Pluralism, paralysis, practice: making environmental knowledge usable

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the global environmental science-policy interface has come to include a greater variety of knowledge. Social scientists have joined natural scientists at the policy table, and Indigenous and local knowledge is being taken ever more seriously. But this pluralisation raises political, normative, and epistemic challenges for environmental expert organisations, including with respect to how knowledge is managed, how it is judged to be valid, how it is made policy-relevant, and how it is presented to policy-makers and decision-takers. Based on an interview study of experts involved in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), we identify three broad approaches to these challenges: the integrationist logic, which seeks to combine all knowledge into a single ontology; the parallelist, which looks for similarities and connections between irreconcilable ontologies; and the pragmatist, which strives to apply knowledge when and where it will have the greatest positive impact. Rather than champion any one of these approaches, the paper explores their origins and how they negotiate paralyses to the timeliness of work. In avoiding ultimate formalisation of how value and knowledge pluralism are to be handled, IPBES allow more contextually sensitive practices to come to the fore. The paper concludes by discussing implications for environmental expertise more broadly.

EDITED BY:

• Suneetha Subramanian

KEYWORDS:

• Usable knowledge
• knowledge pluralism
• knowledge systems
• science-policy interface
• expertise
• IPBES

Introduction

How to produce usable knowledge for global problems is a burning question within the science-policy nexus. To be usable, knowledge should be comprehensible, specific to the problem at hand, and should arrive in time to be acted upon (Haas and Stevens 2011). But the production of usable knowledge is made difficult by issues related to where knowledge comes from and how it is assembled. These difficulties are evident in environmental expertise, especially in science-policy for biodiversity management, where there are ongoing efforts to pluralise the types of knowledge on which science advice is based.

Environmental problems have become more complex, not only with respect to their origins and severity, but also their current and future social ramifications. At the same time, the amount of very specialised knowledge about these problems has grown, and expert organisations have been created to collate and communicate that knowledge effectively (Borie et al. 2021; Lidskog et al. 2022). The inclusion of a greater variety of knowledge is an issue of representation and a long-needed corrective to the unequal racial and gender composition of science. But it also involves a broadening of the knowledge base of scientific expertise to include a variety of social sciences and humanities (i.e. not only economics), and other forms of knowledge (such as local, traditional and Indigenous knowledge). As a public and scientific issue, the biodiversity crisis is understood to have multiple, interrelated drivers and obstacles, and thus demand a multi-scalar policy response (Reid et al. 2006). Following the one-off Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a permanent organisation, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), was established to continue to bring geographically specific knowledge and practices on biodiversity management to global attention (Vadrot 2014). Pluralism is integral to the IPBES approach to knowledge¹ (Timpte et al. 2018). The organisation has a mandate to place the social sciences and humanities alongside the natural sciences, and to take meaningful steps to include Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) within its knowledge assessments. While there are limits to how this has been achieved (see Esguerra et al. 2017; Stokland et al. 2022), IPBES has nurtured a culture of respect towards ILK and has developed and implemented methods for its identification, incorporation and verification (Díaz-Reviriego et al. 2019).

The IPBES approach to ILK is due in part to the reflexivity that has been shown by its members towards their collective values and practices (Borie et al. 2020). For example, a long-running task force on ILK has shaped the methods and methodologies of the organisation, while less formally, others have worked behind the scenes to improve its engagement with ILK. Reflections on these experiences (e.g. Hill et al. 2020; McElwee et al. 2020) are taken seriously within the organisation and read by many of its members. These iterative processes of self-examination, critical feedback and adaptation have allowed IPBES to recognise and begin to overcome weaknesses and set the standard for a productive relationship between scientific and Indigenous knowledge at the global scale.

One paper written by IPBES members recognises that the twin demands for usable knowledge and pluralism can stand in opposition. This is framed as a potential for ‘paralysis in the face of value pluralism’ (Pascual et al. 2017, p. 14). Use of the word ‘paralysis’ emphasises that what is at stake is the momentum or timeliness of the work. While the paper makes some general suggestions for how this might be overcome in practice, both through the integration of knowledge and the bridging between different bodies of knowledge, it glosses over the details. Indeed, this problem of paralysis remains without a formal solution. For while there is no shortage of suggestions from others within IPBES and its connected communities, within its official documents the IPBES approach is non-conclusive (see Granjou et al. 2013; Löfmarck and Lidskog 2017).

