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Contesting Global Environmental
Knowledge, Norms, and Governance

Through theoretical discussions and case studies, this volume explores how
­processes of contestation about knowledge, norms, and governance processes shape
efforts to promote sustainability through international environmental governance.
The epistemic communities literature of the 1990s highlighted the importance
of expert consensus on scientific knowledge for problem definition and solution
specification in international environmental agreements. This book addresses a
gap in this literature – insufficient attention to the multiple forms of contestation
that also inform international environmental governance. These forms include
within-discipline contestation that helps forge expert consensus, inter-­disciplinary
contestation regarding the types of expert knowledge needed for effective response
to environmental problems, normative and practical arguments about the proper
roles of experts and laypersons, and contestation over how to combine globally
developed norms and scientific knowledge with locally prevalent norms and tra-
ditional knowledge in ways ensuring effective implementation of environmental
policies. This collection advances understanding of the conditions under which
contestation facilitates or hinders the development of effective global environ-
mental governance. The contributors examine how attempts to incorporate more
than one stream of expert knowledge and to include lay knowledge alongside it
have played out in efforts to create and maintain multilateral agreements relating
to environmental concerns.
It will interest scholars and graduate students of political science, global gov-
ernance, international environmental politics, and global policy making. Policy
analysts should also find it useful.

M. J. Peterson earned her PhD at Columbia University and is Professor of

Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.
Transforming Environmental Politics and Policy
Series Editors
Timothy Doyle, Keele University, UK and University of Adelaide,
Australia and Philip Catney, Keele University, UK

The theory and practice of environmental politics and policy are rapidly emerging
as key areas of intense concern in the first, third and industrializing worlds. People
of diverse nationalities, religions and cultures wrestle daily with environment and
development issues central to human and non-human survival on the planet Earth.
Air, Water, Earth, Fire. These central elements mix together in so many ways, spin-
ning off new constellations of issues, ideas and actions, gathering under a multitude
of banners: energy security, food sovereignty, climate change, genetic modification,
environmental justice and sustainability, population growth, water quality and access,
air pollution, mal-distribution and over-consumption of scarce resources, the rights of
the non-human, the welfare of future citizens – the list goes on.
What is much needed in green debates is for theoretical discussions to be rooted in
policy outcomes and service delivery. So, while still engaging in the theoretical realm,
this series also seeks to provide a “real world” policy-making dimension. Politics
and policy making is interpreted widely here to include the territories, discourses,
instruments and domains of political parties, non-governmental organizations, protest
movements, corporations, international regimes, and transnational networks.
From the local to the global – and back again – this series explores environmental
politics and policy within countries and cultures, researching the ways in which green
issues cross North-South and East-West divides. The “Transforming Environmental
Politics and Policy” series exposes the exciting ways in which environmental politics
and policy can transform political relationships, in all their forms.
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/politics/
series/ASHSER-1371

Global Environmental Governance, Civil Society and Wildlife

Birdsong After the Storm
Margi Prideaux

Environment and Conflict

Place and the Logic of Collective Action in the Niger Delta
John Agbonifo

Contesting Global Environmental Knowledge, Norms, and Governance

Edited by M. J. Peterson
Contesting Global
Environmental Knowledge,
Norms, and Governance

Edited by M. J. Peterson
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, M. J. Peterson; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of M. J. Peterson to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Peterson, M. J., 1949- editor.
Title: Contesting global environmental knowledge, norms, and governance /
edited by M.J. Peterson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York : Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Transforming environmental politics and policy |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018045196 | ISBN 9781138054738 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315166445 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmental policy--International cooperation. |
Environmental protection--International cooperation.
Classification: LCC GE170 .C64295 2019 | DDC 363.7/0526–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045196
ISBN: 978-1-138-05473-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-16644-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents

List of illustrations ix
List of contributors x
Preface xiii

1 Introduction: Contestation in international environmental governance 1

M. J. PETERSON

Contestation over definitions of relevant scientific knowledge 2

Contestation over using scientific and other forms of knowledge 5
Preview of contents 8
References 12

PART I
Contestation over relevant scientific knowledge 15

2 Linking scientific knowledge and multilateral environmental governance 17

PAMELA CHASEK

Bringing science to the table 19

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification:
a case study in four rounds 21
Improving the scientific basis for policy decision-making 28
What have we learned? 29
References 30

3 Still Saving the Mediterranean?: Expert communities,

regionalization and institutional change 33
JÖRG BALSIGER, BATTISTINA CUGUSI AND STACY D. VANDEVEER

Experts in regional environmental cooperation 35

Regionalizing and rescaling Mediterranean environmental
governance 39
vi Contents
The MedPlan at forty-something and revisiting Saving the
Mediterranean 44
Where next? 47
References 49

4 Measurement practices and evolutionary global institutions 54

CASEY C. STEVENS

Measurement, contestation, and the evolution of institutions 55

The cases: measurements for governance 58
Measurement and governance institutions 63
Measurement for sustainable development 66
References 67

PART II
Contestation over the uses of expert and lay knowledge in
formulating policy 71

5 Global transdisciplinary science and sustainable

development governance 73
NORICHIKA KANIE AND CASEY C. STEVENS

Global transdisciplinary science 74

Transdisciplinary science as a tool in global governance for
sustainability 77
The construction of transdisciplinarity for the SDGs 82
The prospects for developing transdisciplinary science 84
References 85

6 Climate change denial in the United States and the European Union 89
MIRANDA A. SCHREURS

The Paris Agreement 90

Climate policy debates in the United States 91
Climate policy debates in the European Union 100
The implications of increasingly strong climate denial
and skepticism 104
References 105

7 Science and policy in the International Whaling Commission 110

STEINAR ANDRESEN

Whaling in the “old days”: continued depletion 111

IWC phase 1 (1946 to mid-1960s): continued overexploitation 112
 Contents  vii
IWC phase 2 (mid-1960s to mid-1970s): more conservation,
lower catches 113
IWC phase 3 (mid-1970s to mid-1990s): the anti-whaling norm
swamps the influence of science 115
IWC phase 4 (mid-1990s to 2017): more peaceful waters 120
Changing contours of contestation 122
References 123

PART III
Contestation over the uses of expert and lay knowledge in
implementing policy 125

8 Stakeholder access to norm validation: Whose practices count in

global international relations? 127
ANTJE WIENER

Norms research in international relations 128

Practices: contestation and norm validation 130
Normative opportunity structure 132
Norm typology and research assumptions 134
The outlook for norm alignment between
global and local 138
References 139

9 Global conservation and local lore in a post-colonial society:

How traditional environmental knowledge shapes the
implementation of international environmental agreements
on protected areas 144
KEMI FUENTES-GEORGE

Nonstate actors’ participation in environmental governance 145

Regime fragmentation and complexity: a landscape for
increased contestation 147
Jamaica and Cockpit Country governance: from coalition to
contestation 149
Contestation among conservationists: science and culture 152
The Blue and John Crow Mountains: biodiversity and cultural
heritage 156
Managing contestation: a (relative) success story 158
Linking local lore and scientific surveys for effective
conservation 160
References 162
viii Contents
PART IV
Epistemic communities and contestation 167

10 Reflections on contested knowledge and those who study it 169

PETER M. HAAS

Epistemic communities 1.0 research program 170

Epistemic communities 2.0: including contestation 172
The future of knowledge and contestation 176
Pedagogy about epistemic communities, study, and practices 177
References 178

Index 183
Illustrations

Figures
5.1 Concept of transdisciplinary science 75
5.2 Scientific union membership in ICSU, 1922–2015 79
8.1 Cycle-grid model: sites of contestation and practices of validation 132
9.1 CCSG stakeholder map of Cockpit Country boundaries 154
9.2 NEGAR map of Cockpit Country boundaries 155

Tables
8.1 The norm typology 136
9.1 Partial list of organizations in Cockpit Country management
and advocacy 152
9.2 Partial list of organizations in BJCMNP management and advocacy 157
Contributors

Steinar Andresen earned his PhD at the University of Oslo and is a Research
Professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway. He is also a Collaborator in
the Earth Systems Governance Project now part of the Future Earth Program.
His research focuses primarily on the effectiveness of international agreements
and organizations, the significance of “institutional design,” leadership, and
the relation between science and policy. His most recent publications include
Guri Bang, Arild Underdal, & Steinar Andresen (eds.), The Domestic Politics
of Global Climate Change: Key Actors in International Climate Cooperation
(Edward Elgar, 2015) and Norichika Kanie, Steinar Andresen & Peter M.
Haas (eds.) Improving Global Environmental Governance: Best Practices for
Architecture and Agency (Routledge, 2014).

Jörg Balsiger earned his PhD at the University of California Berkeley and is
an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment,
School of Social Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland. He cur-
rently serves as Director of the Institute for Environmental Sciences and
the Hub for Environmental Governance and Territorial Development. His
most recent publications include Jörg Balsiger & Aysun Uyar, Comparing
Regional Environmental Governance in East Asia and Europe: Proceedings
(Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto Japan, 2013) and arti-
cles in Environmental Science and Policy and Mountain Research and
Development.

Pamela Chasek earned her PhD at Johns Hopkins University and is Professor of
Government and Politics at Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY, USA. She is
­co-founder and Executive Editor of Earth Negotiations Bulletin (International
Institute for Sustainable Development). Her research addresses developing
country capacity building for environmental negotiations, scientific uncertainty
in negotiations, professional cultures in negotiations, and efforts to address
desertification through the UNCCD. Her most recent publications include
Transforming Multilateral Diplomacy: The Inside Story of the Sustainable
Development Goals (Routledge, 2018) and Global Environmental Politics,
7th edition (Westview Press, 2016).
 Contributors  xi
Battistina Cugusi is a PhD student and Research Assistant in the Department of
Geography and Environment at the University of Geneva and senior researcher
on EU external relations and territorial cooperation at the Centro Studi di
Politica Internazionale in Rome. Her research focuses on the EU’s external
relations, particularly with countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and
multilevel governance.
Kemi Fuentes-George earned his PhD at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst and is Associate Professor in Political Science and Environmental
Studies at Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, USA. His research focuses on
environmental governance in developing countries, particularly contestations
over land management. His published work includes Between Preservation
and Exploitation: Transnational Advocacy Networks and Conservation in
Developing Countries (MIT Press, 2016) and articles in Global Environmental
Politics and Biodiversity in the Green Economy.
Peter M. Haas earned his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
USA. He is co-editor of the MIT Press series on Politics, Science, and the
Environment. His research focuses on international cooperation, global envi-
ronmental governance, multilevel governance, the role of science and sci-
entists in environmental governance, and policy strategies for sustainable
development. His most recent publications include Epistemic Communities,
Constructivism, and International Environmental Politics (Routledge, 2015)
and articles in Nature, Nature Climate Change, Environmental Science and
Policy, Global Policy, and Japanese Journal of Political Science.
Norichika Kanie earned his PhD at Keio University and is Professor in
the Department of Media and Governance, Faculty of Environment and
Information Studies at Keio University, Kanagawa, Japan. He is also a Senior
Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies
in Yokohama, Japan. His publications include Norichika Kanie & Frank
Biermann (eds.), Governing through Goals: Sustainable Development Goals
as Governance Innovation (MIT Press, 2017), Norichika Kanie, Peter M. Haas,
& Steinar Andresen (eds.), Improving Global Environmental Governance:
Best Practices for Architecture and Agency (Routledge/Earthscan, 2013) and
articles in Nature, Science, and Sustainability Science.
M. J. Peterson earned her PhD at Columbia University and is Professor of
Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her
research focuses on the workings of international organizations, multilateral
governance of global commons areas, and technology. Her work has been
published in Global Governance, International Organization, and Review of
International Organizations.
Miranda A. Schreurs earned her PhD at the University of Michigan and is Professor
of Environment and Climate Politics at the Bavarian School of Public Policy,
xii Contributors
Technical University of Munich. Her research focuses on nuclear energy, renew-
able energy sources, and management of hazardous wastes. Her work includes
A. Brunnengräber, M.R. Di Nucci, A.M. Isidoro Losada, L. Mez, & M. Schreurs,
Nuclear Waste Governance: An International Comparison (Wiesbaden: Springer
VS, 2015) and articles in Global Environmental Politics, Nature Climate Change,
Im Hürdenlauf zur Energiewende, and Renewable Energy.
Casey C. Stevens earned his PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
and is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College in
Providence, RI, USA. His research focuses on biodiversity, international
environmental governance, and sustainability. His work has appeared in
Environmental Science and Policy, Transnational Environmental Law, and
Land Use Policy.
Stacy D. VanDeveer earned his PhD at the University of Maryland and is
a Professor in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security,
and Global Governance at the McCormack Graduate School and Global
Governance and Human Security, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA.
His work addresses global resources and energy politics, global environmen-
tal and resource governance, comparative politics, the European Union, envi-
ronmental change, and human security. His most recent publications include
Raimund Bleischwitz, Catalina Spataru, Holger Hoff & Stacy Vandeveer
(eds.) Routledge Handbook of the Resource Nexus, (Routledge 2018) and
Henrik Selin & Stacy D. VanDeveer, The European Union and Environmental
Governance (Routledge, 2015).
Antje Wiener earned her PhD at Carleton University and is Professor of Political
Science and Global Governance at the University of Hamburg and is co-editor
of the journal Global Constitutionalism: Human Rights, Democracy and the
Rule of Law. Her current research investigates the interplay between diversity
and normativity in the global realm as two central premises of global gov-
ernance. She is particularly interested in understanding social contestation
over norms and how citizens engage in the contentions about defining global
governance structures. Her most recent publications include Contestation
and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations (Cambridge
University Press, 2018) and Antje Wiener, Tanja A. Börzel, & Thomas Risse,
European Integration Theory, 3rd edition (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Preface

