ABSTRACT

This conclusion presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows how biodiversity policy and science have emerged as mutually constituted fields of societal action. It analyses the dynamics leading to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and address the question of how knowledge enables institutional change within highly controversial political settings. The spatio-temporal patterns inscribed in the IPBES process and the 'epistemic selectivities' of related structures and agents condensed into the institutional configuration of the IPBES, most notably because of its orientation towards an anthropocentric and functional approach to nature and a preference for the concept of ecosystem services. The concept of epistemic selectivities enables to show how selectively-structured discourses and narratives about highly controversial issues have contributed to the development of political and scientific self-evidences on how to govern biodiversity and biodiversity knowledge.