Taking the opposition between usability and pluralism as its starting point, this paper investigates how environmental knowledge is made usable in practice. This practice-orientation does not deny the importance of documents that describe what the organisation does or should do (and indeed two, the Conceptual Framework and Multiple Evidence Base, are discussed in detail), but it does attempt to foreground the practices that actually take place, as reported by IPBES participants.² Two further points are worth clarifying about our approach. The first is our relationship to the CRELE model (e.g. Cash et al. 2003). Popular within science-policy literatures, CRELE stresses the need for balance between the credibility of science (in terms of the adequacy of the technical evidence and arguments), the relevance of knowledge (in terms of its geographical and scalar context and timeliness) and the political legitimacy of the knowledge base (in terms of being unbiased and respectful to divergent stakeholder beliefs and values). Our focus is not so much on how to produce usable knowledge in an ideal sense, but on how knowledge is made usable in practice. Thus, our attention to the multiplicity of practice and the forms of authority therein entailed, two issues that CRELE downplays. The second point concerns our emphasis on the science side of science-policy. We maintain that all efforts to make knowledge usable exist within a social and discursive context. The problem to which knowledge is addressed is in part produced by that knowledge in its relation to cultural, economic and political forces. Put differently, the public issue affects the science, and the science affects the public issue (Marres 2007). To zoom in on one part of this relationship is an analytical decision, which necessarily constrains the conclusions that can be reached. Given these two points, the contributions made by the paper are a characterisation of the opposition between usability and pluralism in science advice, and a categorisation of approaches to negotiating this opposition. We consider our analysis an extension of existing work on how knowledge is made usable under conditions of pluralism (e.g. Tengö et al. 2014; Dunkley et al. 2018), especially with respect to discursive context and ways of commanding authority.

The paper proceeds in a further three sections. Following the brief discussion of research materials, methods and methodology, we locate four paralyses in the science advice pipeline: organisation (how knowledge and knowledge holders are managed), judgement (how knowledge is judged to be valid), translation (how knowledge is made policy-relevant) and communication (how knowledge is presented to policy-makers and decision-takers). Next, building on existing work that attends to the management of knowledge pluralism (Tengö et al. 2014; Montana 2017; Hakkarainen et al. 2020), three logics of practice are described. The integrationist logic would fashion all knowledge into a systematic world view that supports the proper policy response. The parallelist understands knowledge systems to be incommensurable but would bridge between them to improve policy options. And the pragmatist would suspend the problem of knowledge commensurability in preference to what works. In the final section, the logics are discussed in terms of the four paralyses to describe the present situation at IPBES and aid other expert organisations hoping to pluralise their knowledge base.

Materials, methods and methodology

The IPBES interview study on which this paper’s analysis is based consisted of twenty five expert interviews, conducted between February and November 2020. While one criteria for inclusion was the interviewee’s association with ILK (and the study included experts on Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous experts and Indigenous knowledge holders), the perspectives of a range of formal roles within IPBES were also sought (including representatives of the Bureau, Multidisciplinary Expert Panel, ILK task force and technical support units, and assessment Co-chairs, Co-ordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors), as were expertise in both the natural and social sciences (with at least 48% of participants being classifiable to the former and 24% to the latter, but with most practising in disciplines and fields somewhere in between, e.g. anthropology, geography, ecological economics or ethnoecology). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all of the interviews bar one were made through Zoom. They were conducted in English, and recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interview guide included questions about motivations for being involved in IPBES, practices conducted, tensions experienced, and views on interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and the science-policy interface. As the interviews were semi-structured, they were in general open, allowing ideas raised during the interview to be properly explored (Galletta 2013).

Other materials included in the study were assessments and process documents released by IPBES, and research publications authored by its members. These materials were gathered and analysed in an iterative and supportive relationship with the interview transcripts.

NVivo software for the analysis of qualitative data was used to conduct a contextualised thematic analysis (Bryman 2012). Of the 25 themes constructed, seven were deemed relevant for this paper: ‘bridging/integration’, ‘indigenous and local knowledge’, ‘validation of ILK’, ‘interdisciplinarity’, ‘difference and debate’, ‘work practices’ and ‘organisational authority’. The logics of integrationism, parallelism and pragmatism ranged across these themes. The four paralyses and three logics explored below were identified using abductive reasoning (i.e. the most plausible explanation of the observations made), and discussion of their historical and theoretical features is in keeping with the interpretivist tradition of social science (e.g. Yanow and Schwartz-Shea 2006).

Paralyses of pluralism

Inspired by Pascual et al. (2017), paralysis refers to antagonism at the science-policy interface that impedes on the ability to produce usable knowledge. While this metaphor foregrounds the momentum or flow of the work, this cannot easily be decoupled from the management techniques used to ensure that deadlines are met. Thus, a paralysis is an interruption to both the movement of and the sense of control over the work of the organisation. At an empirical level, what is at stake is not only the timeliness of an intervention, but also its authority and ability to bring about change. People interpret and weigh priorities differently, and indeed disagreement over how this is done within IPBES cross-cut several aspects of the work. The paralyses of organisation, judgement, translation and communication tease out these tensions at four sites of practice in the knowledge assessment pipeline.