This project emerged from a panel held in March 2014 to honour Peter M. Haas
on the occasion of his being named Distinguished Scholar by the Environmental
Studies Section of the International Studies Association. The timing of that award
was particularly appropriate because it was conferred 25 years after publication
of Haas’s first article about the role of epistemic communities in multilateral
environmental governance, “Do regimes matter? Epistemic communities and
Mediterranean pollution control” in the journal International Organization.
Discussion of the papers presented during the panel quickly expanded to
include consideration of changes in public and government attitudes towards the
reliability of scientific knowledge and its usefulness in making and implement-
ing policy at both the national and international levels. Some of these stemmed
from debates among intellectuals—the challenges to notions that science pro-
duces objective knowledge directly revealing the workings of physical processes
mounted by philosophers of science and scholars of the social studies of knowl-
edge and the claims for the centrality of inclusive deliberation and moral con-
siderations advanced by advocates of strong democracy. Some stemmed from
increased scepticism about scientific knowledge and any policy recommendations
resting on it among the general public in some major countries. This scepticism
and the pushback against national and international environmental cooperation
that it inspires has been most prominent in matters of atmospheric warming/cli-
mate change, but the attack on scientific findings underlying environmental policy
in other areas has also been potent. Both these intellectual challenges and trends in
public mood were visible in 1989 but had intensified and become more prominent
by 2014.
As our discussions continued, we also developed greater understanding
about all the forms of contestation affecting global environmental governance.
Disagreements regarding the value of scientific knowledge as a guide for mak-
ing and implementing policy decisions, a contestation often phrased in terms of
“experts versus laypeople,” often received the most attention since they were the
most widely discussed. Yet two other types of contention that are equally signifi-
cant for global environmental governance have long existed. One is contestation
over which scientific discipline or disciplines provide the most relevant and useful
knowledge for making decisions or assessing results. The other is contestation
xiv Preface
over creating effective implementation among stakeholders having different
worldviews resting on cultural practices, normative beliefs, traditional environ-
mental knowledge, and contemporary science.
The chapters that follow examine the impact of the current high levels of
contestation, each focusing more on some forms than others. They provide mul-
tiple analytical entry points by focusing on different environmental issues, dif-
ferent governments and publics, and different stages of the policy process. What
unites them are efforts to identify productive and pathological contestations,
understand how they happened, and use increased understanding of contesta-
tion to improve international environmental governance. The contributors are
members of different age cohorts—some are senior scholars who have interacted
with Haas and learned from his work for several decades, some are younger
scholars whose direct interactions cover a shorter period of time, and some are
Haas’s students who also have become contributors to the global discussions of
environmental governance.
1 Introduction
Contestation in international
environmental governance
M. J. Peterson

Sustainability has become both a goal to be attained and a guiding standard against
which to assess the adequacy of international environmental governance. This
shift in frame from discrete regulation focused on individual problems to more
comprehensive governance began to emerge at the 1972 Stockholm Conference
on the Human Environment and received a major infusion of political energy at
the Rio+20 Conference in 2012. New actors have become involved in interna-
tional environmental governance and the policy frames organizing their thinking
have become more comprehensive. Throughout this transition, the multilateral
approach to global environmental governance emphasized identifying consensus
scientific knowledge of physical processes and formulating policy guidance based
on it. Policy-makers and citizens were encouraged to rely heavily on epistemic
communities of physical scientists for guidance in formulating and implement-
ing policy (e.g., Knorr Cetina 1991; Haas 1992; Haas, Keohane, and Levy 1993).
Designing environmental governance to pursue sustainability requires a
broad array of knowledge about natural systems, the interconnections between
the physical consequences of human activity and natural ecological processes,
and processes of promoting social change because transitioning to sustainabil-
ity will require widespread change in individual and aggregate human behav-
ior. The broader set of scientific knowledge of natural systems needed typically
establishes multiple scientific communities as sources of authoritative knowledge
about relevant aspects of the environment. The wide-ranging changes in indi-
vidual-, household-, local-, national-, and global-level patterns of human activity
needed to bring human societies within the limits of what the natural environment
can absorb require understanding human interactions, making social science as
relevant to environmental governance as natural science.
Yet other developments have raised serious questions about the validity of this
vision of the place of scientific and other expert knowledge in improved interna-
tional environmental governance. Social studies of knowledge have highlighted
the often-contentious process by which a scientific community comes to consen-
sus behind the theories and facts offered as “scientific knowledge” at any given
moment while various political actors challenged the presumption that policy-
makers and citizens should defer so extensively to the guidance of “science” or
“the scientific community.” Questions of what counts as scientific knowledge,
2 M. J. Peterson
how scientific knowledge becomes “usable knowledge” that can be incorporated
into policy processes, and whose knowledge is relevant to formulating and imple-
menting policy became central questions for scholars and political actors alike.
Understanding the tension between contestation and consensus, both within
epistemic communities of scientists and among the full range of actors engaged
in the policy process, is vital for a better understanding of social learning and
improving policy. Contestation over what knowledge and whose knowledge are
relevant to international environmental governance is unlikely to be eliminated
entirely. Yet without considerable convergence on what knowledge offered by
whom provides a workable basis for proceeding among the actors involved,
policy formulation and implementation are weakened and attaining sustainabil-
ity becomes less likely. Developing the needed convergence requires a better
understanding of the interplay between contestation and consensus during every
phase of the governance process from problem definition through policy-making
to implementation and evaluation.
Through theoretical discussions and case studies, this book seeks to help iden-
tify ways forward to more effective international agreements promoting sustain-
ability by investigating how controversies about what set or sets of scientific
knowledge are relevant to a particular environmental issue, how to incorporate
both scientific and social scientific knowledge into the policy process, and how to
include lay knowledge alongside expert knowledge have played out in efforts to
create and maintain multilateral agreements relating to environmental concerns.

Contestation over definitions of relevant scientific knowledge

Disagreements, including protracted controversy, over the content and reliability
of scientific knowledge can occur within any area of science. How those contro-
versies play out depends on whether it affects the subset of scientific knowledge
being drawn upon for governance – whether it involves an area of “esoteric sci-
ence” distant from current public concern or in an area of “public domain sci-
ence” currently viewed as directly relevant to public welfare (Goldman 2006:
14). Where the knowledge is within an esoteric domain, contestation is unlikely
to attract attention from actors outside the scientific community involved, while
contestation over what counts as knowledge in an area where science appears to
be relevant to public welfare will attract attention from other actors perceiving
themselves as having a clear stake in what is – or is not – accepted as authoritative
scientific knowledge.
Contestation within the communities of scientists producing the relevant
knowledge can take either of two forms. The first occurs within a particular scien-
tific discipline or field. Science is a dynamic enterprise, and both the substantive
content of knowledge and the extent of consensus about it in any discipline or
field can change over time. Lack of consensus may be confined to the answers
currently offered to particular questions but may run deeper and involve disa-
greement on the theories and analytical frameworks that should be used to make
sense of observational data. Analysts have distinguished among four possibilities
 Introduction 3
(Collins and Evans 2006: 71), each with different implications for the ease of
reaching consensus on the relevant scientific knowledge:

1 “normal science” in which there is consensus on the theories and analytical

frameworks and on the basic knowledge of the field;
2 “golem science” in which there is currently no consensus on theories, frame-
works, and basic substantive knowledge but continuing scientific work
appears likely to produce sufficient consensus to make it “normal science” in
the near or medium future;
3 “historical science” in which there is unlikely to be consensus for a long
time – if not forever – because the field it addresses is characterized by com-
plex interactions and trends that cannot be studied through the usual short
time intervals and general routines of laboratory experiments; and
4 “reflexive historical science” in which human activity affects the workings
of physical systems and forces scientists to incorporate humans within their
models of physical processes.

