ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the conditions, strengths and limitations of real-life interfaces between science and policy-making for environmental governance. It focuses on a normative reflection on the context and scope of such interfaces. Science–policy interfaces can be defined as social processes that encompass relations between scientists and other actors in the policy process, and which allow for exchanges, co-evolution and joint construction of knowledge with the aim of enriching decision-making. The practical and institutional questions relate to how to create and implement functional interfaces that answer the needs of environmental policy-making, what the needs, roles and responsibilities of the different actors are, and what institutional settings and changes may support such interfaces. In practice, to address effectively a global environmental issue such as biodiversity loss, policy-makers have a series of specific needs from science. Biodiversity loss is one of the key global environmental issues today. Most of the causes of biodiversity loss are ultimately anthropogenic.