IPBES is governed according to a decision-making structure, and through the imposition of formal work practices, scoping documents, timelines, deadlines and deliverables. These have been developed to achieve high-level objectives in an efficient manner, but embody the values and politics of the formative stages of the organisation. Paralysis can occur when these rules and relationships are not observed by participants.

We kept thinking we understood what those guys were going to go away and do, and they would either come back with nothing or come back having decided to deliver us something else. It was always very frustrating, [because] everyone on the MEP and the Bureau was accountable to the Plenary. And if you know anything at all about corporate governance you will know you have just got to deliver what you have been commissioned to do. (interviewee 22, 3 November 2020)

Paralyses of organisation surface disagreements in how the work is to be conducted. These include methodological concerns, but also what is important to do, and who decides what it is that is important to do. Thus, while on the surface this is a procedural problem, at heart is something far more political.

The work of knowledge assessment involves the collection of literature and the selection from that literature what is deemed relevant to the topic. Judgements must be made with respect to how wide the net is to be cast, how resources are to be engaged with and what is to be included. Two paralyses of judgement recur in IPBES, each pulling a different direction from the norm. The first arises from the stipulation that no new knowledge may be included in the assessments. While this is sometimes taken to mean that only academic literature can be drawn upon, others seek to assess grey literature, while still others promote participative methods to engage with tacit and embodied knowledge. This is particularly important for the inclusion of ILK, where not only must a history of systematic exclusion be overcome, but where significant variation persists in the language (i.e. not English) and format (i.e. not written) of the communication of knowledge (see Lynch et al. 2021). The second paralysis involves disagreement over how well suited local and traditional knowledge is (whether spatially or epistemically) to global and contemporary drivers of change. While we have little reason to doubt the culture of acceptance and respect described by our interviewees, we have also had it impressed on us how important key individuals have been to its development. This has occurred not only through efforts to pilot review methods or to spread them throughout the organisation. It has also occurred through resistance to those that do not value ILK and through the identification of outputs that did not meet expectations. The maintenance of the IPBES culture of respect requires considerable unseen and unrecognised effort, which adds to the workload and can impinge on the timeliness of outputs.

The interpretation and representation needed to make knowledge amenable to policy, open the way for paralyses of translation. These have the potential to occur at two sites: in the writing of an assessment and in the production of a summary for policy makers (SPM). Each site entails different participants and audiences, and are conducted over different time scales. The first occur within chapter author groups and between co-ordinating lead authors and assessment chairs. They involve professional scientists that work together over a period of months or years, mostly through private channels (such mailing lists and working group meetings). A recurring threat to the work here is the constant interplay between policy relevancy and policy prescription. Deciding what should be included in the first and how much to say while avoiding the second, inevitably entails strategic and values-based interactions. In contrast to these closed-door negotiations, the SPM is a primer document, written over a shorter period of time through official exchange between assessment authors and state representatives. Given the formality, visibility and pressure for results (where paralysis can undo significant investment in an important issue), translational disagreements in the production of SPMs tend to be different to those in assessments. While crucial to the production of usable knowledge generally, the specific problems raised by pluralism of the knowledge base are usually addressed prior to the formulation of the SPM.

Finally, in communicating the message of an assessment, disagreement can arise over how to achieve the greatest policy impact. Important here is whether authority is taken to lie more with scientific cohesion or local specificity. At one extreme, a united and universal message is understood to be a clear expression of the nature of the problem, upon which action can be based. At the other, the assertion that the ability to affect change is predicated upon the inclusion of knowledge grounded by local people and examples rather than universal abstractions. Overlaying this is a reflexive dynamic wherein the perception that disagreement exists within the organisation (ultimately manifesting in public controversy) is anticipated as a threat to its authority.

‘I was [reading] the one paper that really started to cultivate the polarised discussion and I was like, “Stop doing this, this is not helpful at all”. […] [T]here will be quite some parties, quite some interests that will be challenged by IPBES conclusions. The status quo has to change and there is a lot of interest to keep the status quo and I think IPBES cannot use any type of overcultivated controversy that might harm the conclusion’. (interviewee 10, 22 May 2020)

While the perception of disagreement is more threatening to those that equate authority with unity, there is a sense here in which IPBES sits in the shadow of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The worry that controversy will produce denial of the biodiversity crisis in the same way that Climategate bolstered climate change denial (Grundmann 2012), ensures that disagreement will be downplayed, even for those with a local focus. Communication threats and opportunities are anticipated by IPBES participants and so shape the work of assessment, especially in considerations of the nature of the problem and the ultimate strategy to address it with.