Each type of situation has distinct implications for the readiness of wider public
to defer to scientific knowledge.
Public and policy-maker deference to scientists’ reports and suggestions is
greatest in areas of normal science. Here, the existence of scientific consensus
allows fostering public confidence in both the information and the policy sug-
gestions scientists provide. The lack of scientific consensus means deference is
weaker in areas of golem science. Lack of consensus creates openings for choos-
ing among competing groups of experts or for making policy decisions on other
grounds. The extended debates on the acceptability of GMO foods are a good
example. Continuing argument among scientists about the long-term effects of
genetic modification allows publics and governments to base policy decisions on
other considerations, producing strong divergences in the policies adopted in vari-
ous parts of the world. Public deference to scientific knowledge is even weaker in
areas of historical science because of the complexities of the pathways by which
physical phenomena studied in historical sciences occur. Different analyses
based on different models and inspired by different sets of values can have equal
technical plausibility. Deference is lowest in areas of reflexive historical science
because human activity is part of the process shaping physical outcomes, meaning
that social science, as well as physical science, is directly relevant to answering
“technical” questions, and the lower levels of scientific consensus in many areas
of social science reduce the influence of whatever knowledge might be offered to
citizens and decision-makers.
The second form of contestation about scientific knowledge stems from the
actual or potential relevance of more than one set of scientific knowledge for
understanding some substantive knowledge domain. The situations giving rise
to this form of contestation have some surface resemblance to golem science in
that there is no consensus at the moment, but the source of disagreement runs
deeper because it results from applying more than one scientific discipline to the
4 M. J. Peterson
processes of theory-building, measurement-definition, observation, and infer-
ence from observation. When this form of contestation over the relevant scientific
knowledge arises, citizens and policy-makers do not face the usual “lay-expert”
problem, but a more complicated “lay-two experts problem” (Goldman 2006: 18).
They must determine not only who among those claiming to be experts should be
accepted as such, but also which set of experts possesses what relevant knowledge.
This can be complicated because the various disciplines of contemporary physical
science feature three distinct “ways of knowing” (Pickstone 2000: 10–13): natu-
ral history, analytical, and experimental. Natural history combines an element of
taxonomy – classifying phenomenon through some sorting scheme – with an ele-
ment of tracing change over time. Analytical science seeks knowledge by break-
ing things into parts whether the parts be static elements of a larger compound or
the process by which some element flows through the system. Thus, analytical
chemistry focuses on treating the world as a set of chemicals; thermodynamics
focuses on energy flows; and histology focuses on processes common to all living
tissue regardless of the species of animal from which they are taken. Experimental
science involves placing elements under controlled conditions to analyze their
physical processes under varying conditions or to create new entities out of new
combinations of elements. Synthetic chemicals, antibiotics, and recombinant
DNA are all well-known products of experimental science as creation.
Reliance on decomposing natural systems to analyze them part-by-part was
strongly imprinted into Western science during the 18th and 19th centuries, ini-
tially as an effort to explain many physical processes with mechanical analogies
(Schofield 1969), but later as an expression of confidence that simple covering
laws could explain a wide array of similar phenomena (Cassirer 1951; Thackray
1970). Yet more holistic ways of thinking about nature never disappeared. The
ecosystem concept was first introduced in the 1930s (Willis 1997) and became
increasingly prominent in the late 20th century as grounding for claims that envi-
ronmental concerns needed to be addressed in ways acknowledging the interrela-
tions of natural systems (Smith and Smith 2012; Likens and Lindenmayer 2010).
The emergence of ecology as a distinct scientific discipline also had another effect
because it highlighted differences between analytical and dialectical reasoning.
Each tradition runs deep, originating in the same historical era (c. 500–400 BCE).
Each has distinct strengths and weaknesses as sources of “usable knowledge” for
policy (Disheng 1990; Peng and Nisbett 1999; Nisbett et al. 2001) but combining
them can be a challenge because each aligns most closely with different world-
views (e.g., Holling 1998; Sarewitz 2004).
Focusing on sustainability has given rise to a third dimension of arguments
about what constitutes policy-relevant knowledge: the place of social scientific
knowledge. Humans are connected to the physical world through the physical
characteristics of their own bodies and the dependence of their societies on a
supportive natural environment. They also affect physical systems through their
patterns of social life and economic activity. Social life and economic activity
involve physical action but are shaped by human-created and human-alterable
practices. One need not go to the extremes of regarding all actual or possible social
 Introduction 5
practices as equally valid experientially or morally to acknowledge that studying
human interactions with other humans requires different approaches than study-
ing molecules interacting with other molecules. At the same time, lower levels of
methodological and substantive consensus in the social sciences means that social
science does not resemble “normal science” in the physical world, making the for-
mation of policy-guiding epistemic communities unlikely. Attaining sustainabil-
ity is likely to involve reflexive historical science since the physical processes of
ecosystems are complex and human-affected. This suggests that efforts to attain
general sustainability – as distinct from sustainability in a localized ecosystem or
a defined type of human activity – will involve strong doses of controversy among
experts and considerable room for choosing policy for other reasons.

Contestation over using scientific and other forms of knowledge

Once accepted as relevant for policy, scientific or social scientific knowledge can
be used effectively in two situations. If, and for as long as, actors involved in the
policy process believe that experts “know better,” they will defer to the knowl-
edge the experts endorse. Whenever that belief weakens, knowledge will be used
effectively only if those involved in the policy process understand the knowledge
and its implications well enough to regard it as useful for the policy enterprise.
In this context, “useful” is not likely to mean leaving aside other forms of knowl-
edge; the impulse to defer to experts is not strong enough to occlude other per-
spectives and considerations.
Thus, whenever experts do not receive automatic deference, effective com-
municating between “experts” with scientific knowledge and “laypersons” with
other sorts of knowledge is crucial to a successful policy process. Two distinct
tensions arise in contemporary efforts to define the respective uses of expert and
lay knowledge. The first and more generally relevant is whose knowledge should
weigh how heavily in influencing the direction and outcome of policy processes.
Whenever expertise is relevant there is a need for what Selinger and Crease call
“educated decision making” that takes technical considerations into account. This
raises the question of whether decisions about technical aspects of policy need to
be endorsed in democratic processes or should be based on the best expert advice.
Selinger and Crease suggest there may be no universal answer, noting that “The
first choice risks technological paralysis; the second invites popular opposition”
(2006: 3).
Their concern derives partly from the usual formulation of the “lay/expert”
distinction as a zero-sum contest between different types of knowledge, one very
precise and based on human-independent facts and the other quite fuzzy because
it includes preferences and normative considerations, in which more reliance on
one eclipses the other in equal measure. However, belief in the strength of the dif-
ferences in precision and reliability have been weakened as doubts have been cast
on the correspondence theory of truth, the objectivity of scientific research, and
the possibility of insulating the scientific enterprise from the values, biases, career
incentives, and personality clashes of scientists. These doubts and concerns mean
6 M. J. Peterson
that the relevance of expert knowledge has extended to all parts of the policy pro-
cess where natural scientists might be drawn in as experts: as members of standing
expert advisory committees, as special consultants on some particular question,
as expert witnesses in legal proceedings, or through employment in staff posi-
tions in government agencies responsible for acquiring relevant data or perform-
ing policy-related analyses. Whatever the role they are alotted, including experts
and relying on their policy suggestions strains against democratic norms of broad
participation and hearing all distinctive voices. Many contemporary advocates of
deepening democracy by establishing clearer processes of inclusive deliberation
(e.g., Flyvbjerg 1998; Thompson 2008; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014) worry that
too much deference to experts will provide openings for elitism, masked ideologi-
cal positions, and political partisanship to creep in unnoticed under the cover of
supposedly neutral expertise. However, democratic deliberation is not a cure-all;
as popular forms of climate change denial and skepticism have demonstrated,
efforts to limit consideration of scientific knowledge and other expertise can also
serve ideological and partisan purposes (e.g., Oreskes and Conway 2010).
The actual dynamics involved in drawing on both expert and lay knowledge
are not adequately captured in the standard dichotomy between “laypeople” and
“experts” because there is a range of relevant knowledge. Within the community
of scientists working in any particular field, there is an acknowledged “core” of
leading specialists who are the sources of most of the new knowledge produced at
any moment, as well as a surrounding group of scientists and students who fully
understand the core members’ work and help test and refine it. Putting the core at
the center of a widening set of concentric circles of other participants in the policy
process who hold varying degrees of expertise, allows distinguishing (Collins and
Evans 2006: 59–62) among individuals possessing:

1 “referred expertise” (expertise in a related scientific or technical field) who

can understand the scientific knowledge well enough to evaluate policy pro-
posals, manage implementation projects, or coordinate inter-disciplinary
research efforts;
2 “interactional expertise” who can converse knowledgeably with members of
the scientific core, understand the flow of controversy among scientists in the
core, and convey to the broader public the content of substantive scientific
knowledge in the field and the degree of consensus in the core regarding it; or
3 “contributory expertise” who have more scientific or technical understanding
than citizens or policy-makers in general because they know things relevant
to refining or testing scientific knowledge or to applying it in the field.

The “lay/expert” dynamic becomes more complex when some citizens have con-
tributory knowledge. They are not in the same situation of one-sided dependence
on experts as the dichotomous model assumes. They are likely to be in a better
position to assess the quality of the scientific knowledge offered or the quality of
its reformulation into “usable knowledge” for policy purposes than is assumed
to be true of laypeople in general. The broad array of contributory knowledge
 Introduction 7
existing in some fields turns the distinction between “experts” and “laypeople”
into a spectrum of overlapping possibilities because some forms of contributory
knowledge can be held without benefit of significant scientific training. Nearby
sheep farmers had information relevant to the controversy over the harms caused
by radioactive pollution near the Sellafield nuclear complex because they could
see the changed behavior and health of their sheep (Collins and Evans 2006: 60).
Providing some basic training in what to notice and how to report it aided mobi-
lization of “citizen scientists” to provide data about the impact of events like the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill along the US Gulf Coast (McCormick 2012) and such
efforts spread understanding of the data collection enterprise. The whole argu-
ment for engaging in “community-based research” and “co-production of knowl-
edge” with members of distinct (often marginalized) groups, like arguments for
paying attention to “traditional environmental knowledge” rest on a belief that
many individuals possess knowledge deserving attention.
Definitions of relevant contributory knowledge have been expanding at the
same time that deference to all forms of authority has declined. This affects both
those “in authority” by virtue of some organizational leadership position and
those functioning as “an authority” because of greater knowledge (Peters 1958).
Traditional and social media have become sites for investigative journalism, and
exposés of scientific fraud in the conduct of research (ICSU 2009), dishonesty,
and error have become more common. The public itself now seems less homoge-
neous than it once was because members of groups that have been marginalized
or subordinated are campaigning vigorously for change. Some of these campaigns
have focused on and affected the practice of science in certain areas. This is par-
ticularly true in medicine and related science fields where women are seeking
more control over their own treatment and reproduction decisions; homosexuals
are resisting notions that their sexual orientation is something that should be cor-
rected through medical treatment; and blacks are challenging the hierarchy of
race that has consigned them to lesser treatments. 1960s counterculture activists
began the ongoing trend of regarding professionals of all sorts, including sci-
entists, as agents of social control and/or of the military-industrial complex. A
resurgence of romantic attitudes toward nature combined with popular interest
in traditional Hindu and Chinese medicine to encourage the spread of alternative
medical treatments.
Two schools of thought about the practice of the natural sciences deepened
these developments by arguing that scientists, even when carrying out their
knowledge-building work according to best practices, do not have any surer
access to the truth about physical systems than anyone else. Scholars pursuing
social studies of knowledge (SSK) focused on the processes by which “scientific
knowledge” was developed and refined have concluded that scientific knowledge
is not an “objective” reflection of the world but is the product of a set of humanly
constructed modes of thought. While agreeing with more traditional historians of
science that the content of scientific knowledge changes over time, they viewed
the change not as a process of approximating objective truth ever more closely but
as a process in which one social construction is replaced by another without the
8 M. J. Peterson
same confidence that the newer is an improvement over the earlier. Post-colonial
theorists went further, regarding Western scientific practice as part of a “colonial
devastation wrought on indigenous communities” (e.g., Harrison 2005; Tuhiwai
Smith 2012) causing both cultural collapse and loss of traditional knowledge of
local ecosystems. Post-colonial theorists share with SSK scholars a strong sen-
sitivity to the power dynamics created by notions of “objective science” but go
further in linking use of research-based knowledge not only to the rise of tech-
nical-rational decision-making and management in the West, but also to erosion
of customary authority and cultural integrity in non-Western areas (e.g., Escobar
2011). Though schemes for bringing both Western-style analytical science and
traditional knowledge to bear in a mutually reinforcing way have been suggested
(e.g., Gómez-Baggethun et al. 2013; Knudtson and Suzuki 2006; Armitage et al.
2011), their impact is limited among those who regard the colonial experience as
continuing to cast a deep shadow that continues to makes science-society rela-
tions in developing countries “highly diverse, complex, and contentious” (Van
Kerkhoff and Pilbeam 2017: 31).
Suggestions that scientists have no greater access to truth even in scientific
domains raises what Collins and Evans (2006: 40) call “the problem of exten-
sion” – determining how far into the technical details informing proposed policies
and the schemes for policy implementation public consultation and deliberation
should extend – or, put the other way, how much the public and elites should
simply defer to scientists’ knowledge. The answer is likely to vary from prob-
lem to problem, with more scrutiny of the proffered scientific knowledge and
expert advice likely either when the range of contributory knowledge held by
non-experts is wide or when significant elements of elites and the public reject the
scientific knowledge as wrong or irrelevant.
Environmental governance provides many examples of another dynamic
affected by the “lay/expert” relation: increasing realization that implementing
policy requires support from a variety of stakeholders. Even when governments
were the only stakeholder at the table, they sought protection against the potential
for partisan bias in the conveyance of scientific knowledge by having “their own
scientists” – scientists at least of their own nationality and preferably also working
at universities or institutes inside the country – participate in scientific advisory
committees or other expertise-provision processes. As Willard Chapman put it
in explaining his insistence on a multinational composition of the Interamerican
Tropical Tuna Commission’s Scientific Advisory Committee, “we have to gain
the facts in conjunction with the Latinos so they will believe them” (Chapmen
1950). Many of the same tensions about whose knowledge should receive what
weight that dog the policy formulation state also affect the implementation and
policy evaluation stages of policy processes.

