ABSTRACT
The creation of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in April 2012 can be seen as a milestone in international biodiversity politics, policies and science. The new institution is expected to tie together existing (scientific) knowledge on different aspects of the Earth’s biological diversity, based on common methodologies and tools. This should provide decision makers at different levels with policy relevant knowledge. Furthermore, the new institution was conceptualized as a service provider, aiming at delivering tangible products (e.g. global and regional assessments) in order to raise awareness of the negative consequences of biodiversity loss, the value of nature for human wellbeing and the necessity to support and invest in natural resource conservation activities around the globe among policy makers and the public at large. At a first glance, the establishment of a new body in the institutional
landscape of biodiversity politics and science looks like a success story that is beneficial for all actors involved. It follows the principles of evidencebased politics, multilateralism and deliberative democracy and contributes to the objectives of credibility, salience and legitimacy as an integral part of linking knowledge and action for environmental decision making (Cash et al., 2003). Since its emergence in the early 1990s, international biodiversity politics in general and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in particular were confronted with a lack of (scientific) knowledge on how to tackle biodiversity loss. This had inter alia triggered the establishment of the CBD Subsidiary Body on Scientific Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) and led to the elaboration of the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) (Di Castri & Younès, 1996; Guay, 2002; McConnell, 1996). The nonavailability of scientific evidence and usable knowledge was one side of the coin. The other side of the coin regards the failure of CBD “to institutionalize the common responsibility of humanity to protect biodiversity” (Guruswamy, 1998: 351). In this regard, the establishment of IPBES addresses some of the needs
identified throughout the debate on reforming the institutional architecture
of international environmental politics (Biermann and Bauer, 2005; Kanie et al., 2012). In 2005, the 60th session of the UN General Assembly recognized “the need for more efficient activities in the UN system, with enhanced coordination, improved policy advice and guidance, strengthened scientific knowledge, assessment and cooperation” (UNGA, 2005: 37). Seven years later, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio +20, seems to have confirmed that “[t]he practice of multilateralism has simply not caught up with structural changes in the system” (Bernstein, 2013: 16). This is particularly true for biodiversity politics and CBD: “In the absence of a common natural resource, what is it intended to regulate? What is it supposed to achieve?” (Swanson, 1999: 308). Furthermore, “widely varying concepts of nature meet (depending on the viewpoints on ecosystems, species or genetic resources; from untouched nature or the ‘natural wealth of the tropics’ to the utility of genetic resources), but also widely varying societal nature relations (above all diverging forms of use)” (Görg & Brand, 2000: 378). In the light of the multiple contestations of multilateral environmental politics and the contested and multifaceted “object to be governed”, the establishment of IPBES could be considered a success story. What Désirée McGraw assumed for the emergence of CBD, namely that it
“entered a legal field crowded with agreements” is true for IPBES. International biodiversity policy is a rather fuzzy field, overlapping with issues of climate change, the destruction of local livelihoods, poverty reduction, food and water security; the regulation of the use of resources for the development of seeds, drugs and cosmetics, and related issues of intellectual property rights; biotechnology; and access to, and benefit sharing of genetic resources (Le Prestre, 2002; McGraw, 2002; Rosendal, 2001; Vadrot 2011; Vadrot, 2014). The complex institutional landscape of international biodiversity politics within which IPBES is operating is increasingly being seen as deficient, fragmented, and unstructured (Le Prestre, 2002). This mirrors the ineffectiveness of the current system in dealing with the ecological crisis politically, institutionally and scientifically (Görg & Brand, 2000; Koetz, Farrell and Bridgewater, 2012; Vadrot, Heumesser & Ritzberger, 2010). Since the establishment of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Subsidiary Body on Scientific Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), the politicized character of biodiversity knowledge became a central feature of biodiversity politics and policies (Brand, 2010a, 2010b; Brand & Vadrot, 2013; Koetz et al., 2008). In this light, the establishment of IPBES is not a matter of course. Since the
early beginnings of the debate on whether to establish and institutionalize a science-policy interface for biodiversity, the dialogue between different stakeholders has been politicized. Due to politicization of the issue, the outcome of the multi-stakeholder meetings under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) from 2008 to 2010 and of the first two plenary meetings in 2011 and 2012 were for a long time unpredictable: different actors had divergent interests, problem understandings and expectations towards a new interfacing institution between science and policy for biodiversity. This
has led to many predictions that the attempt to establish a science-policy interface will fail. Why then has the formal establishment of IPBES succeeded in the end? An answer to this question necessitates both empirical work and theoretical reflection on policy change as a historical development.
The history of IPBES and the policy change concept