The potential paralyses of organisation, judgement, translation and communication are not of equal presence, nor are they of equal importance to all IPBES participants. In identifying them, we do not wish to stress the frequency or intensity of their occurrence. Rather, we are interested in their qualitative differences and how they reflect upon different stages of the work tasks that are performed. In the next section, we turn to the dominant ways in which participants deal with these paralyses.

Logics of knowledge difference

When diverse traditions of knowledge are assembled towards the strategic end of informing decision makers and improving policy, a crucial challenge is how to connect and relate knowledge in usable ways (Tengö et al. 2014; Löfmarck and Lidskog 2017). This does not necessitate tension and conflict, although those do certainly occur. Rather, we want to stress that decisions need to be made and that there are common logics that guide movement through the potential paralyses of organisation, judgement, translation and communication. These logics are understood to be ideal types, often expressed in partial and blended ways. They are an internally-consistent means of understanding the reasons that one choice is made over another. In this section, we present the three logics of knowledge difference using quotes from our interviews with IPBES participants, and reflect on what these logics mean for pluralism at the science-policy interface.

Integrationism

The logic of integrationism seeks to bring all forms of knowledge together into a syncretic whole, with the assertion that from a greater understanding of the relevant issues the appropriate course of action can be determined. The integrationist logic sits comfortably alongside a systems theoretical perspective of nature-society relations in which systems are composed of human and non-human aspects that self-regulate and together mediate their environment (Galison 1994). From this it follows that scientific theories focus on a specific scale of a system (or one system within a system of systems), and that the role of interdisciplinarity is to bring knowledge of those scales together in a self-consistent manner (Reid et al. 2006). Systems theory is functionalist, but need not be teleological; there is now widespread recognition that the outcomes of complex (i.e. nonlinear) systems cannot be fully predicted from information of their starting conditions. The integrationist logic is prevalent in many of the natural and biological sciences (Hammond 2003), and not uncommon in the social sciences (Heyck 2015). It is influential in European and other transnational policy domains, including in the EU and UN, and is well embedded in the documentation of many expert organisations, including those of the IPCC and IPBES.

The most important vehicle for this logic within the corpus of IPBES documents is the Conceptual Framework (CF) (presented in Díaz et al. 2015). Developed early in the work of the organisation, the CF seeks to incorporate different knowledge systems into an overarching structure. Conceptual frameworks are defined as ‘the focus of a system analysis’ that offer ‘a common set of relationships and definitions to make complex systems as simple as they need to be for their intended purpose’. The developers go on: ‘Integrative conceptual frameworks are particularly useful tools in fields requiring interdisciplinary collaboration where they are used to make sense of complexity by clarifying and focusing thinking about relationships, supporting communication across disciplines and knowledge systems and between knowledge and policy’ (Díaz et al. 2015, p. 3). One of our interviewees described their use of the CF both to enable interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange, and to tie knowledge systems together.

So I think it is a really good tool if you do it properly […] when you are talking about a more holistic approach. It goes back to that question you asked before about different scientific groups siloing. So the conceptual framework brings you that more holistic way of explaining to people or scientists or whoever they are that there are many ways of looking at the topic and this allows you to bring lots of other knowledge systems and other ways of thinking into how you do things.

(interviewee 11, 5 June 2020)

Scientific fields are here framed as silos, that is, as knowledge domains with an internal focus, in need of joined-up or holistic thinking. The CF promises to facilitate this way of thinking by defining the terms and relations that allow for enriched communication and knowledge transfer.

Importantly, it is not the ability of the CF to stage inter- and transdisciplinarity that bind it to the integrationist logic, but the overarching ontology used to achieve this. The slippage between these has been interpreted by Maier and Feest (2016) as a confusion between the descriptive and the normative, and by Dunkley et al. (2018) as a way of enforcing consensus. Things are more complicated than this, however. In the first instance, there is a recognition by CF developers ‘that representations of human–nature relationships may vary across cultures and knowledge systems’ (Díaz et al. 2015, p. 4) and ‘that there are aspects of each knowledge system — or even discipline, for example, social and natural sciences — that cannot be fully translated from one into another’ (Díaz et al. 2015, p. 10). These statements reveal a hesitancy about the full integration of knowledge systems, or at least a suspicion that the exercise is limited. In the second, a naive version of the integrationist logic was seldom championed by our interviewees, but was instead the background against which knowledge differences and their management were discussed.³ Choices are shaped by numerous and sometimes conflicting logics and it would be a mistake to assume that the CF fully determines IPBES practices.