Preview of contents
The chapters in this volume are designed to advance understanding of the the-
oretical, ethical, and practical implications of these sorts of controversies for
 Introduction 9
decisions and activities related to pursuing the policy goal of sustainability at the
international level. They are divided into three distinct sets focused on different
types of contention.

Contestation over relevant scientific knowledge

The first set of chapters explores the implications of contestation about what bod-
ies of scientific knowledge are relevant to formulating policies to promote more
sustainable human activity. In many instances of policy-making focused on dis-
crete problems of pollution or depletion of particular renewable resources, one
scientific discipline was regarded as the primary source of relevant knowledge for
the policy effort. This was clearly true in efforts to address “acid rain” in Europe
(Levy 1993), or protection of the stratospheric ozone layer (Parson 2003). It was
less true in fisheries management, where the relevant knowledge was a hybrid of
biological and economic elements (Peterson 1992). Yet even in fisheries manage-
ment, the expertise involved was heavily analytical – depending on decomposing
ecosystems into their parts and focusing on the dynamics of processes in each
part. This began to change in the 1990s as advocates of an “ecosystems approach”
argued that it was not enough to understand population dynamics species-by-­
species but also necessary to take account of the interrelations between all species
of marine life in a particular area (FAO 2003). The relevance of social science
knowledge was asserted implicitly in developing countries’ insistence on link-
ing environment and development, a linkage indicated in the names of the two
main UN Conferences of the late 20th century – the 1972 Stockholm Conference
on the Human Environment, and the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment
and Development.
Pamela Chasek examines what happens when defining and diffusing
­policy-relevant scientific knowledge gets tangled in arguments about the goals
to be advanced by a particular multilateral agreement in Chapter 2. The ability of
the scientific advisory bodies established in the UN Convention on Combatting
Desertification to facilitate cooperation among the governments of states that
became parties to the Convention was severely limited by ongoing disagreement
about whether it was intended to foster economic development of a particularly
poor region of the world now coping with extended drought, or to promote coop-
eration in limiting or mitigating the impact of a major change in natural conditions.
In Chapter 3, Jörg Balsiger, Battistina Cugusi, and Stacy VanDeveer track
the changes in how scientists and policy-makers have interacted to co-produce
policy-relevant knowledge for environmental cooperation among the states ring-
ing the Mediterranean Sea. The influence of scientists was strong in the prob-
lem-definition and agenda-formation phases, mainly because their presentations
and charts presented the Mediterranean as a common area harmed by pollution
originating from all of the adjacent land areas. Scientists and scientific knowl-
edge have been much less powerful in the decision and implementation phases
because of a shift towards greater attention to bureaucratic logics as cooperation
shifted into implementation and the prime site of the policy process shifted from
10 M. J. Peterson
a UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) Regional Seas Program to European
Union institutions.
Though the maxim “If you can’t measure, you can’t manage” has become
more prominent in global governance, common measurement systems do not
always promote effective policy implementation and evaluation. In Chapter 4,
Casey Stevens uses three examples of efforts to develop a common system for
measuring progress toward some development goal formulated in three inter-
national institutions – the United Nations Development Programme, the World
Bank Group, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – to reveal how
the structure of the work process leading to the measurement system affected the
extent to which it was accorded credibility by other actors. Both the UNDP and
IPCC efforts became the agreed standard for assessing progress towards the goal,
while the World Bank effort had little impact.

Contestation over the uses of expert and lay knowledge

in formulating policy
The second set of chapters addresses contestation over the respective roles of
expert and lay knowledge in the formulation of policy. The importance of listen-
ing to what ordinary citizens say about their experiences and concerns is a cen-
tral point in a large literature of democratizing policy-making on a wide array of
issues, including many where expert knowledge is needed for good policy formu-
lation and effective policy implementation (e.g., Flyvbjerg 1998; Dryzek 2010;
Dryzek and Stephenson 2014). These chapters explore various ways scientific
knowledge can be eclipsed by other considerations.
Norichika Kanie and Casey Stevens use the experience of the UN’s Future
Earth Program to explore the problems encountered when both physical and social
science expertise must be brought to bear for effective governance in Chapter 5.
Sustainable development rests firmly in the realm of reflexive science, meaning
that what they call “transdisciplinarity” – the ability to bridge different fields of
knowledge in academic disciplines – will be crucial to the success of the interna-
tional sustainable development agenda. They also explain how the need to bring
a wide array of non-expert stakeholders into the policy process makes successful
transdisciplinarity even more challenging.
Miranda Schreurs explains in Chapter 6 why the strong consensus about the
extent and human role in causing atmospheric warming among atmospheric scien-
tists has not guided policy formulation on climate change in all countries. She exam-
ines the varieties of climate change denial and skepticism, tracing how they became
influential in the United States and are attracting increasing support in Europe. The
net result is a strong challenge to not only the content of scientific consensus on
climate change but to the relevance of scientific knowledge for policy-making that
inhibits efforts to reach global agreements to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
In Chapter 7, Steinar Andresen takes up the regulation of whaling, an issue on
which scientific consensus has had limited impact on policy decisions because of
the strength of support for a competing normative argument. In the late 1960s,
 Introduction 11
there was sufficient scientific consensus about cetacean population dynamics
to orient management of whaling towards sustaining whale populations in the
New Management Procedure. However, they were displaced in 1982 by a blan-
ket moratorium on all commercial whaling operations. Though this step could
be defended on purely scientific grounds at the time, it was clear by the mid-
1990s that some whale populations were large enough to support regulated taking.
Advocates of protecting whales from human exploitation have retained enough
influence in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to keep the morato-
rium in place, but the new understandings of whale population dynamics devel-
oped by the Scientific Committee and accepted by the IWC as the basis of Revised
Management Procedure in 1994 have led to a situation in which limited taking on
robust stocks no longer elicits strong protest from IWC member governments.

Contestation over the roles of expert and lay knowledge

in implementing policy
The third set of chapters explores the ways in which contestation over the respec-
tive places of expert and lay knowledge in the policy process affect implementing
policy decisions. Both chapters also highlight the interplay between consensus
and contestation at global, national, and local levels.
Antje Wiener focuses in Chapter 8 on the importance of anchoring interna-
tional environmental cooperation in the practices of regular citizens in each of the
affected countries. This only occurs when there are good and plausible connec-
tions between three levels of norms, the “Level 1” (broad or macro) norms stating
very general principles that are widely accepted around the world, such as pre-
caution and common but differentiated responsibilities; the more focused “Level
2” (meso) norms guiding effort regarding each type of environmental problem;
and “Level 3” (specific or micro) norms defining rules for conduct governments
and other actors that are institutionalized in particular international environmental
agreements. Many implementation problems stem from a lack of articulated meso
norms that connect the micro rules to the broad principles capable of giving the
rules legitimacy in the eyes of those needing to take action in particular places.
Kemi Fuentes-George uses Chapter 9 to highlight the importance of local com-
munities’ actions for the successful implementation of international environmen-
tal agreements. He uses case studies of developing management plans for two
protected areas in rural parts of Jamaica to show that local actors will resist even
the most robustly-designed management plans based on internationally-endorsed
practices if the plans do not accommodate local actors’ beliefs. The contrasting
cases also reveal the conscious effort needed to meld local and global knowledge
to create management plans locals will accept and help implement.

Epistemic communities and contestation

Peter M. Haas draws on his decades of experience studying international envi-
ronmental cooperation (starting in Haas 1989) to reflect in the final chapter on
12 M. J. Peterson
the roles and impacts of scientific epistemic communities in today’s conditions
of contestation. He identifies two distinct phases of research on the roles of sci-
entific epistemic communities in global environmental governance. First phase
studies revealed the importance of scientific and policy consensus within expert
epistemic communities as a basis for expert influence in governance processes.
Second phase studies have addressed questions about the limits to epistemic com-
munity influence by paying greater attention to contestation as a normal part of
governance processes. In this chapter, Haas goes beyond much of the existing
literature by identifying five distinct types of contestation. The first three are the
within-science contestations that are an integral part of developing new scientific
knowledge, the longstanding “experts versus laypeople” arguments about how
far citizens and decision-makers should defer to experts in policy decisions and
implementation, and the related arguments about the relative place of technical,
normative, and cultural considerations in governance. The fourth is the between-
level contention that emerges because international environmental governance
involves national implementation of globally agreed-upon decisions. The fifth,
which Haas calls meta-contestation, occurs as actors seek to develop shared
understandings about the forms and moments of consensus and contestation that
will permit both effective governance at any particular time and the openness to
revision needed to maintain sustainability over the long term in a changing world.

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Part I

Contestation over relevant

scientific knowledge
2 Linking scientific knowledge
and multilateral environmental
governance
Pamela Chasek

