therefore, boundary organization is an important concept, but primarily as a way to facilitate interaction. Thus, the focus of research should be on analyzing how the concept is used and what its implications are for the organization studied.

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.

What role do organizational preconditions play in the constitution of expertise? This is the guiding question for this paper, which studies how expertise is shaped in the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). By organizing the world’s experts on biodiversity, IPBES sets out to produce policy-relevant knowledge. However, in contrast to many other international expert bodies such as the IPCC, IPBES assesses not only scientific knowledge, but also other forms of knowledge, including indigenous and local knowledge. In light of IPBES’s ambition to become an epistemic authority by synthesizing heterogeneous knowledge forms, it is of great interest to investigate how this expertise is constructed. What does ‘expertise’ mean for IPBES, and how are experts selected? Based on documents studies, this study explores the organizational structure through which IPBES assesses and selects experts. The analysis finds that the construction of expertise involves scientific as well as political dimensions. In the conclusions, problems are raised that are related to the outcome of this process and may threaten the epistemic authority of IPBES.

Crisis, by its very nature, requires decisive intervention. However, important questions can be obscured by the very immediacy of the crisis condition.  What is the nature of the crisis? How it is defined (and by whom)?  And, subsequently, what forms of knowledge are deemed legitimate and authoritative for informing interventions?  As we see in the current pandemic, there is a desire for immediate answers and solutions during periods of uncertainty. Policymakers and publics grasp for techno-scientific solutions, as though the technical nature of the crisis is self-evident. What is often obscured by this impulse is the contingent, conjunctural and ultimately social nature of these crises.  The danger here is that by focussing on immediate technical goals, unanticipated secondary effects are produced.  These either exacerbate the existing crisis or else produce subsequent further crises.  Equally, these technical goals can conceal the varied, and often unjust, distribution of risk exposure and resources and capacities for mitigation present within and between societies.  These socio-political factors all have important functions in determining the effectiveness of interventions. As with climate change, the unfolding response to the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of broadening the knowledge base beyond technical considerations.  Only by including social scientific knowledge is it possible to understand the social nature of the crises we face.  Only then is it possible to develop effective, just and legitimate responses.

This paper explores to what extent and in what ways conceptual innovations matter for biodiversity governance. A three-step analysis is employed, starting with identifying theoretical insights on how concepts matter for transformative change. These insights provide a lens for examining the academic debate on the Ecosystem Services concept and for identifying critical conceptual challenges related to transformative change. Finally, how the concept is used and valued in policy practice is explored through an empirical study of policy practitioners in Sweden. Based on this investigation we conclude that the ES concept holds important but restricted properties for transformative change. The ES concept provides new meanings in the form of economic valuation of nature, but these remain highly contested and difficult to practice; ES function as a boundary object, but poorly integrates social analysis and, in practice engages professionals, rather than resulting in more inclusive public participation; and ES function performatively by reflecting a technocratic ideal and raising awareness rather than targeting fundamental political challenges. Finally, the paper returns to the general questions of how conceptual innovations can generate transformative change and argues that in the continued work of conceptually developing the Nature’s Contribution to People, researchers and practitioners need to pay close attention to interpretive frames, political dimensions, and institutional structures, necessitating a strong role for social analysis in this process of conceptual innovation.

Ecosystem services (ES) is an important approach to biodiversity protection in political rhetoric and policy practice, but it is also highly contested. This paper analyzes the introduction of ES in Swedish environmental policy and how it is contested by key stakeholders, and discusses its implications for biodiversity governance. The results show that although ES is widely accepted on an abstract and conceptual level, critical features and functions are highly contested. These primarily concern the valuation of nature, and the appropriateness of different policy instruments and institutional structures. The paper concludes that while the controversy surrounding ES fills an important role by reinvigorating debate and stimulating reflections on biodiversity loss, it also illustrates how ES is used to further particular values and beliefs and to challenge traditional biodiversity-protecting strategies. Understanding these policy controversies is central to addressing the challenges of transforming the promises of ES into practical policies. 