For the integrationist, policies are authoritative when they respond to generally applicable knowledge based on a naturalist scientific world view. While ILK is understood to be well suited to the context in which it is developed, it is regarded as policy-relevant only when integrated into a general framework. On the one hand, integrationism recognises the value of knowledge pluralism and has the ability to bring ILK into the policy arena and put it to work on important environmental problems. On the other, it achieves this by working ILK into a system of object-relation definitions that are based on external values and precepts. As such, ILK remains subservient to science and at risk of being co-opted into what are sometimes perceived to be the colonialist and capitalist agendas of Western science.

Parallelism

In contrast to integrationism, the logic of parallelism follows from the assertion that science is neither place nor value free. Many historians and sociologists of science have argued that the practice of science falls short of the normative demand that it produce universal, objective knowledge (e.g. Shapin 1996; Harding 2015). Science and society are here regarded as inseparable; knowledge cannot transcend the temporal and spatial context in which it is produced. Similarly, all scientists are understood to be embedded within a network of social relations that prefigure the values that they bring to their work. Notably, the modest witness that is said to be able to verify and validate scientific results, can only perform this function when trusted and authorised by their peers (Shapin and Schaffer 1985). It is not uncommon for the parallelist to identify a practice of science that denies its social context as a specifically Western phenomenon (de Sousa Santos 2016).

Several important points follow on from this. The first is that because knowledge coheres within a setting, it is often distinct and irreconcilable. This extends pluralism from the mode of enquiry to the very facts and beliefs that are retained (or more radically, constructed). Second, because knowledge is based on different values and arises from different social conditions, it should not be externally validated. This means, third, that knowledge cannot be successfully syncretised and that emphasis should be placed on identifying connections and building bridges between knowledges. Fourth, usability is to be achieved by identifying policy options that are supported by a multitude of examples and evidence. While the parallelist logic is most strongly associated with the social sciences (e.g. Harding 2015), it is of growing influence in the natural sciences (e.g. Berkes 2012) and, if IPBES is any indication, within environmental expert organisations more broadly.

This logic has found expression in IPBES in the form of the Multiple Evidence Base (MEB) (Tengö et al. 2014). The MEB was proposed by IPBES participants, including a later co-chair of the Global Assessment. Three approaches to navigating value and knowledge pluralism are identified: knowledge integration, the co-production of knowledge, and the creation of synergies between parallel knowledges. The third, of which the MEB is a type, ‘emphasizes complementarities while presupposing validation across knowledge systems’ (Tengö et al. 2014, p. 582) and ‘includes acknowledging and recognizing the spatial and temporal context of knowledge’ (Tengö et al. 2014, p. 587). As the MEB is in no small part intended for IPBES, it pulls back from clearly distinguishing itself from the integrative logic. For example, while it identifies conceptual frameworks as a means of integrating knowledge, it suggests that the MEB builds upon rather than transforms these efforts.⁴

It is important in the MEB that an open and collaborative process of problematisation (i.e. goal definition) takes place prior to the bridging of knowledges. This is intended to counteract pre-existing power structures and ensure that collaboration is not undertaken in service to a single group or agenda. While experts in Indigenous knowledge are included in the IPBES governance structure and assessment scoping exercises, the direct participation of Indigenous knowledge holders has so far been largely restricted to dialogues that review ongoing work or verify the findings of published assessments. Nevertheless, it is clear that the parallelist logic has its champions.

We are not a vacuum sucking information from Indigenous and local communities. We would like to have that information available to put alongside and with science, Western science. And this was another thing, fighting against words like integration, blending, because it is not that. Because in the end science then dominates always. It is actually putting on the table alongside science this, this, this and this and using specific examples […] to take back to Indigenous and local knowledge holders […] some facts, some ideas that have come from the scientific community.

(interviewee 25, 6 November 2020)

This interviewee stresses the placement of different knowledges alongside one another in explicit contrast to their integration. Also interesting here is the symmetry of policy relevance, where not only is ILK usable for governments, but science is usable for Indigenous and local communities.

For the parallelist, the authority of a policy recommendation comes not from its coherence within a single frame, but from correspondence and confirmation between multiple frames. Knowledges are regarded as ultimately incommensurable, with the situatedness of values and beliefs ruling out mutual validation. Despite their differences, it is nevertheless both possible and desirable to create synergies by bridging between them. This opens up a number of procedural difficulties around how and by whom this bridging is to be conducted, and the ends to which it is to be directed. Moreover, there are tendencies within parallelism to ignore how knowledge is developed through interaction and conversation, or to render knowledge isolated, static and unresponsive. Meaningful conflicts can herein be suppressed, as can opportunities for sustained interaction and novel insight.

