`Improving Biodiversity Knowledge´- Conflicts & Controversies

The aim of the project is to study the epistemic and political dimensions of emerging institutional arrangements at the interface between conservation science and biodiversity policy. The project will analyse these dimensions within the scope of the EU-BON project and the implementation of GEO-BON at the European level. A focus will be placed on the inner- scientific conflicts within those institutional arrangements co-ordinating the process of transforming biodiversity data into usable knowledge. An important and overarching question will be as to how the epistemic becomes political. The objective of the empirical research to be conducted is to analyse the debates within and between different scientific communities, disciplines and approaches with regard to the implementation of GEO-BON and the working groups on Ecosystem Services and In-situ / remote-sensing integration. More particularly, I will investigate the interests, strategies and knowledge claims of stakeholders participating in the plenary sessions of GEO-BON and meetings of the EU-BON consortium. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the knowledge claims, ideals and perceptions in place, the conflicts and controversies will be identified and classified, in order fully to understand the scope of specific issues of debate and their relationship to the broader politico-institutional framework of biodiversity policy. The thesis of this project is that scientific and political self-evidence about the governance of biodiversity loss co-evolve and that this process of co-evolution is characterised by inner- scientific conflicts mirrored in particular institutional arrangements at the interface between science and policy. In order better to understand the process of the mutual alignment between science and politics, the practices of the organisation of such arrangements based upon the knowledge claims, ideals and perceptions of the actors, I will analyse the framework and procedures against the background of The politics of knowledge and global biodiversity (Vadrot 2014) on the basis of strong empirical data. The research will combine qualitative and quantitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with policy-makers and scientists, participant and non-participant observation and the design and analysis of an online questionnaire. Theoretically, the project will use approaches from the Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Political Ecology (PE) to environmental knowledge as the way in which struggles over the meaning, the distribution of resources and the locus of power and control are conceptualised. Both, the object under study and the theoretical approach, will enable developing a better understanding of how epistemic definitions become political. Thus, the study will lay the foundations for the scientific originality of the project. The project will run for a period of three years and includes a two-year stay at the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP), University of Cambridge, where most of the research will be conducted. The CSaP is the most appropriate institution for this project, as it is involved in the EU-BON project as the partner responsible for the analysis of the uses of biodiversity knowledge in European biodiversity policy-making. Working with the CSaP team will enable access to current debates, methodologies and the most relevant actors and developments. A one-year stay at the University of Vienna, Institute of Political Science (return-phase), is planned and will be devoted to the finalisation of data analysis and the writing-up of scientific publications. The aim is to write a follow-up book to my recent one, The Politics of Knowledge and Global Biodiversity, which is based on the results of my Ph.D. thesis and which will be published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis) in 2014, and to ensure the exchange of knowledge with the staff of the receiving organisation.

The aim of this research project was to study institutional arrangements interfacing conservation science and biodiversity policy and politics with the objective to produce policy- relevant knowledge for the protection and sustainable use of biological diversity. Case studies included the Intergovernmental Platform on biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO-BON) and were investigated with the methods of participant observation, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The collected data was used to analyse conflicts within these institutional arrangements. Additionally, the project developed concepts and methods to empirically investigate and theoretically ground these cases. The research findings were used to develop recommendations on how to strengthen inclusion and participation within science-policy interfacing bodies, particularly regarding the social sciences and humanities and the involvement of individual scientists. The point of departure of the project was the assumption that agreements related to policy relevant scientific concepts, terminologies and methodological approaches for representing nature are accompanied by conflicts at the intersection between science and politics. The analysis of such conflicts allows conclusions on epistemic selectivities and the distribution and entanglement of power in international politics. Epistemic selectivities are apparent, when political actors prefer to use particular knowledge and concepts over other and with the aim to underpin their position and thereby create selective, i.e. incomplete pictures of problems and strategies for problem solving. In cases, in which this could lead to a redistribution of power, conflicts emerge and lead to the weighting of particular scientific concept and terminologies, which thereby become objects of negotiation themselves. The project has identified and systematically analysed three cases, that characteristic of this effect: 1) conflicts over the representation and recognition of the non-economic value of nature through the concept pf bicultural diversity and the equal treatment and inclusion of local and indigenous knowledge, 2) conflicts over scientific uncertainty and big data in the scientific underpinning of the sixth mass extinction, mainly as a result of human activity, 3) conflicts over the use, distribution and legitimisation od satellite data in the development of variables to measure the success of policies in biodiversity protection, specifically in marine biodiversity politics. The three cases show that intergovernmental conflicts in the field international biodiversity politics are present in negotiation processes around legitimate knowledge. These conflicts mirror global inequalities related to research and data infrastructures reinforcing and shape the use of knowledge and science in international negotiations to represent nature.