“The need for science policy applied to the management of transboundary and
global environmental threats is now widely recognized,” wrote Peter Haas in
2004. Decision-makers need accurate scientific and technical information about
the nature of threats, how each actor will be affected, and the types of arrange-
ments that can be developed to address transboundary and global risks. However,
scientific knowledge is not always accessible to decision-makers, their policy
advisers, and citizens. The most advanced scientific knowledge is embodied
in journal articles and scholarly books that only cognoscente can fully under-
stand. At the same time, decision-makers often have questions that are not easy
to answer scientifically, due to uncertainty or ongoing research, or to answer in a
policy-relevant way within a time frame relevant for decision-makers.
Since the early 1990s, international environmental organizations and treaty
bodies have grappled with the challenge of effectively incorporating scientific
knowledge into policymaking. This chapter examines this challenge through a
case study of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which
illustrates how developing a mutually beneficial relationship between science and
policy is easier said than done. It first looks at how knowledge and institutions
interact and at the evolution of efforts to institutionalize scientific advice into mul-
tilateral environmental agreements, then focuses on these efforts in the UNCCD.
Finally, it concludes with lessons learned for operationalizing international organ-
izations as both venues for and agents of knowledge diffusion.
By their very nature, environmental problems do not lend themselves to preci-
sion. The causes or long-term effects of pollution, toxic waste, carbon dioxide
emissions, species extinction, drought, and land degradation are not always clear.
The nonlinear nature of many environmental issues, the large number of common
problems, and the poorly understood relationship between the natural world and
the social world conspire to render global environmental problems difficult to
solve. Policymakers are rarely certain of the complex interplay of factors in an
ecosystem and cannot always anticipate the long-term consequences of measures
they design. Whenever they are persuaded that without the help of experts, they
risk making the wrong policy choice (Haas 1992, 13), they are eager to include
interaction with scientific knowledge and scientific bodies when creating or
implementing an international environmental treaty or regime.
18 Pamela Chasek
There are many theoretical approaches that explain how international organi-
zations or regimes come into existence, function, and change. However, most
approaches pay little attention to the role that science and scientific bodies play in
the operation of environmental regimes.1 Scholars taking structural or hegemonic-
power approaches hold that the primary factor determining regime formation and
change is the relative strength of the state actors involved in a particular issue and
that “stronger states in the issue system will dominate the weaker ones and deter-
mine the rules of the game” (Keohane & Nye 1977, 50–51). However useful it has
been in explaining the creation of post–World War II economic systems, a strictly
structural approach cannot explain why global environmental regimes have been
negotiated or how science and knowledge affect these regimes. Studies based
on game theory and utilitarian models of bargaining suggest that small groups
of states, or coalitions, are more likely to succeed in negotiating an international
regime than a large number because each player can more readily understand the
bargaining strategies of other the players (Chasek, Downie & Brown 2017, 27).
While this approach can explain bargaining strategies, it doesn’t really address
how actors understand and respond to the underlying science necessary for an
environmental regime to succeed.
The epistemic-communities model emphasizes the impact of international
learning and the activities of transnational networks of experts and bureaucrats
formed primarily on the basis of scientific research into a given problem on
the evolution of regimes. The emphasis on “epistemic communities,” initially
advanced by Peter Haas, is a constructivist approach to international relations
concerned with agency; it seeks to understand actors associated with the formula-
tion of ideas, and the circumstances, resources, and mechanisms by which new
ideas or policy doctrines get developed and are introduced to the political process.
Haas (1989) identifies intra-elite shifts within and outside governments as the
critical factor in the convergence of state policies in support of a stronger regime.
The shifts empower technical and scientific specialists allied with officials of
international organizations, who form transnational epistemic communities –
communities of experts sharing common values and approaches to policy prob-
lems (Chasek, Downie & Brown 2017, 27). Moreover, regimes built with usable
scientific knowledge appear to be more effective at inducing states to achieve their
intended environmental goals (Haas and Stevens 2011, 134).
Since 1972, an increasing number of multilateral environmental agreements
(MEAs) have worked with epistemic communities to “mobilize and utilize net-
works of environmental scientists” in the development of strategies to address
transboundary pollution and the protection of natural resources (Haas & Haas
2002, 598). Many international organizations and treaty bodies have recruited
members of the relevant “ecological epistemic community” to serve as staff mem-
bers or consultants and the organizations themselves have turned to this commu-
nity for advice. To a certain extent, the ideas of the epistemic community have
become institutionalized in international environmental organizations. But the
existence of scientific networks and epistemic communities does not guarantee
that scientific knowledge is successfully transmitted to or used by policymakers.
 Linking science and environmental governance 19
Several studies make clear that scientific knowledge is unlikely to be used
unless the science is seen as credible, legitimate, and salient. As Cash et al. (2003,
8086) explain:

Credibility involves the scientific adequacy of the technical evidence and

arguments. Salience deals with the relevance of the assessment to the needs
of decision makers. Legitimacy reflects the perception that the production of
information and technology has been respectful of stakeholders’ divergent
values and beliefs, unbiased in its conduct, and fair in its treatment of oppos-
ing views and interests.

Another impediment to successful transmission of science from epistemic com-

munities to policymakers stems from how scientific participation in forming
and implementing an international environmental regime is actually organized.
Research suggests that scientific communities may not be influential if their exper-
tise and policy-relevant claims about causes and effects of natural processes are
not developed behind a politically insulated wall (Haas & Stevens 2011, Andresen
2000). The more independent the science is from policymakers, the greater its
potential influence will be on environmental regimes. In other words, for scien-
tific knowledge to be seen as legitimate by policymakers, it must not come from
just one institutional source or it is likely to be perceived as politically biased. One
way to avoid the appearance of bias is through the establishment of international
environmental assessments and/or scientific panels that bring together multiple
sources of information and are not reliant on a single funder or political sponsor.
With these considerations in mind, social scientists have increasingly scruti-
nized the role of science and scientific advisers in international policymaking. In
particular, they are now questioning the common understanding of science and
policy as two separate realms, with science “speaking truth to power” (Kohler
et al. 2012, 60–61). All organizations cannot be assumed to be rational and auto-
matically recognize and adopt what prove to be the appropriate policy responses
to available science. More often than not, they still reflect the wants and needs of
their most powerful constituencies (Haas & Stevens 2011, 128), with a negative
impact on the credibility, legitimacy, and salience of the science itself.

Bringing science to the table

Numerous challenges face those involved in designing scientific advisory bod-
ies to provide the scientific knowledge that policymakers need, understand, and
trust. While some scientific advisory bodies have achieved great success along
one of these metrics, achieving success across all three simultaneously has proven
more elusive.
Kohler et al. (2012) examine several broad types of institutions that enable
interaction between scientists, social scientists, and policymakers and provide
expert advice for environmental regimes. The first two provide state of the art
assessments, which convey comprehensive overviews of available evidence
20 Pamela Chasek
around a particular environmental challenge. One of the best-known stand-
alone assessments is the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which
assessed the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being (MA
2005). Standing review panels have many of the advantages of one-off assess-
ments while also providing the continuity and reactivity that can increase the sali-
ence of advice for policymaking. Two examples are the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The IPCC and IPBES do not
undertake their own research; rather, they evaluate existing peer-reviewed pub-
lished research to provide policy-relevant yet neutral and non-prescriptive con-
sensus views. Thus, the IPCC and IPBES occupy an intermediary position in the
science-policy relationship, in which they sit outside both the realm of scientific
inquiry and actual decision-making (Kohler et al. 2012, 63–64).
Subsidiary bodies established by and reporting to the Conference of the Parties
(COP) of a particular treaty represent another means of institutionalizing expert
advice. These bodies interact directly with the COP to provide advice on scientific
and technical matters while also benefiting from the institutional and organiza-
tional support of the treaty’s Secretariat. Because their agendas are set by the
COP, in principle the advice they provide responds directly to the needs of the
COP and should thus be salient. There are two large classes of subsidiary bod-
ies: broad membership bodies, where any party to the treaty in question can send
representatives, and limited-membership committees, where Parties delegate the
provision of advice to a smaller group of experts (Kohler et al. 2012, 64–65).
Examples of the former include the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technological
Advice and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Subsidiary Body on
Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice. Examples of the latter include
the Stockholm Convention’s Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee,
the Rotterdam Convention’s Chemical Review Committee, and the Montreal
Protocol’s Scientific Assessment Panels.
The function of the expertise being called on by participating governments
plays an important role in the extent to which the science retains credibility, legiti-
macy, and salience (see Kohler et al. 2012, 66–69). One key function played
by expert advice, and by the bodies established to produce such advice, is issue
framing, which can often help to raise awareness of scientific evidence. Such
awareness-raising efforts usually pre-date the negotiation of a treaty and are often
stand-alone or one-off assessment efforts. However, the way the issue is framed
at the early stages of expert review can shape policy options in the longer term.
Another function, perhaps the most visible contribution of expert advice in the
day-to-day operation of an MEA, is providing operational advice. This advice can
help Parties understand what needs to be done to implement treaty requirements
and design processes that facilitate that action. In this regard, some expert bod-
ies, such as the technical options committees under the Montreal Protocol, have
achieved a greater level of credibility, legitimacy, and salience in their output
than others.
 Linking science and environmental governance 21
A third important function is creating momentum for a policy shift. Large-
scale global assessments, such as the MA and the IPCC, were useful in this regard
as they engaged policymakers, scientists, and non-governmental organizations in
the search for solutions. In some cases, these assessments triggered a change in
the operation or focus of an MEA. In others, most of the influence is more indi-
rect – changing public perceptions of the problem and thereby changing the dis-
course in the relevant scientific bodies and, through them, the COP.
But one size does not fit all. Different scientific bodies and mechanisms transfer
knowledge to policymakers in different ways, different environmental problems
exist in different political contexts, and different institutions may not respond in
the same way. Designing bodies or mechanisms to produce scientifically cred-
ible and legitimate outputs meeting the needs of policymakers is thus situation-­
specific. The challenges posed by situation-specificity are revealed clearly in the
case of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The use of trial
and error characterized the approach of international policymakers and scientists
alike as they tried to link science to multilateral environment governance.

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification:

a case study in four rounds
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was negoti-
ated under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly following the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It is often referred to as the first sustain-
able development convention, in that it tried to encompass the three pillars of sus-
tainable development: economic, social, and environmental. It is often bundled
with the UNFCCC and the CBD as the “Rio Conventions.” However, unlike its
Rio siblings, the UNCCD institutions have struggled over the years to effectively
incorporate science into the regime. This can be traced in part to the UNCCD,
which was intended not only to address the science of land degradation but also
to address poverty, both as a cause and a consequence of land degradation in the
drylands (UNCCD 1994, Article 4). As a result, many participants viewed the
UNCCD as a development convention rather than an environmental one and iden-
tified fighting poverty as its primary objective (Bauer and Stringer 2009, 251). The
effort to create effective scientific advisory bodies can be described in four phases
or rounds: (1) the negotiation of the treaty, (2) the Committee on Science and
Technology, (3) the Scientific Conference, and (4) the Science-Policy Interface.

Round 1
The scientific community had an opportunity to play a major role in the negotiation of
the UNCCD, but its influence was minimal. UN General Assembly resolution 47/188,
which established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Desertification
(INCD) to elaborate the UNCCD, called for creating a “multidisciplinary panel of
experts to provide the necessary expertise in the scientific, technical, legal and other
related fields” (United Nations General Assembly 1992). The INCD established a
22 Pamela Chasek
17-member International Panel of Experts on Desertification (IPED) as the central
mechanism for the contribution of epistemic communities into the negotiations. The
experts were appointed by the executive secretary of the INCD Secretariat, Hama Arba
Diallo, and provided scientific knowledge in the form of presentations at the initial
stages of the negotiations, reports, responses to questions from the INCD, and assistance
to the Secretariat in the preparation of documents. The experts met in Geneva six weeks
before each negotiating session until the UNCCD was adopted in 1994 (Corell 1996, 8).
Corell (1996) identified four reasons for the limited impact of the scientific
community during the negotiations: the state of science relevant to the deserti-
fication problem, the lack of expert interest, the politicization of expert advice,
and the design of the IPED. She argued that experts who were involved with the
negotiating process had little chance to influence the outcome because the IPED
was established too late in the fact-finding process. Thus, it had no influence on
the definition of desertification included in the treaty, it lacked sufficient time to
prepare high-quality expert reports, and the reports actually submitted arrived too
late in the negotiating process to have a significant impact on agenda setting and
the design of the convention. She also notes that there was even a deliberate move
to avoid producing any new scientific knowledge during the negotiations because
it was felt that doing so would undermine the “neutral” status of the international
panel of experts. Others believe that the Panel may have been deliberately designed
to merely serve as scientific legitimization for the negotiations. Moreover, the
absence of an already established international network of scientists concerned
with desertification made it even more difficult for the Panel to have much influ-
ence (Chasek 2013). Bauer and Stringer (2009, 253) note that the role of science
could have been minimized because science is rarely able to provide quick-fix solu-
tions to urgent problems, rarely provides simple solutions that can be transferred to
the policy arena, typically develops iteratively over time, and is rarely definitive or
final. These characteristics of science complicate and could lead to the marginali-
zation of scientific experts in the negotiation of an international convention.
But while scientific experts were marginalized, NGOs had more success.
Long Martello (2004) argues that many participating governments and the INCD
Secretariat were already attuned to understandings of desertification as locally
contingent and arising from a complex mix of social, biophysical, and economic
factors because they viewed the UNCCD as a development assistance convention,
rather than an environmental one (Chasek 2013). Thus, the INCD and Secretariat
relied little on the IPED and, instead, emphasized the importance of traditional and
local forms of knowledge and the experience of NGOs and local communities in
combating desertification and mitigating the effects of drought. This approach to
indigenous and local knowledge is reflected in the convention, which emphasizes
the broad category of “knowledge,” beyond just scientific knowledge, signaling
reliance on a wider range of cognitive resources for understanding and ameliorat-
ing desertification (Long Martello 2004). Such traditional knowledge also reflects
viewing the UNCCD as a sustainable development convention. For example, the
identification of useful farming practices contributes to poverty reduction, the
identification of useful plant and animal species contributes to conservation and
 Linking science and environmental governance 23
biodiversity, and forms of social organization that function well in a particular
agro-pastoral system contribute to community empowerment (UNCCD 2017).