Pragmatism

At work in the negotiation of pluralism at IPBES we have identified the logic of the pragmatist. This logic seeks to respond directly to the imminence of the problem (as it currently stands) by identifying what works. Unlike integrationism and parallelism, pragmatism does not profess a position on the commensurability of knowledge. Questions of validation and synthesis are suspended in favour of presenting proven solutions to those that need them in a language that they will understand. This logic finds purchase in highly rationalised scientific endeavours that involve many individuals, partners and stakeholders, which are managed through well-documented mandates and procedures, with clearly delineated tasks and deliverables. Under such circumstances the objective becomes the efficient completion of the project, with little time afforded to reflexivity and critique. Accordingly, the pragmatist logic is well-entrenched in the natural sciences, where Big Science has been common practice since the Second World War (Galison and Hevly 1992), and is becoming more so in the social sciences, especially in the context of European funding regimes.

Many common methods of project management have intellectual roots in systems theory, especially operations research (Lilienfeld 1978). There is, as such, a ready compatibility between the logics of integrationalism and pragmatism. Nevertheless, the distinction is worth maintaining. Integrationalism applies systems theory to the arrangement of difference within the work of IPBES, while pragmatism is eager simply to get on with the work’s doing. This plays out differently in terms of ILK and policy formation.

Pragmatism has not found formal expression in any single IPBES document.⁵ It is, however, clearly evident in our interview data, where it explains statements unaccounted for by the other two logics. We present it as a way of categorising backstage practices that part ways with claims made publicly as to what the organisation is doing. Our diagnosis of the logic unfolds through three observations. First, at a governance level there is a downplaying of common philosophical terms and a focal shift towards practices in preference to beliefs. As one interviewee, influential in establishing ILK assessment methods, said: ‘I don’t think it is useful to talk about epistemologies and ontologies, so we try and talk about world views and knowledge systems’ (interviewee 13, 18 August 2020). Another, involved at a higher level still, said that a focus on practice (rather than ontology) was a conscious way to draw attention towards commonalities (interviewee 5, 4 April 2020). We read this as an effort to avoid a common cause of paralysis: ontological contestation. Second, at a procedural level exists an ignorance or ambivalence towards the problems of pluralism and a willingness to find ways of getting through the workload. One assessment author presented their uncertainty towards the incorporation of ILK in this way: ‘I find the concepts are abstract and therefore it is hard to say exactly, to indicate the difference, I guess, when one thing is needed, or what the different roles of the different knowledge systems are’ (interviewee 12, 29 May 2020). Another author stressed the importance of holding back: ‘You have to accept that if you say the things that you want to say that might take the whole assessment down. So sometimes you have to compromise and I think I was more conscious of that than some of the contributing authors’ (interviewee 15, 16 September 2020). To show that scientists are sometimes unsure of themselves or choose to remain silent is not to undermine the quality of their work. Rather, our purpose is to foreground how paralyses are anticipated as often by pragmatic restraint as by an explicit methodology. Third, is the common assertion that different terms, theories and solutions are more or less suited to different purposes and policy arenas. This is exemplified in the following statement about how to use conceptual language.

If you want policy makers to take up your ideas and change the way that they are dealing with ecosystem management … I couldn’t go to say the [United States Environmental Protection Agency] and [say] Nature’s Contribution to People and they would know off the bat what I was talking about. But Ecosystem Services has been around more and it has been embedded in legal frameworks now that I think it has more saliency in the policy world probably.

(interviewee 16, 2 October 2020)

Although this IPBES author self-identifies as a critical social scientist, they nevertheless regulate their policy communications according to the consequences that they expect them to have. This not adherence to an optimal course of action (à la integrationism), nor the presentation of a range of policy options (à la parallelism), but a conscious effort to persuade a specific actor.

Within the logic of pragmatism, authority is a matter of finding a way forward. Coalitions are made and policies presented in anticipation of the context in which they will be received. Where they come from, how they were arrived at, the broader apparatus in which they sit, all these are issues of secondary concern. The paralyses of pluralism are avoided by bracketing contentious issues arising from differences in power and belief, and by stressing the urgency of the problem to which the work must be addressed. While pragmatism may be effective, it risks insensitivity to the past. First, because it strategically avoids the histories of dispossession and colonisation with which many Indigenous peoples contend. Second, because it proceeds on the basis that the problem definition has been agreed upon and will not change. These two moves free the scientist to act at their own discretion, but come at the expense of the full participation and opinion of Indigenous and local knowledge holders.

Discussion

The logics differ in their philosophical positions on knowledge and value pluralism, and have a differing sense of how to command authority. For integrationism, issues of an epistemic and axiological nature may be plural but the ontological remains singular – there is only one reality that we must strive to understand through a holistic theoretical framework using the scientific method. It is the general applicability of the overarching framework that affords it the ability to affect change. This is quite different from parallelism, which encourages the coexistence of plural ontologies. Not all parallelists are comfortable with the argument that what comes to be regarded as real is constructed wholly or in part by theory, but in general the prospect of a single grand theory is met with ambivalence. Authority is here found in the correspondence and confirmation between ontologies. For pragmatism, these discussions are irrelevant, possibly in general, but above all with respect to the task at hand. The focus should be on whatever helps solve the problem.

