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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between scale and power in the context of scientific assessments. Scientific advisory boards and assessment processes strongly influence how the spatial dimensions of environmental problems are defined and thus how power relations are reconfigured accordingly across scales and levels. The question of scale along with its implications for policy-making has become a contested factor in the design of such assessment processes. In particular, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) has dealt explicitly with the issue of scale and how it is related to decision-making across institutional levels. Starting out from a critical reading of experiences with the MA, this paper analyses the design process of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in terms of how issues of scale are being addressed.
Section 2 presents the analytical framework. It combines the scholarly literature on critical state theory and science and technology studies. Both approaches challenge notions of scale as ‘natural’, ‘fixed’, bounded spatial units. They draw our attention to scalar configurations ‘in the making’ and highlight the need to take the relationships between knowledge and power seriously. The concluding section argues that the selection of scale is a matter of political contestation and normative choice rather than of purely scientific judgement. Using the MA and IPBES examples we show that although assessments are often seen as a means to achieve unbiased, rational solutions by ‘keeping politics out of policy’ (Haas, 1992), there is a need to better understand their inherent connection to the distribution of power and to implicit forms of delegation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors(s).
Notes
1 We do not claim here to bring greater clarity to the complex and sometimes muddied discussion among PoS scholars on how to operationalize the notion of scale (see Brenner, Citation2001, Citation2003). We would like to emphasize, however, that addressing the scalar dimension of social processes and the power relations involved in them is crucial to our understanding of such processes. For this reason, we refer to just two basic questions that lie at the heart of PoS.
2 In the case of biodiversity it is even questioned whether the problem itself is a global or a local one; this argument was also used to argue for a multi-scale approach in the making of IPBES (see Görg et al., Citation2007).
3 STS scholars stress that the expert bodies examined here, such as the MA and IPBES, are not part of a purely scientific network, but are rather hybrid organizations located at the interface between science and policy. As a hybrid, such a body is accountable to rather different communities in each of the named spheres and must maintain credibility and trust vis-à-vis them all—the scientists who make up its primary membership, the global policy community to which it provides input and not least the publics who are holding the scientists to account (Jasanoff, Citation2012).
5 http://www.biodiversity.de/index.php/de/biodiversitaet/biodiversitaet-international/ipbes/2-ipbes-konferenz/2720-eigenes-wissenschaftlergremium-nun-doch-beschlossen (24 April 2012).
6 For more detail on the history of the IPBES, see (Granjou et al., Citation2013).
7 The article echoed some of the arguments put forward by the international research program DIVERSITAS with which some of the authors were affiliated (DIVERSITAS, Citation2005).
8 Note that the issue of indigenous and local knowledge systems has been recognized as an important topic in its own right throughout the negotiation process (see IPBES/2/INF/19 http://www.ipbes.net/images/K1353280-IPBES-2-INF-1.docx accessed June 26th 2014).
9 Capacity building was a major topic for all the developing countries during the negotiations (Granjou et al., Citation2013).
10 The Plenary is the main decision-making body of the organization in which state delegates decide on all procedural and substantive matters; a small secretariat in Bonn assists the Plenary and its subsidiary bodies. IPBES has two subsidiary bodies. The Bureau is in charge of the administrative functions, and the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel provides advice on scientific and technical matters (see www.ipbes.net).
11 This has led to the current situation in which some members of the interim MEP with a two-year term are only appointed for one year so that another country may have its member appointed.
12 At their session in Panama 2012, state delegates recognized that the nomination of experts for the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel should be on ‘the basis of their personal capacity and expertise' and that the members ‘are not intended to represent any particular Government or region' (IPBES, Citation2012, p. 17). The rationale for this decision was expressed by a delegate with the words, ‘if the MEP becomes politicized, we will be in the same predicament as the CBD SBSTTA, whose meetings have almost transformed into mini COPs rather than meetings of technical biodiversity experts' (iisd).
15 This is especially apparent when it comes to designing the policy support function. For example, functions such as the evaluation and monitoring of national and regional policies by independent transnational authorities such as the IPBES—which could be instrumental in enforcing compliance with and implementation of policies and that might entail far-reaching consequences for decision-makers and interventions in national sovereignty—are matters of dispute in the intergovernmental negotiations and are very hard to establish.