In 2004, Science published a study on organic contaminants in farmed salmon. The study had a clear normative message and worked strategically and successfully to gain worldwide media attention. In this article, we investigate global media coverage of the study. The varying types of attention and different framings of selected national broadsheets in 14 countries are analysed. (Framing is where a complex and often uncertain reality is simplified in order to support a specific understanding of the issue and/or push an agenda.) The results show that even if the scientists and the sponsor of the study had a clear ambition to publicize and disseminate their results and normative proposals to the wider society, the newspapers did not act as a passive medium for distributing the original message. Instead, diverging understandings and framings were developed. By way of conclusion, it is stated that ambitious strategies for attracting media attention may be successful in terms of media coverage; this does not, however, mean that the message is passively transmitted. The national context and the logic of media cause issues to be framed in specific ways with the aim of telling stories and catching the attention of the reader.

Today the certainties of modernity are dissolving and there is little guidance on how to act. In late modernity, individuals and organisations are forced to take standpoints and make choices on the basis of uncertain knowledge and diverse views. It is argued that we therefore often are confronted with dilemmas. In this article, the concept of dilemma is presented as a way to understand and analyse processes of sense-making and decision-making by contemporary institutions and people. With reference to various current meanings, the concept of dilemma is elaborated and a definition is proposed that encompasses both the cognitive-emotional and the socio-cultural side of dilemma. Emphasising this duality, a research approach is suggested for empirically analysing the multidimensional dilemmas people and institutions are confronted with in late modernity. By way of conclusion, it is stated that the challenge is to not only acknowledge dilemmas, but to use them as means for opening up spaces where stakeholders can deliberate upon desirable futures.

The term “biodiversity” is often used to describe phenomena of nature, which can be studied without a reference to the socially constructed, evaluative, or indeed normative contexts. In our paper, we challenge this conception by focusing particularly on methodological aspects of biodiversity research. We thereby engage with the idea of interdisciplinary biodiversity research as a scientific approach directed at the recognition and management of contemporary society in its ecological embedding. By doing this, we explore how research on and assessments of biodiversity can be enhanced if meaning, aspiration, desires, and related aspects of agency are methodically taken into account. In six sections, we substantiate our claim that the discourse on biodiversity (including the IPBES (Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) debate) is incomplete without contributions from the social sciences and humanities. In the introduction, a brief overview of biodiversity’s conceptual history is provided showing that “biodiversity” is a lexical invention intended to create a strong political momentum. However, that does not impede its usability as a research concept. Section 2 examines the origins of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) by way of sociological discourse analysis. Subsequently, it proposes a matrix as a means to structure the ambiguities and tensions inherent in the CBD. The matrix reemphasizes our main thesis regarding the need to bring social and ethical expertise to the biodiversity discourse. In Section 3, we offer a brief sketch of the different methods of the natural and social sciences as well as ethics. This lays the groundwork for our Section 4, which explains and illustrates what social sciences and ethics can contribute to biodiversity research. Section 5 turns from research to politics and argues that biodiversity governance necessitates deliberative discourses in which participation of lay people plays an important role. Section 6 provides our conclusions.

The impacts of extreme weather events, causing severe storms and wildfires, cascade across administrative borders within a country, challenging the steering capacity of governance networks at different political scales. This paper examines how accountability and risk were constructed and negotiated in the aftermath of Sweden’s largest wildfire. It draws on results from an interview study with executives of organizations and landowners involved, and an analysis of government reports about the wildfire’s cause and consequences. Although the fire was human-caused, public administrative bodies paid considerable attention to the local emergency services and their poor handling of the wildfire, caused by lack of knowledge of forest fire behavior. The study confirms many of the challenges associated with governance networks. It finds that issues about who to hold accountable, in what forum and for what issue are not fully addressed, being overwhelmed by demands for better knowledge of forest fire prevention and improved coordination and collaboration. To conclude, the paper calls for a better-informed public administration, forest sector and interrelated networks that take responsibility for their actions or lack thereof.

Managed forests can play an important role in climate change mitigation due to their capacity to sequester carbon. However, it has proven difficult to harness their full potential for climate change mitigation. Managed forests are often referred to as socio-ecological systems as the human dimension is an integral part of the system. When attempting to change systems that are influenced by factors such as collective knowledge, social organization, understanding of the situation and values represented in society, initial intentions often shift due to the complexity of political, social and scientific interactions. Currently, the scientific literature is dispersed over the different factors related to the socio-ecological system. To examine the level of dispersion and to obtain a holistic view, we review climate change mitigation in the context of Swedish forest research. We introduce a heuristic framework to understand decision-making connected to climate change mitigation. We apply our framework to two themes which span different dimensions in the socio-ecological system: carbon accounting and bioenergy. A key finding in the literature was the perception that current uncertainties regarding the reliability of different methods of carbon accounting inhibits international agreement on the use of forests for climate change mitigation. This feeds into a strategic obstacle affecting the willingness of individual countries to implement forest-related carbon emission reduction policies. Decisions on the utilization of forests for bioenergy are impeded by a lack of knowledge regarding the resultant biophysical and social consequences. This interacts negatively with the development of institutional incentives regarding the production of bioenergy using forest products. Normative disagreement about acceptable forest use further affects these scientific discussions and therefore is an over-arching influence on decision-making. With our framework, we capture this complexity and make obstacles to decision-making more transparent to enable their more effective resolution. We have identified the main research areas concerned with the use of managed forest in climate change mitigation and the obstacles that are connected to decision making.

