ABSTRACT
When scientists and their work show up in diplomatic spaces, anthropologists have the opportunity to observe the rough edges where climate science and policy meet. Sometimes called a boundary, other times an interface, these powerful epistemic and discursive zones can help us learn about what is at stake in the translations between science and policy. For example, at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approval plenary for their Working Group One’s Sixth Assessment Report—a meeting where government delegates approve the science report’s summary for policymakers sentence-by-sentence, an Indian delegate succinctly objected to one word: “with regard to the figure’s heading stating that ‘every tonne of CO2 we put in the atmosphere adds to global warming,’ INDIA called for the deletion of the ‘we.’” (Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 2021: 23). This intervention can be read doubly, as a line edit or as an ethical statement, objecting to the idea that all of humanity shoulders an equal blame for carbon emissions. This chapter, using ethnographic observations and reports from meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Antarctic Treaty, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, analyzes the key tactics that scientists, diplomats, and technocrats use – be they framings, ethical, or ideological interventions, or strategies for stalling or accelerating progress.