Round 2
To bring scientists and social scientists into the implementation of the Convention,
UNCCD Article 24 established the Committee on Science and Technology (CST).
The CST membership is multidisciplinary and, in principle, all Parties can par-
ticipate. Although this permits inclusiveness, there are considerable trade-offs.
Bauer and Stringer (2009, 254) posit that the large and diverse membership of
the CST renders it rather unwieldy and leads to discontinuities in the representa-
tives attending each meeting. Discussions are typically dominated by govern-
ment representatives, many of whom lack the scientific training or expertise to
engage in substantive debates on the science of desertification, land degradation,
and drought. For example, Parties requested scientific advice on the develop-
ment of benchmarks and indicators—a concern that is essential to maintaining
legitimacy, encouraging compliance, and monitoring progress toward effective
implementation of the convention. However, adequate input on these issues did
not materialize (Grainger 2009). In fact, CST meetings often yielded low-profile,
non-authoritative outputs with little relevance for either the COP or the scientific
community (Bauer and Stringer 2009).
In 2005, the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) confirmed this in
its report on the management, administration, and activities of the UNCCD
Secretariat, which noted that the CST

“is expected to play a major role in providing the COP with information and
advice on scientific matters relating to combating desertification and mitigat-
ing the effects of drought. The CST meets in conjunction with the sessions of
the COP, which gives rise to logistical problems. More seriously, the results
of the deliberations of the CST may not be fully assimilated by the COP in
its policy decisions. It was expected that the CST would be composed of
government representatives competent in the relevant fields, but there is no
procedure in place to ensure the right mix of expertise. Experience has shown
that the CST does not always get the scientists it needs.”
(JIU 2005, 2)

Convening for only three days per meeting in the typically politicized atmosphere
of the COP allowed little time for the CST to satisfactorily address its agenda and
attracted few members of the scientific community. Discussions were rushed and
draft decisions tabled by the CST for the COP were often adopted without further
discussion (Bauer and Stringer 2009).

Round 3
The eighth meeting of the COP in Madrid in 2007 addressed the issue of the CST
head on. In Decision 1/COP.8, the COP urges the CST to accelerate its efforts to
24 Pamela Chasek
establish links with scientific communities in order to make full use of relevant
initiatives in areas relating to sustainable land and water management (UNCCD
2007, 5). Furthermore, the 10-year strategic plan and framework to enhance the
implementation of the Convention (2008–2018), also adopted in Madrid, con-
tained an entire operational objective on science, technology, and knowledge:

Operational objective 3: Science, technology, and knowledge

To become a global authority on scientific and technical knowledge pertaining
to desertification/land degradation and mitigation of the effects of drought.
(UNCCD 2007, 19)

Within this objective, the strategic plan called for, inter alia,

•• development of a baseline based on the most robust data available on

biophysical and socioeconomic trends and harmonization of relevant sci-
entific approaches;
•• improved knowledge on biophysical and socio-economic factors to ena-
ble better decision-making;
•• improved knowledge of the interactions between climate change adap-
tation, drought mitigation, and restoration of degraded land to assist
decision-making;
•• development of effective knowledge-sharing systems; and
•• engagement of science and technology networks and institutions relevant
to desertification, land degradation, and drought to support implementation
(UNCCD 2007, 19)

Parties agreed to reshape the CST and improve the way that relevant scientific,
technical, and socio-economic information can inform UNCCD implementation.
The COP also adopted a focused work program for the CST, decided that it may
invite renowned scientific institutions and subject-matter expert task forces to
consider issues, and called for CST meetings to produce sound scientific out-
puts and policy-oriented recommendations based on the analysis and compila-
tion of peer-reviewed and published literature that inform policy formulation and
dialogue at the COP (UNCCD 2007). Finally, in decision 13/COP.8, the COP
decided that each future ordinary session of the CST would be organized in a
“scientific and technical conference-style format” (UNCCD 2007). Each session
would focus on a specific thematic topic, which would be determined in advance
and relevant to the implementation of the strategy, and submit a report to the
COP. The scientific-style conference would include presentations by scientists,
scientific institutions, other environmental conventions, NGOs, and other experts
from all regions.
To date, the CST has held three scientific conferences. The first, in September
2009, addressed the theme “Bio-physical and socio-economic monitoring and
assessment of desertification and land degradation, to support decision-making in
land and water management.” The second, in April 2013, addressed “Economic
 Linking science and environmental governance 25
assessment of desertification, sustainable land management, and resilience of
arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas.” The third, in March 2015, focused on
“Combating desertification, land degradation, and drought (DLDD) for poverty
reduction and sustainable development: the contribution of science, technology,
traditional knowledge, and practices.” While these three scientific conferences
brought a wide range of scientific and social scientific experts into the UNCCD
and resulted in peer-reviewed publications, they did not succeed in integrating
science into the work of the convention. Some participants put the blame on the
scientists who do not produce the salient results policymakers need. Others placed
the responsibility on policymakers and the slow political process that is always
“two steps behind” the science. Still, others called for both scientists and policy-
makers to connect to those on the ground who are facing the direct consequences
of land degradation. This debate raised questions not only of how to, but espe-
cially of who should, undertake the task of translating scientific knowledge into a
form that is usable and relevant for policymakers (IISD 2015, 14).

Round 4
Both the CST and the scientific conferences were largely ineffective at channeling
salient, relevant, and credible knowledge and information into the UNCCD. The
COP was still not able to tap the information from the scientific community, which
in turn was unable to draw the attention of the Parties to policy-relevant scientific
research on DLDD. Accordingly, there were calls for the provision of independ-
ent scientific policy advisory services from outside the immediate UNCCD pro-
cess, referring to the IPCC as a promising model (e.g., ICLD3 2002; Vlek 2005;
Bauer & Stringer 2009).
Drawing on analyses of the operation of other existing scientific bodies
(Watson 2005 and Koetz et al. 2008), a group of scientists at the first Scientific
Conference proposed establishing a new international, independent scientific
body to provide advice on land degradation. They proposed that such a scien-
tific body should gather and synthesize information on land degradation and
feed it into the UNCCD process via the CST and into any other MEA dealing
with land issues via appropriate channels. It would need to be independent and
autonomous to be as politically neutral as possible, so that it would be legitimate,
and should comprehensively cover land degradation issues and sustainable land
management. Finally, they said that the new body should be an international and
independent scientific platform that will support, but not compete with, the CST
(Akhtar-Schuster et al. 2011).
Like the IPCC, this new body would not carry out its own research. It would
base its assessments mainly on peer-reviewed and published scientific/technical
literature (Vlek 2005) including data from regional bodies that have responsi-
bility for monitoring and assessing land degradation. In addition to publishing
reports at regular intervals, like the IPCC, the body could publish summaries for
policymakers so that results are presented in a format that is easily accessible and
salient to national governments. These assessments could be complemented by
26 Pamela Chasek
special reports and technical papers on specific topics requested by the UNCCD
and other interested international bodies. It also suggested that this proposed new
body could be considered a “think tank” that could create a more effective inter-
face between science and the policy arena (Akhtar-Schuster et al. 2011).
At its tenth session held in Changwon, Republic of Korea in October 2011, the
CST explicitly acknowledged there was a need to mobilize scientific and techni-
cal expertise to address the problems of desertification/land degradation and to
mitigate the effects of drought. However, CST 10 could not reach a consensus
on choosing one of four options for science-advisory bodies: (a) using existing
scientific networks; (b) establishing a new scientific network focusing on spe-
cific topics; (c) using existing intergovernmental scientific advisory mechanisms;
or (d) establishing a new intergovernmental scientific panel on land and soil
(UNCCD 2013a). So, they postponed decision by setting up a working group that
would “further discuss the options for the provision of scientific advice focusing
on desertification, land degradation and drought issues…” This working group
was supposed to propose the most suitable components that would shape an inte-
grated scenario for providing scientific advice to the UNCCD for consideration
by the CST in 2013.
The working group held three meetings between July 2012 and April 2013 and
presented its conclusions at UNCCD COP 11 in September 2013 in Windhoek,
Namibia. The working group decided that the best mechanism would be a modu-
lar one comprising three core elements:

•• A “Science-Policy Interface” (SPI), where representatives of the policy and

science communities, and other stakeholders, could discuss, synthesize, and
communicate to the UNCCD scientific information and knowledge and pol-
icy-relevant advice on DLDD, and identify the needs of the UNCCD for such
inputs. The compact design should ensure faster communication than what
occurs in the science-policy interfaces of other United Nations bodies.
•• An “Independent Non-Governmental Group of Scientists” (IGS), whose rep-
resentatives would meet with policymakers in the SPI. Scientists would be
invited to join the IGS based on their individual credentials and represent
all disciplines essential for providing comprehensive knowledge on DLDD.
The IGS would prepare peer-reviewed reports, which would be presented
to the SPI to be transmitted by the CST to the COP. The advice provided
by the IGS would be inclusive of all studies on DLDD, and external peer-
reviewing of the group’s reports would ensure that this advice is independent
and authoritative.
•• “Regional Science and Technology Hubs” (RSTHs), which would bring
together existing scientific networks in each UNCCD region to collate and
synthesize regional knowledge on DLDD and communicate this to gov-
ernments and other bodies in that region and to the SPI and IGS. The hubs
could also catalyze the growth of DLDD research in their respective regions,
improve coordination, and facilitate contributions, requests, and participa-
tion through bottom-up mechanisms. The hubs would give the modular
 Linking science and environmental governance 27
mechanism a broad base across the regions, and keep it grounded in real
issues and the concerns of member countries through the constant feedback
which they provide (UNCCD 2013a).

The working group argued that this modular approach has six advantages. First,
it can be implemented in a stepwise manner by initiating the SPI and the IGS and
then enabling each region to establish its own RSTH at its own pace. Second, it
is evolutionary in terms of structure, since it can build on the UNCCD Scientific
Conferences and existing scientific networks. Third, by incorporating an inde-
pendent IGS with external peer-review procedures it will ensure that the UNCCD
receives credible and unbiased scientific knowledge of the highest quality. Fourth,
it emphasizes the needs of the regions and fully involves them, in a way that
should also enhance scientific activity and science-policy communication within
each region and facilitate tapping other forms of knowledge. Fifth, it facilitates
the establishment of synergistic links with existing science-advisory bodies, such
as the IPCC and IPBES. Sixth, it is the only form of integrated scenario that could
become operational within a two- to five-year time frame and therefore enhance
the implementation of the 10-year strategic plan and framework to enhance the
implementation of the Convention by 2018 (UNCCD 2013a).
In response COP 11 adopted Decision 23/COP.11, “Measures to enable
the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification to become a global
authority on scientific and technical knowledge pertaining to desertification/
land degradation and mitigation of the effects of drought,” which established the
“Science-Policy Interface” to facilitate a two-way science-policy dialogue and
ensure delivery of policy-relevant information, knowledge, and advice on deserti-
fication/land degradation and drought. Its mandate is to:

•• establish the approach to deliver each task assigned to it by the CST;

•• analyze, synthesize, and translate relevant scientific findings and recommen-
dations from desertification/land degradation and drought-related scientific
conferences, including upcoming UNCCD scientific conferences, the roster
of independent experts, as well as from relevant stakeholders and networks
into proposals to be considered by the Committee on Science and Technology
for the consideration of the COP;
•• interact with existing multiple scientific mechanisms, in particular IPBES,
IPCC, and Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soil and other new and
existing scientific networks and platforms; and
•• assist the Bureau of the Committee on Science and Technology in organiz-
ing the UNCCD scientific conferences and assessing their results (UNCCD
2013b).

