3.4 Knowledge co-production and science-policy engagement

Manjana Milkoreit, Miranda Boettcher, Sean Low, J. David Tàbara

Key Messages

  • To support effective governance of Earth system tipping processes, solutions-oriented, context-specific, actor-relevant and anticipatory knowledge is needed. Existing international knowledge institutions (e.g. the IPCC) need to be reformed to better support this kind of knowledge production.
  • Currently, knowledge gaps are biggest in the social sciences and humanities.
  • Learning challenges specific to tipping points are significant and could slow down or impede effective governance and public engagement.
  • Anticipatory knowledge and related capacities are weak and require time and resource-intensive knowledge co-production processes.

Recommendations

  • International organisations, national governments and science funders should foster urgent international research collaboration, especially in the social sciences and humanities, by promoting open, interdisciplinary, solutions-oriented, networked knowledge co-production systems focusing on ESTPs.
  • Regional and national science and knowledge institutions (e.g. national academies of science, EU foresight initiatives) should foster anticipatory capacity building with participatory co-production processes involving policymakers, scientists, other knowledge holders, artists and designers. 
  • Governments should provide funding to support knowledge co-production and anticipatory capacity building. Individual decision makers and governance institutions should dedicate more time and resources to these processes.
  • A core goal of knowledge co-production should be the translation of scientific knowledge regarding the temporal and spatial scales of ESTPs into actionable understanding of feasible options across scales and actor types.
  • The IPCC should develop a special report covering climate tipping points and elevate discussions of tipping points in future assessment cycles, including in summaries for policymakers.

Summary

Knowledge production and learning related to ESTPs face significant challenges, with implications for effective science-policy interactions. Scientific knowledge about ESTPs is increasingly reflected in IPCC assessment reports, but governance actors are not yet using this growing knowledge base sufficiently. Lack of awareness, misconceptions and learning challenges limit the demand for, and use of, existing scientific insights. At the same time, engagement with tipping points in the social sciences and humanities is lagging.

The knowledge needed to understand, assess and support governance efforts related to ESTPs in a polycentric setting must be solutions-oriented, context-specific and actor-relevant. Anticipatory knowledge and related capacities for making sense of and acting with regard to uncertain futures (e.g. complex systems thinking) are essential tools for decision makers. Currently dominant patterns of knowledge co-production and science-policy engagement do not foster learning and anticipatory capacity-building sufficiently to generate robust and actionable knowledge for policy. To effectively support governance efforts related to ESTPs across multiple scales, knowledge production should be inter and transdisciplinary, and increasingly participatory. Developing capacities for anticipation requires expanded use of methods like participatory scenario development, roleplay simulations and storytelling, which combine quantitative and qualitative data, foster participants’ ability to deal with uncertainty, and strengthen long-term agency.

Experiments with some of these approaches are currently taking place in global knowledge-generating institutions like the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). However, more profound changes to current science-policy interface institutions and processes will be needed to support effective decision making on ESTPs. The needed knowledge-production and capacity-building processes are more resource intensive and require more time (longer and more frequent engagement) than common science-policy interactions. They are also difficult to include in the scope of international institutions like the IPCC. Regional (e.g. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme) and national scientific organisations (e.g. national academies of science) and policy advisory bodies might be best suited to drive innovation and progress in this domain.

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