ABSTRACT
Created under the combined pressure of several middle powers and various groups of stakeholders, and despite strong initial skepticism from several major states, IGOs, and even NGOs, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) represents a remarkable example of the contemporary dynamics of international institution-building. Its basic features evolved during the negotiation process: the linear model of science-policy relations became dialectical, the range of relevant knowledge expanded, as did the diversity of stakeholders. Thus, it also constitutes an experiment in new forms of governance, including attempts to invent ways of approaching and conducting assessments and a new science-policy dialogue. IPBES strives to reconcile three approaches to biodiversity protection:
scientific (biology and ecology, with a focus on conservation and knowledge building), utilitarian (ecological economics, with a focus on ecosystem services and the science-policy interface) and cultural (anthropology and politics, with a focus on institutions and on the protection of knowledge and political rights). Although the advent of IPBES represents a political alliance of sorts, especially between the first two, it also falls within the larger debate on what should form the basis of decisions regarding biodiversity and, more generally, on the proper relationship between societies and nature. This debate, which is reflected in the triple narrative identified by Alice Vadrot (see chapter 3), has affected and will continue affecting the definition of IPBES procedures, starting with the development of a “coordinative discourse” designed to guide decisions and act as a standardization device (see chapter 7). Three basic assumptions that have driven the genesis of IPBES, shaped its
mission, determined its structure, and guided its operations correspond to these approaches. These assumptions have not necessarily been widely shared – which explains the time it took for IPBES to emerge – and they still face contradictory interpretations regarding their importance and implications. They pertain to filling knowledge gaps, improving the science-policy interface, and including all stakeholders in the development of policy-relevant knowledge. A brief examination of them sheds some light on the two questions
posed at the beginning of this book: (1) What explains the emergence of IPBES in the context of a global biodiversity issue-area that is both institutionally fragmented and complex? (2) How does IPBES manage tensions between the openness ambition, the knowledge selection process and the production of global assessments by experts, i.e. tensions arising from directions taken in response to those assumptions?
