Why are social sciences and humanities needed in the works of IPBES? A systematic review of the literature

Abstract

Despite the increased attention, which has been given to the issue of involving knowledge and experts from the social sciences and humanities (SSH) into the products and works of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), little is known on what the expectations towards the involvement of SSH in IPBES actually are. The aim of this paper is to close this gap by identifying the range of possible SSH contributions to IPBES that are expected in the literature, and discuss the inherent challenges of and concrete ways to realize these contributions in the particular institutional setting of IPBES. We address these two points by: firstly, assessing the literature dealing with IPBES and building a typology describing the main ways in which contributions from SSH to IPBES have been conceived between 2006 and 2017. We discuss these expected contributions in light of broader debates on the role of SSH in nature conservation and analyse some of the blind spots and selectivities in the perception of how SSH could substantially contribute to the works of IPBES. Then, secondly, by looking at one particular example, economics and its use in the first thematic assessment on pollinators, pollination and food production, we will concretely illustrate how works in a given discipline could contribute in many different and unprecedented ways to the works of IPBES and help identify paths for enhancing the conservation of biodiversity. Finally, we propose a range of practical recommendations as to how to increase the contribution of SSH in the works of IPBES.

Keywords:

• IPBES
• social sciences
• interdisciplinarity
• biodiversity
• conservation
• science-policy interface

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the very helpful remarks and comments. Furthermore, we are very grateful to the Center for Science and Policy (CsaP), IDDRI and Sciences Po for supporting two workshops, where we could elaborate our ideas and present some of the accounts developed in this paper. Thank you very much also to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), who supports the work of Alice B.M. Vadrot with an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship (J-3704).

ORCID

Alice B. M. Vadrot http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6043-9846

Pierre-Marie Aubert http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0177-8127

Yann Laurans http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8504-8369

Notes

1

Lundquist et al. (2015) have also noticed difficulties in engaging the nature conservation community, which points to more general challenges of attracting experts from academia and practice into processes and products of intergovernmental assessment producing bodies, including awareness, access, capacity, personal resources, perceived benefits and personal values.

As Díaz et al. (2018) have pointed out, the early conceptual framework of IPBES and its emphasis on ecosystem services have also discouraged experts not in line with this approach from participating actively in IPBES activities.

2 The consultation process towards an International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (IMoSEB) was financed by the French government and ran from February 2006 to November 2007. “These consultations should be seized as a unique opportunity to move biodiversity science and governance forward and to find new ways of resolving the crisis” (Loreau et al. 2006, 246). In 2008 IMoSEB and the MA follow-up were merged and the negotiations on establishing IPBES started under the auspices of UNEP (Vadrot 2014b).

3 In many papers of our sample, knowledge gaps are identified where SSH research or SSH contributions to inter- and transdisciplinary research, are conceived as indispensable contributions for increasing the relevance and applicability of biodiversity research more generally.

4 The attention given to culture “in defining all links between people and nature” has recently be reinforced through the concept of “Nature’s contributions to people”, which “NCP elevates, emphasizes, and operationalizes the role of indigenous and local knowledge in understanding nature's contribution to people.” (Díaz et al. 2018, 270)

5 http://www.teebweb.org.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Austrian Science Fund [grant number J-3704].