The three logics of knowledge difference are not policed within IPBES and nor do they encapsulate all of the subject positions adopted by its members and stakeholders (not least of which Indigenous knowledge holders). Indeed, because these logics are often deployed in incomplete and blended ways, it is better to conceive of them as a map of possibilities within a broader context than as discrete and rigorous programmes of action. Building on the discussion in the previous section, we finish the paper by elaborating on how each of the logics can be expected to negotiate the paralyses of organisation, judgement, translation and communication. Thereafter, we characterise the way IPBES treats the tension between usability and pluralism, before concluding with remarks about what our analysis means for environmental expertise.

A map of ways through the paralyses

Paralyses of organisation are met by focusing on different aspects of the work. The appropriate synthesis of published material is a concern of all IPBES participants, but for those influenced by the integrationist logic it is particularly important. This is because the task apprehends knowledge systems on a field of equivalence, such that diverse behaviours can be identified, compared, categorised and accommodated into the overarching frame. Effort is directed towards the collection of resources that can inform the work, especially grey literature on local and Indigenous land management practices. The organisational difficulties posed by pluralism are dealt with by directing energy and opinion towards these narrow ends. Parallelism is less likely to accept that a literature review will be able to account for the variation and context of ILK. Thus, it is in keeping with this logic to stress participative and dialogical means of recognising and learning from the knowledge and experience of others. It is assumed that by genuinely listening to one another a way through the thicket of difference will be found. In the context of IPBES, where the role of Indigenous knowledge holders has already been well directed and defined, this emphasis on open dialogue can be construed as a source of rather than a solution to paralysis. The pragmatist logic confirms any mandated task that attends to the stated objectives and so will seldom contribute directly to the paralysis of organisation. While those of this inclination can be expected to find efficient ways to manage, distribute and deliver the work, they may have little motivation to go beyond the specification.

We expect paralyses of judgement (i.e. indecision about what to include) and translation (i.e. indecision about how to include it) to be handled in a manner consistent with each logic’s ordering of epistemic practices. For integrationism, the means by which knowledge systems are developed can be sorted into a hierarchy of credibility, at the top of which sits the (supposedly) value-free pursuit of universal laws. As such, choices about what to include will be made according to how well they fit within the dominant paradigm (i.e. the CF). Paralysis is avoided by submitting all knowledge claims to the same standard, which tends to be materialist and even positivist in nature. Parallelism, by contrast, asserts that there is no outside position from which knowledge practices can be judged and sorted; the valuation of knowledge must take place from within the knowledge system itself. This means that judgement should be sidelined in favour of the (wherever possible mutual) identification, formation and presentation of commonalities. The pragmatist takes a practical stance towards the ordering of knowledge. On the one hand, resisting its formalisation, but on the other, failing to reflect on the inclusion criteria let alone how they are shaped by individual and group biases. Emphasis is placed on finding what works, rather than what is justified or what will correct epistemic inequalities. Paralysis is here undone by a focus on (what stands for) common sense.

Paralyses of communication surface beliefs about how change occurs. Beneath the presentation of solutions lie differences in what the problem at hand is thought to be. While all IPBES participants would presumably agree that biodiversity is at risk, the reasons why (or more precisely, why still) are more open. For integrationism, the solution is to be found in the promotion of a scientific consensus around biodiversity threats and the identification of best practices to address them. This does not necessarily assume the problem to be one thing, but it does suppose a direct relationship between knowledge and action. If only there were greater awareness of the problem, if only the appropriate response were generally accepted, then surely this is something that could be solved. Vested interests are best met head on by a united scientific community. Parallelism sees the biodiversity crises as, in the first instance, the sum of many localised threats. These can be addressed by making available a selection of good practices and helping well intended policy makers to identify the solutions that best fit their specific needs. While we refer to this as a liberal mode of communication, it can also be understood as something more progressive. For some, the valourisation of ILK is also a way to recognise and begin to undo the ecological damage caused by universal science, technological progress and bureaucratic rationalisation. The solution here is not only more sustainable land use practices, but a transformation of the mediating role that science (and other ways of knowing) play between nature and society. Pragmatism is not so ambitious. It strives to address threats to biodiversity in a piecemeal fashion, through the strategic communication of policy options in a language intended to persuade. While this may do little to alter existing power structures, of the three logics pragmatism is the most sensitive to different forms and uses of authority. For this reason, it is again least likely to contribute to the paralysis of communication within IPBES.

