Learning from the Experiences of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Balancing Science and Policy to Enable Trustworthy Knowledge
Environmental Sociology Section, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden
Sustainability 2019, 11(23), 6533; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236533
Received: 11 October 2019
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Revised: 31 October 2019
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Accepted: 18 November 2019
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Published: 20 November 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Boundary Organizations & Sustainability)
To create a societal change towards a sustainable future, constructive relations between science and policy are of major importance. Boundary organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have come to play an important role in establishing such constructive relations. This study contributes to the development of empirically informed knowledge on the challenge of balancing different expectations for how the science–policy relation is to be constructed to create trustworthy knowledge and policy decisions, i.e., when to be what and to whom. This study revisits Climategate and uses the public debate on the IPCC’s credibility, legitimacy, and policy relevance that followed Climategate as an analytical window to explore how the IPCC balanced the science–policy relation in a trustworthy manner. The analysis is based on a document study. The study shows how different expectations on the science–policy relation coexist, and how these risks create a loss of trust, credibility, legitimacy, and policy relevance. Thus, for boundary organizations to have a chance to impact policy discussions, reflexivity about the present epistemic ideals and expectations on knowledge production is of major importance, and must be reflected in an organizational flexibility that is open to different strategies on how to connect science and policy in relation to different actors and phases of the knowledge production process.
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Keywords:
science-policy interface; IPCC; Climategate; boundary organization; landscape of tension; stage-management
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Gustafsson, K.M. Learning from the Experiences of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Balancing Science and Policy to Enable Trustworthy Knowledge. Sustainability 2019, 11, 6533. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236533
AMA Style
Gustafsson KM. Learning from the Experiences of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Balancing Science and Policy to Enable Trustworthy Knowledge. Sustainability. 2019; 11(23):6533. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236533
Chicago/Turabian StyleGustafsson, Karin M. 2019. "Learning from the Experiences of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Balancing Science and Policy to Enable Trustworthy Knowledge" Sustainability 11, no. 23: 6533. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236533
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