The decision states that the Science-Policy Interface should comprise: mem-
bers of the Bureau of the Committee on Science and Technology; five scientists,
one nominated by each Regional Implementation Annex regions; ten scientists
selected by the CST Bureau through an open call taking into account regional
28 Pamela Chasek
and disciplinary balance; and three observers: one from a civil society organi-
zation, one from an international organization, and one from a relevant United
Nations organization. Furthermore, the decision encourages the formation of an
independent consortium of scientific networks on desertification/land degrada-
tion and drought; and regional science and technology platforms that can inter-
act with the Science-Policy Interface for the provision of scientific advice in a
stepwise manner.
One of the SPI’s first accomplishments was the coordination of work with
other scientific bodies. The Bureau of the CST requested IPBES to conduct an
“Assessment and valuation of sustainable land management in maintaining and
enhancing ecosystem services and biodiversity by combating DLDD in affected
areas” (UNCCD 2015, 5). This was incorporated into the IPBES thematic assess-
ment on land degradation and restoration, which is expected to be completed and
approved in 2018. The SPI developed an analysis of the land degradation and res-
toration process, including recommendations relevant for future UNCCD–IPBES
interactions. The SPI is also collaborating with the Intergovernmental Technical
Panel of Soils of the Global Soil Partnership of the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) to ensure a regular exchange of information between both
science advisory bodies, avoid duplication of efforts, and support synergies. In
addition, the SPI is working with the IPCC in the production of the IPCC special
report, “Climate Change and Land: An IPCC special report on climate change,
desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security,
and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems,” which is expected to be
completed in 2019.
Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the SPI to date has been the publica-
tion of “The Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality
(LDN)” in February 2017. This report was called for at UNCCD COP 12 in
Ankara in October 2015. Parties had been invited to formulate voluntary targets
to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN), however, there was little clarity on
what LDN meant. The SPI was asked to develop a conceptual framework for LDN
to provide a scientifically sound basis for understanding and implementing LDN
and to inform the development of practical guidance for pursuing LDN and moni-
toring achievement of LDN. The resulting conceptual framework focuses on the
goal of LDN and the supporting processes required to achieve this goal, including
biophysical and socio-economic aspects, and their interactions (Orr et al. 2017). It
was hoped that this report would not only create a bridge between the vision and
the practical implementation of LDN, by defining LDN in operational terms, but
also show how credible, legitimate, and salient science can be integrated into the
work of the UNCCD.

Improving the scientific basis for policy decision-making

During its first 20 years, the UNCCD lacked an efficient operational mechanism
to process and channel practical and scientific expertise for political decision-
makers. While the UNCCD COP kept trying to reconfigure avenues for scientific
 Linking science and environmental governance 29
input into its work, it failed time and again to effectively tap into the work of
the scientific community. This led to a vicious circle, as poorly coordinated
decision-making reinforced the existing institutional culture, thus further con-
straining the adoption and application of holistic scientific and socio-economic
approaches to combating land degradation (Akhtar-Schuster et al. 2011). This
was further exacerbated by the complex nature of land degradation and the lack
of cross-­communication among the hundreds of scientists and organizations that
are conducting research, making an assessment of the current state of scientific
knowledge quite challenging. Such disparate production of knowledge made it
difficult for policymakers to comprehend the extent of understanding on the issue,
let alone use it to inform their policies (Governing Council of the United Nations
Environment Programme 2008).
Furthermore, to enhance incentives for decision-makers to consider scientific
evidence in policy planning and implementation, scientists need to consider polit-
ical and economic priorities and timescales while providing data and information
in a policy-comprehensive format on: the causes and effects of land degradation
(symptoms and diagnoses); ecological and social vulnerabilities and trends; the
economics of land degradation, its prevention, rehabilitation and sustainable land
management; and the cross-thematic or cross-sectoral implications of the prob-
lem (Akhtar-Schuster et al. 2011). The scientific community also needs to realize
that it is important to build on tools that are already being used at the decision-
making and policy levels (Akhtar-Schuster et al. 2011). After all, while knowl-
edge production and innovation are within the realms of science, development
and implementation belong to the political arena (Shi 2004). Greater involve-
ment of policymakers in knowledge production is one important way to enhance
the acceptance of science-based information (Bailey 1997; Jones et al. 2009).
“Feedback loops” or “backward engineering” are necessary to iteratively readjust
the required scientific information to the needs of users. While many hope that the
SPI through its coordination with other intergovernmental scientific bodies and
the publication of the “Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation
Neutrality” can be a model for mainstreaming science into the UNCCD, the jury
is still out.

What have we learned?

As Haas and Haas (2002) posited, international organizations can play a role as
the venues and agents of social learning and knowledge diffusion. There are many
different ways that science and scientific knowledge can be brought to bear in
international policymaking and what works for one regime or organization may
not work in another. MEAs that have successfully reduced environmental degra-
dation (e.g., Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, the
Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution) have arrangements for
the provision of usable scientific knowledge, leading to the collective adoption of
policies that are “reasonably linked to achieving tolerable levels of environmental
protection at socially acceptable costs” (Haas 2004, 119). Yet, some aspects of
30 Pamela Chasek
science do not always translate well into policymaking. Even with the success of
the IPCC in evaluating peer-reviewed public scientific research to provide policy-
relevant yet neutral and non-prescriptive consensus views, the UNFCCC has not
had a substantial effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This indicates how
scientific uncertainties can be used politically to downplay the severity of the
problem and the role of humans in changing the climate (Kohler 2012). As the cli-
mate example illustrates, credible, legitimate, and salient science does not always
overrule deep-seated political and economic interests.
It is not always easy to find the right mechanism to enable “scientifically
informed cooperation” to affect the way questions are framed, how problems
are presented, and how transboundary environmental problems can be resolved.
It is essential for analysts to use theoretical constructs that look at international
policymaking as part of a system that involves both science and policy. The epis-
temic-communities model establishes a theoretical basis for understanding the
interactions between science and policymaking. Yet, as the UNCCD case illus-
trates, the challenge that still remains is to understand how to institutionalize these
interactions and devise the most effective structures to enable integration of the
ideas of the epistemic community and the policy community. Only then can inter-
national environmental organizations play effective roles as the venues and agents
of scientific knowledge diffusion.

Note
1 For an early analytical overview of these approaches, see Haggard and Simmons
(1987).

References
Akhtar-Schuster, M., Stringer, L. C., Thomas, R., Chasek P. S. & Seeley, M., 2011, “Improv-
ing the enabling environment to combat land degradation: institutional, financial, legal
and science-policy challenges and solutions,” Land Degradation & Development 22(2),
299–312.
Andresen, S., 2000, “The whaling regime,” in S. Andresen, T. Skodvin, J. Westtestad & A.
Underdal, eds., Science and Politics in International Environmental Regimes: Between
Integrity and Involvement, pp. 35–70, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Bailey, P. D., 1997, “IEA: A new methodology for environmental policy?” Environmental
Impact Assessment Review 17(4), 221–226.
Bauer, S. & Stringer, L. C., 2009, “The role of science in the global governance of deser-
tification,” The Journal of Environment and Development 18(3), 248–267. doi:10.
1177/1070496509338405
Cash, D. W., Clark, W. C., Alcock, F., Dickson, N. M., Eckley, N., Guston, D. H. Jäger,
J. & Mitchell, R. B., 2003, “Knowledge systems for sustainable development,” Pro­
ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100(4),
8086–8091.
Chasek, P., 2013, “Lessons Learned in Multilateral Environmental Negotiations,” in N.
Kanie, S. Andresen & P. M. Haas, eds., Improving Global Environmental Governance:
Best Practices for Architecture and Agency, pp. 56–82, Routledge, New York.
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Drome
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: Drome

Author: John Martin Leahy

Release date: September 24, 2023 [eBook #71716]

Language: English

Original publication: Los Angeles, CA: Fantasy Publishing

Company, Inc, 1925

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book
was produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DROME ***

 Drome

By John Martin Leahy

Illustrated By John Martin Leahy

FANTASY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

Los Angeles, California

Copyright 1952 By John Martin Leahy

Copyright 1925 By Weird Tales Magazine

Manufactured in the U. S. A.

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any

evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
renewed.]
 Contents
Preface
Prolegomenon
1 The Mysterious Visitor
2 What He Told Us
3 The Mystery of Old He
4 "Voices"
5 "Drome!"
6 Again!
7 "And Now Tell Me!"
8 "Drome" Again
9 "To My Dying Hour"
10 On The Mountain
11 The Tamahnowis Rocks
12 We Enter Their Shadow
13 "I Thought I Heard Something"
14 The Way To Drome
15 The Angel
16 "Are We Entering Dante's Inferno Itself?"
17 Like Baleful Eyes!
18 "That's Where They Are Waiting For Us!"
19 The Angel And Her Demon
20 The Attack
21 Into The Chasm
22 What Did It Mean?
23 That We Only Knew The Secret
24 What Next?
25 The Labyrinth—Lost
 26 Through The Hewn Passage
27 The Monster
28 I Abandon Hope
29 The Ghost
30 The Moving Eyes
31 "Gogrugron!"
32 "Lepraylya!"
33 Face To Face
34 Another!
35 A Scream and—Silence
36 Gorgonic Horror
37 As We Were Passing Underneath
38 Something Besides Madness
39 The Golden City
40 Before Lepraylya
41 A Human Raptor
42 He Strikes
43 Drorathusa
44 We See The Stars