Table 1 presents the map of possibilities that is found by intersecting our analysis of the paralyses of pluralism with the logics applied to negotiating them. This characterisation of IPBES implies that it does not fully resolve the opposition between usability and pluralism that has been recognised by members (Pascual et al. 2017). Rather, multiple approaches to managing this opposition co-exist within organisational practices, sometimes aligning but at other times coming into tension. Were IPBES to enforce a standard by which all authors must bring knowledge together, things might be different. But no matter how this closure were achieved, it would certainly alienate some portion of the organisation’s participants and stakeholders. There is another, perhaps more important, reason not to do this. By formally limiting epistemic possibilities, IPBES would lose much of its interpretive flexibility. Currently, the four paralyses are internalised into the work, where they can be met at various stages by practices better suited to the specifics of context. The map of possibilities reveals pathways through organisational processes, in which an individual or group can move from one logic to another as needed. It also suggests hiding places, in which unpopular opinion can rest and avoid scrutiny. Having a single, authorised approach may speed things up, but this would likely curb variation, and restrict the people and places that an IPBES assessment could be said to represent. Loose guidance and a certain level of epistemic ambiguity may be the best way for the organisation to balance timeliness with the inclusive negotiation of difference, and so provide usable knowledge.

Table 1. Map of possibilities in the negotiation of knowledge and value pluralism at IPBES.

	Ontology	Epistemology	Authority	Organisation	Judgement	Translation	Communication
Integrationist	Single	Multiple	General applicability	Synthesis of published materials	Materialist/positivist	Presentation of ‘the facts’	Consensus
Parallelist	Multiple	Multiple	Correspondence and confirmation	Participation of ILK holders	Internal validation	Bridging of worldviews	Liberal (or progressive)
Pragmatist	Irrelevant	Irrelevant	Finding a way forward	Observe organisational mandate	Practical	Presentation of ‘what works’	Strategic

Concluding remarks

In this paper, four potential paralyses to the timeliness of work in the knowledge assessment pipeline of IPBES have been identified. These each are met by organisational practices to negotiate value and knowledge pluralism, which we have grouped into three logics. This categorisation of the production of usable knowledge at IPBES is the main analytical contribution of the paper. But neither the paralyses nor the logics are unique to IPBES. Environmental expert organisations grappling with the challenges of pluralism can be expected to face paralyses in their work, for the simple reason that when various kinds of knowledge and belief are put into dialogue, disagreements will arise (Tengö et al. 2014; Borie et al. 2021; Lidskog et al. 2022). While the paralyses described here may be particular to IPBES, overarching epistemic and political issues will recur: what knowledge is relevant and valid? Who decides what to include and exclude, and on what basis? Why problematise in this way? Why adopt this approach to change? Similarly, the integrationist, parallelist and pragmatist logics are enmeshed with theories, research praxes and funding architectures across the environmental disciplines, both natural and social, and so can similarly be expected to exist in other expert organisations. However, one logic that does seem to be lacking in IPBES is a more agonistic stance on pluralism, which would seek to make critique and conflict the very grounds for its authority (e.g. Mouffe 1999; Potter 2013). In any case, the success of IPBES in allowing the three logics to work together, which we suggest has occurred through a lack of formal epistemic closure and the maintenance of a culture of respect, make it an example worthy of building upon.

Acknowledgments

This paper has been presented at a seminar organized by The Social Sciences and Humanities Network (SSH Network) related to IPBES (https://onet.ipbes.net/node/43). We are grateful for the constructive comments given by participants at that seminar as well as by two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas [2018-01235]

Notes

1. Pluralism is here used in a descriptive rather than explicitly political way to refer to the plurality of values and knowledge backgrounds that exist within IPBES. It is a pluralism more reflexive than mere diversity of representation, but not so conflict-oriented as in the political theory of agonism (e.g. Mouffe 1999).

2. Our purpose is not to ultimately reveal that what is done is different from what is claimed. Rather, the distinction is made to elucidate the underlying logics that allow knowledge difference to be negotiated. Following Hilgartner (2004, p. 447), ‘The fundamental challenge for dramaturgical analysis in STS [Science and Technology Studies] is not to reveal what the backstage is “really” like, but to explicate collective modes of information control and to illuminate their role in stabilizing and destabilizing knowledges and social orders’.

3. This is not to say that the logic is uncommon. Interviewees were selected, in part, for their involvement with ILK, a choice that we expect skewed the data away from integrationism.

4. Indeed, this appreciation goes both ways with developers of the IPBES CF pointing to the MEB with respect to the problem of validation (Díaz et al. 2015).

5. For the pragmatist, the CF is just a model and the MEB just a method. The philosophical implications of and differences between these documents are ignored.