Within sustainability development paradigms, state governance is considered important in interventions to address risks produced by the industrial society. However, there is largely a lack of understanding, especially in the Global South, about the nature and workings of the governance institutions necessary to tackle risks effectively. Reflexive governance, as a new mode of governance, has been developed as a way to be more inclusive and more reflexive and respond to complex risks. Conversely, there is limited scholarly work that has examined the theoretical and empirical foundations of this governance approach, especially how it may unfold in the Global South. This paper explores the conditions and constrains for reflexive governance in a particular case: that of the South Durban Industrial Basin. South Durban is one of the most polluted regions in southern Africa and has been the most active industrial site of contention between local residents and industry and government during apartheid and into the new democracy. Empirical analysis found a number of constrains involved in enabling reflexive governance. It also found that a close alliance between government and industry to promote economic development has overshadowed social and environmental protection. Reflexive governance practitioners need to be cognisant of its applicability across diverse geographic settings and beyond western notions of reflexive governance.

Although the significance of scientific expertise is often proposed and empirically illustrated in academic literature, it is still unclear how environmental expertise becomes authoritative, and how its legitimacy can be challenged. In order to understand the interplay between scientific expertise and civil society engagement, this paper examines how industrial scientific expertise has worked with surrounding communities and civil society to inform scientific decisions, and for the co-creation of scientific knowledge formations. A particular case is analysed, that of the South Durban Industrial Basin in KwaZulu-Natal. This area comprises a mixed use of residential areas juxtaposed with heavy industries. Scientific expertise, especially within the industrial sectors, is therefore important in the prevention, alleviation and management of risks to residents, society and the environment. The study finds that there is poor engagement between scientific expertise with communities and civil society, not least when it comes to environmental issues. A reason for this is poor governance, enforcement and leadership with an overriding objective of industrial expansion for economic development by both government and industry. Another reason is that, with a few exceptions, the communities have mainly been concerned about socio-economic issues. This has resulted in a double bind, where scientific expertise and government have not shared environmental information with civil society at the same as the civil society, has not on the whole requested it.

Medierna rapporterar dagligen om våldsbrott och människors otrygghet att vistas i stadsrummet. Frågan om skapandet av trygga och säkra städer fått en allt högre prioritet bland såväl offentliga som privata aktörer. Det ställs krav på ordning och säkerhet, till exempel genom fler poliser och ordningsvakter, starkare social kontroll och kameraövervakning av tunnlar och allmänna platser. Säkerhetstänkandet har spridit sig i samhället, detta trots att brottsstatistiken inte visar på någon ökad brottslighet. Istället pekar många forskare på att vi håller på att utveckla en rädslokultur i samhället, där staden starkt förknippas med brott, våld och otrygghet, våld. En rädslokultur som hotar stadens integrerande funktioner. Bland annat är olika typer av segregation och utanförskap ett stort hot mot stadens kvaliteter: det som kortsiktigt kan skapa individuell trygghet kan långsiktigt leda till kollektiv otrygghet.

Denna situation utgör utgångspunkt för denna text som diskuterar hur en stad samtidigt kan vara öppen och trygg, innehålla såväl fredliga som konfliktfyllda möten samt omfatta kulturell mångfald och gemensamma normer. Med hjälp av urbansociologiska anknytningar visar jag på hur staden historiskt sett kännetecknas av mångfald, hur konflikter och kontroverser har hanterats fredligt och hur en social ordning gradvis utvecklats där vi lärt oss samspela med människor som inte delar våra intressen och livsstil. Det största hotet mot staden är kanske inte en tilltagande brottslighet, utan vår rädsla för det okända och de avgränsade liv många av oss lever där vi endast möte de som är lika mig själv?