"For there is one descent into this region."—

Josephus: Discourse to the Greeks Concerning
Hades.
Drome
 Preface
by Darwin Frontenac
"But please to remember that although we can
prove to our own satisfaction that some things
really exist, we can not prove that any imaginable
thing outside our experience can not possibly exist.
Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of;
you will not induce a modern man of science to
admit the impossibility of it as an absolute."—F.
Marion Crawford: Whosoever Shall Offend.
On my return from the Antarctic, it was with surprise and grief that I
learned of the very strange and wholly inexplicable disappearance of
Milton Rhodes and William Carter. The special work of Rhodes was
in a department of science very different from that to which my own
pertains; but we were much interested in each other's investigations
and problems, and, indeed, we even conducted some experiments
together.
It will be quite patent, then, that, as the Multnomah made her way
northward, I was looking forward with much pleasure anticipated to
the meeting with my friend—with all that I had to tell him of our
adventures and discoveries in the region of the Southern Pole,
picturing to myself the astonishment that would most certainly be his
on seeing some of the things brought from that mysterious region;
above all, imagining his reaction when we would behold our poor
Sleeping Beauty in her crystal coffin, in which she had lain (neither
living nor dead, as I believe; or as my friend Bond McQuestion has it,
in a living death) from some awful day in that period men call the
Pliocene.
And then to come back and find that Milton Rhodes had
disappeared, and with him William Carter!
They had vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as though a secret
departure had been made for the moon or Mars or Venus.
It was very little, I was surprised to learn, that any one could tell me.
And that very little presented some very singular features indeed.
This was certain: Milton Rhodes had planned to begin in a very few
days a series of experiments (the exact nature of which was
unknown) that would claim his close and undivided attention for
weeks, possibly months, experiments that would keep him
imprisoned, so to speak, in his laboratory. But he had not even
begun those experiments; he had vanished. What had caused the
sudden change? What had happened?
As for William Carter, he was about to start on a journey which would
take him as far as Central America. Again, what had happened?
What had caused him to give over all that he had purposed and go
and disappear along with Milton Rhodes?
Here there was but one bit of light, but that light seemed to make the
problem the more perplexing. The very day before that on which
Rhodes and Carter got into the automobile and started for Mount
Rainier, some visitor had come and had been received by Rhodes in
the library, Carter being present at this meeting. Some of the
concomitants of this visit had been a little unusual, it was
remembered, though at the time no one had given that a thought.
It was believed that this man had remained there with Rhodes and
Carter for a period somewhat extended. But who had this mysterious
visitor been? It was, of course, held as certain that something told by
this man to the scientist and his companion was the key to the
mystery. But what had the visitor told them?
We knew that Rhodes and Carter had gone to Mount Rainier. But
why had they so suddenly abandoned all their plans and gone to the
mountain? On the mountain they had disappeared. More than that
no man could tell.
And now we come to another enigma. Rhodes seldom drove a car
himself. On this trip, however, he was at the wheel. The only other
occupant of that car was Carter. And Rhodes had left with his
chauffeur, Everett Castleman, instructions over which I puzzled my
head a good deal but without my ever becoming any the wiser.
These instructions were somewhat extraordinary.
They were these:
If Rhodes had not returned, or if no word had been received from
him, within a period of ten days, then Castleman was to go to Mount
Rainier. He was to go to Paradise, and he was to go on the eleventh
day. And he was to maintain a strict silence about everything
appertaining to this whole proceeding. At Paradise he was to remain
for another period. This was one of eight days. If, at the expiration of
that time, neither Rhodes nor Carter had appeared, Castleman was,
on the ninth day, to take the car back to Seattle, and then the
imposition of silence regarding that part which Castleman had played
was at an end.
The mystery, of course, was what had become of Milton Rhodes and
William Carter. Had some fatal accident occurred? Had they, for
instance, fallen into a crevasse and perished? Or had they just gone
off on some wild mountain hike and would they be returning any
day?
As to this last hypothesis, those instructions given to Castleman
should have shown its utter untenability.
And so the time passed. And Milton Rhodes and William Carter
never came back. Week followed week. Month followed month. All
hope was abandoned—had been abandoned long before the
Multnomah entered Elliott Bay.
And that mysterious visitor? Why had he not spoken? Why had he
not come forward and told what he knew? Where was he? Had he
too vanished? Had he joined Rhodes and Carter on the mountain,
and had the three vanished together? And what had he told them
there in Rhodes' library on that fateful day?
Thus matters stood when one afternoon an automobile came gliding
into my place, and there in it were Milton Rhodes and William Carter!
With respect to the mystery of their disappearance, I could for some
time elicit from them no enlightenment whatever.
Instead:
"Where is she, Darwin?" asked Milton Rhodes, looking about. "Let
me see her! Let me meet her! Quick!"
"So you know about my Sleeping Beauty in the Ice?"
"Of course. The first thing that I did," he told me, "was to get a copy
of Zandara[1]. We've just finished reading it. And, if it hadn't been for
what has happened to us, to Bill here and me, then I might have
been inclined, Darwin old tillicum, to fancy that Bond had been
romancing in that book of his instead of setting forth an account of
actual adventure and discovery."
"But, Milton," I asked, "what in the world did happen?"
"We'll come to that soon, Darwin old top. What Bill and I want now is
to see your Zandara."
"Well, you'll have to wait till she gets back. That should be in an hour
or so.
"But, again, what on earth happened? Where have you two been all
this time?"
But I must not go on like this, or I will find that I am writing a book
myself instead of a preface to William Carter's narrative.
You will see it mentioned in his Prolegomenon that his manuscript
was to be placed in my keeping, to be given by me to the world when
the time fixed upon had expired. All that I need say on that point is
that the raison d'être of this prospective measure will be quite
obvious to you ere you have read to the last page of Drome.
Save for three very brief footnotes, and to those my name is
appended, every word in the pages that follow is from the hand of
William Barrington Carter.
I hasten to conclude, that you may proceed to learn who that
mysterious visitor was, what he told them, where Rhodes and Carter
went—where they are now.
Seattle, Washington,
September 18, 1951.
 Prolegomenon
"Our world has lately discovered another: and who
will assure us it is the last of his brothers, since the
demons, the Sibyls and we ourselves have been
ignorant of this till now?"
"Nostre monde vient d'en retrouver un autre: et qui
nous rêpond si c'est le dernier de ses frêres,
puisque les dêmons, les sibylles et nous avons
ignorê cettui-ci jusqu'à cette heure?"—Montaigne.
"There is," says August Derleth, "an element of the unnecessary
about even the most apparently needed introduction."
What with that element, and what with my own experience, as a
reader, with introductions, it was my intention to write nothing in the
species of a foreword to this my narrative of those amazing
adventures and discoveries in which Milton Rhodes and I so
unexpectedly and so suddenly found ourselves involved. I thought
that I would most certainly have set down in the account itself
everything that I should wish to write upon the subject.
But, now that my manuscript is finished, and now that the time draws
on apace when it is to be placed in the keeping of our valued friend
Darwin Frontenac, by whom, when the period fixed upon has
elapsed, it will be given to the world, I feel that there are some points
anent which it would be well to say a few words.
In the first place, apropos of the shortcomings, of which, in some
instances, I am painfully sensible, of this work when viewed through
the glasses of the literary artist, I may say in extenuation that this is
the first book that I have ever written—and certainly, by the by, it will
be the last.
Whether the fact that this is an initial venture in authorship excuses
my deficiencies as a craftsman with pen, paper and words I can not
say; but, at any rate, it is an explanation.
Furthermore, far outweighing (so it seems to me) any artistic
desiderata, is this: the following narrative does not come to you from
any secondhand source or from any source even farther removed; it
is written by one who was an eye-witness of, and an actor in, the
scenes, adventures and discoveries described in it—an actor that, I
do assure you, would at times have given much to be some place
else.
Also, in the writing of this book, I placed above all other things the
endeavor to attain the utmost accuracy possible; the style was,
therefore, in a great measure, left to take care of itself. With old
Anatomy Burton, though very likely he quoted,[2] I can say:
"I write for minds, not ears."
Too, more than once when disposing of difficulties obtruded upon me
by the noncoincidence of thought with words, have I had in mind this
observation of Saint Augustine:
"For there are but few things which we speak properly, many things
improperly; but what we may wish to say is understood."
And, similarly, when reminding myself that I had not set out to
produce a work of art but merely to put down upon paper a plain and
straightforward account of actual happenings and discoveries, many
a time did I think of these words of John Stuart Mill:
"For it is no objection to a harrow that it is not a plough, nor to a saw
that it is not a chisel."
And so it should be no objection to this my account of our discovery
of another world that it has not the charm of Dante's Hell or the
delicate beauties of Kipling's Gunga Din.
In the second place, I wish that I could say more about that
mysterious phenomenon the firedrake, Saint Elmo's fire, or whatever
it should be called, light-cloudlet, light-cloud, light-mass, light-ghost
—sometimes it looks like luminous mist—but I know no more at this
date about the origin of that most remarkable manifestation than I did
after seeing the first "ghost," nor does Milton Rhodes himself, and
Milton Rhodes, as everybody knows, is a scientist.
Of course, if people were like Trimalchio in the Satyricon of Petronius
(and many people are) authors or scientists would not need to bother
their heads about explanations, conjectures, theories, hypothesis or
such sort when telling about strange phenomena or events; for,
when some matter was being expounded by one of his guests, a
gentleman by the name of Agamemnon, Trimalchio disposed of the
whole business in this simple and summary fashion:
"If the thing really happened, there is no problem; if it never
happened, it is all nonsense."
But, in the present instance—not to the Trimalchios, of course, but to
any person with an iota of the scientific spirit in his encephalon—the
fact is the very converse of this; for, if the firedrakes, the light-clouds,
did not "happen," there would be no problem at all.
The Trimalchios, I have no doubt, would at once put the stamp of
their approval upon this statement, which I lift from Hudibras:

"But what, alas! is it to us

Whether i' th' moon men thus or thus
Do eat their porridge, cut their corns,
Or whether they have tails or horns?"

But the light in that other world is not the only problem to the solution
of which I wish that I had something to offer. There are many
problems. Here is one: the "eclipses." These are sometimes truly
awful.
For instance, just imagine yourself in a forest dense and mysterious,
and, furthermore, imagine that one of those fearful carnivores the
snake-cats, is stealing toward you, stealing nearer and nearer,
watching for the chance to spring; imagine yourself in such a
pleasant pass as that, and then imagine a sudden and total
extinction of the light (which is what, for want of a better word, we
call an eclipse) so that you yourself and everything about you are
involved in impenetrable darkness. How would you like to find
yourself in such a place as that and have that happen to you? Well,
as you will see in its proper pages, that is just where we were, and
that, and more too, is just what happened to us.
And that will give you an idea of what I mean when I say an eclipse
can sometimes be awful indeed.
Why the light at times quivers, shakes, fades, bursts out so brightly,
or why, slowly or all of a sudden, it ceases to be at all, is certainly an
extremely curious and most mystifying business.
But

"To them we leave it to expound

That deal in sciences profound."

A possibility has occurred to Rhodes and me that is by no means

conducive, what with the care and labor that I have expended in the
endeavor to be accurate in the writing of this true history, to any
feeling of happiness on my part. My companion in adventure and
discovery is, however, pleased to entertain the idea that it would
certainly be "funny." Funny?
That possibility is simply this: so very strange is the story which I tell
in the pages that follow, many a reader may be disposed to set the
whole thing down as fiction! And, indeed, many a reader may do just
that!
Fiction, forsooth!
Well, if any one actually is of that opinion or belief when he has
finished reading this book, all I can say is that I wish such a one had
been with us there on that narrow bridge, the yawning black chasm
of unknown profundity, on either side, when the angel and her
demon so suddenly appeared there directly before us!
I have an idea that, if he had been there, he would have wished, and
have wished as hard as he had ever wished anything in his life, that
the whole business would turn out to be fiction or nightmare!

"Why then should witlesse man so much misweene

 That nothing is but that which he hath seene?"

But I must hasten to bring this introduction to a close. Already I have

exceeded the space that I had allotted for it, without even mentioning
a number of things that I had in mind, and without having yet set
down that which especially brought me to the decision to write
anything prolegomenary at all.
And, now that I come to it, I feel hesitant. But this will not do.
In my whole narrative, there is, I am sure, but one single allusion,
and that most brief—namely, Amor ordinem nescit—to my own
heart-tragedy; and, as that allusion, even, is involved in obscurity, I
will in this place and incontinently make it clear, and I do it by writing
this:
I would rather have, though it were but for one single hour,
Drorathusa as My Only than have for a lifetime any other woman I
have ever known.
You will, I have no doubt, smile when you read this; you may think
Eros has put me into a state very similar to the one in which the poor
wight found himself of whom Burton wrote:
"He wisheth himself a saddle for her to sit on, a posy for her to smell
to, and it would not grieve him to be hanged if he might be strangled
in her garters."
Well, that busy little imp Venus's son (and he's as busy in that other
world as he is in this) enjoys getting men and women into just such
states of mind and heart. He moved even the rather cold-hearted
Plato—I mean the great philosopher, not one of the poets so named,
the philosopher who banished poets and Love himself from his
Republic—the little imp moved even him to write:

"Thou gazest on the stars, my Life! Ah! gladly would I be

Yon starry skies, with thousand eyes, that I might gaze on
thee!"

And I would rather have this heart-tragedy mine—have loved and

lost Drorathusa—than never to have seen my lady.
"The heart has its reasons," says Pascal, "that reason can not
understand."
Swiftly now the time draws on, on towards that final journey which
Milton Rhodes and I are to make, and to make with glad hearts, that
journey from which there is never to be a return, that journey back to
another world, a world where there is no sun, no moon, no skies, no
stars—a world where there is neither day nor night.
Vale.
William Barrington Carter