To Örebro University

The global community remains significantly off track in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), prompting calls for not only stronger political commitments but also more effective and credible expert guidance. This paper contributes to this discourse by examining a critical form of global environmental expertise: the conductof global environmental assessments. Such expertise has become a foundational component of the institutional architecture underpinning global sustainability governance. Focusing on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), one of the most prominent and widely recognized international expert bodies, this study examines the challenges that researchers face when synthesizing research findings and making them policyrelevant within the IPCC’s assessment work. The empirical material consists of an interview study (N = 18) conducted with experts involved in the IPCC, from its first assessment (1990) to the most recent one (2023). The data were analyzed thematically using NVivo.The analysis reveals four key internal challenges that the IPCC must address to enhanceits advisory capacity: epistemic hierarchies, leadership and management dynamics, the complexities of formulating recommendations, and inequities in recognition and reward systems. By identifying and analyzing these challenges, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions about the IPCC’s future development and offers broader insights into the evolving role of scientific expertise in global environmental governance.

This paper analyzes how the IPCC understands and addresses with risk and uncertainty. First, it discusses the IPCC’s formal and explicit view on how it understands, manages, and communicates risk and uncertainty in its knowledge assessments. This is done through an analysis of the documents that the IPCC has produced on the subject. The analysis reveals that the IPCC has an ambitious yet complicated system for identifying, assessing, and managing risk and uncertainty. The paper then explores how IPCC experts – researchers appointed by the IPCC to conduct its knowledge assessments – view this system and use it to determine risk and uncertainty. This is done through an interview study with IPCC experts. The analysis indicates that there are tensions in the way knowledge, uncertainty, and risk are viewed. Interviewees made limited reference to the IPCC’s formalized view of risk and uncertainty, but based on the little they did say, it appears to help them manage not only risk and uncertainty, but also internal disagreements and divergent research traditions. Finally, the paper draws conclusions about the challenges that the IPCC will face and need to address regarding risk and uncertainty.

This study explores the nature and significance of a crucial form of global environmental expertise: that which relates to conducting global environmental assessments with the aim of influencing decision-making. Drawing on the theory of expertise, which conceptualizes expertise as a social position defined by epistemic practice, this study focuses on expertise in the context of global environmental challenges—particularly relating to climate change and the IPCC—highlighting the expertise required to address this kind of complex and multifaceted issue. This type of expertise allows for a synthesis of the current state of environmental challenges, the proposal of options for action, and communication of these findings to decision-makers and society at large. This expertise shapes knowledge that is much broader than a single disciplinary field, encompassing both ecological and social dynamics, and allows for the development of recommendations for action. This study finds that such expertise embodies a distinct epistemic practice with four key characteristics that distinguish it from more narrowly defined forms of expertise and introduces the term “mega-expertise” to capture the character and position of this kind of expertise. This study concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of this form of expertise, considering its relationship to more traditional, disciplinary scientific expertise.

This article theorizes the role of sharing in the broader transformation of society toward sustainability. In a context where overconsumption prevails, adopting strategies that move away from reliance on private possessions and ownership and in the direction of more collective approaches, such as the sharing of goods, resources, and services, is crucial. We undertake an integrative literature review specifically predicated on a theoretical understanding of the social conditions for nonprofit sharing. It builds on a conceptual model of the social that is based on five facets: inner life, social relationships and interactions, socio-material arrangements, social stratification, and institutions. We stress that while digitalization and smart use of technology may facilitate the mainstreaming of some sharing practices, not least through market-based initiatives, there is a risk that these forms of commercialized sharing will only complement continued and increased consumption. Therefore, the decisive and urgent question is to foster a nonprofit sharing economy that also counteracts consumerism and overconsumption, and a prerequisite for this objective is to develop and support more noncommercial forms of sharing. Prioritizing the five facets of the social provides insights into the various opportunities, barriers, and challenges that organizers of nonprofit sharing face. These insights can be further tested in policy and practice and explored in future research.

Environmental expertise is a frequently used concept in environmental discussions and in environmental research. It is often seen as crucial for environmental policy-making and environmental discourses. Through its competence, authority and mandate, expertise offers guidance to organizations and individuals concerning how to understand, address and manage environmental issues. At the same time, expertise is often questioned; its capacity to deliver both trustworthy and relevant knowledge is contested. This entry discusses the meaning of expertise, both the social and epistemic base for becoming an expert and the importance it has. Environmental expertise is a key concept for environmental sociology but, at the same time, is a concept that needs to be further elaborated and studied.

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 discusses “academic housekeeping” undertaken within IPCC, understood as the work that is rarely made visible or rewarded, but is nevertheless essential to the success of the organization. It explores the conditions, motivations, and implications for individual researchers involved in the IPCC, with particular emphasis on the invisible, un(der)recognised and unrewarded work they engage in. The empirical material consists of aninterview study of researchers involved in the IPCC assessment work. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of unrewarded work for individual experts,expert organisations, and academic institutions.

Using the Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) as a lens, this study examines the making of risk communication in Swedish municipalities by comparing two central professions in this work, safety and communication. Sweden's decentralised responsibility for risk preparedness means that municipalities are given a central role in promoting increased preparedness among residents and local actors. However, there is little guidance on how to organise the work and how to coordinate between the different professions involved. Municipal officials are tasked with developing strategies to implement national policies, including conducting and communicating RVA. The study is comparing two central professions in Swedish municipalities' risk communication, safety, and communication, to analyse their views on central tasks and perceptions of their practice. The theoretical approach is based on risk communication and institutional theory, and the empirical material consists of an interview study with both safety and communication officers (N = 36). The findings reveal that while both professional logics are active in municipal risk communication, interactions, and negotiations between them are somewhat limited. The organisational structure of the RVA favours the logic of safety officers, which has implications for how risk communication is made in practice. The article concludes by discussing what effect this may have on preparedness.

In Sweden, municipalities and municipal planning are central to the government’s preparedness for climate-related risks, as municipalities are the organizations that will largely have to adapt to and prepare for climate change. However, there is little government guidance in the form of clearly formulated policies, policy objectives, and detailed regulations to support municipalities in this work. In practice, municipal officials are tasked with developing climate preparedness, including facilitating citizen awareness of the need to prepare for climate-related risks. By exploring the local level of Swedish public administration, which in practice has to deal with different and sometimes divergent understandings of a situation and who should manage it, the paper explores the implications of officials’ meaning-making about local risk governance. An exploratory approach to risk governance and meaning-making rationality is used to examine Swedish municipal officials’ views of citizens’ climate crisis preparedness and the motives and barriers they perceive the citizens to have in developing this preparedness. An interview study is conducted with 23 officials in 5 municipalities. Based on the results, the paper discusses the implications of the perception that citizens have no constructive role to play in the work to better prepare municipalities for climate change. The paper concludes by discussing how officials’ meaning-making rationality needs to be addressed in the development of robust climate preparedness.