Karin M. Gustafsson

Acknowledging Risk, Trusting Expertise, and Coping With Uncertainty: Citizens' Deliberations on Spraying an Insect Population

The basis for this article is the growing interest in understanding how the public evaluates risk issues. The empirical case consists of an interview study of residents in an area that has experienced an outbreak of moths that has become a nuisance to humans. The study focuses on the narratives created by the residents to make sense of the situation, the risks they associated with regulatory options, and how these narratives relate to expert opinions of the problem. The analysis shows that the residents criticize specific experts and knowledge claims. This is done, however, without questioning science as such; there is still a belief among the residents that science is an institution that generally produces valid knowledge. The analysis also shows that citizen knowledge does not merely passively reflect science. Instead, citizens create meaning and construct knowledge by organizing personal experiences and knowledge claims into coherent narratives.

Environmental discourses and biodiversity: the construction of a storyline in understanding and managing an environmental issue

Although biodiversity is considered to be one of todays greatest environmental challenges, its definition remains open to interpretation. How biodiversity is understood and managed depends on the environmental discourses within which it is articulated. This paper examines how the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), one of the largest environmental NGOs in Sweden, describes biodiversity in its 2011 yearbook. The yearbook is aimed at a wide audience and is intended to improve the general publics understanding of biodiversity. Using discourse analysis, this study shows how the SSNC defines biodiversity by re-articulating three environmental discourses and integrating them into a single storyline. The analysis shows how these discourses offer different possibilities for different subject positions to speak about and act in relation to biodiversity. Finally, the study shows how normative implications for action are articulated as consequences of these definitions and who is responsible for performing these actions.

Biological diversity under development: a study of the co-production that is biological diversity

The problem of biodiversity loss is a complex issue involving multiple actors and knowledge forms. This article examines how this complexity is possible without fragmenting the issue and causing it to lose its meaning and legitimacy. Inspired by Jasanoff, the study aims to analyse the construction of biological diversity through a co-production perspective. This aim is achieved by focusing on three milestones in the history of the problem of biodiversity loss: launching the concept of biodiversity, establishing the Convention on Biological Diversity and founding the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The study shows how biological diversity consists of a co-production of facts and values and how its differences make it a stable rather than unstable phenomenon. The study offers knowledge of the hybrid character of biodiversity and discusses the importance of trying to manage the complexity of biological diversity rather than reducing it through boundary work.

Producing expertise: the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services’ socialisation of young scholars

Abstract Expert organisations, such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (IPBES), have become increasingly important in global, regional, and local efforts to manage current environmental challenges. As producers of environmental knowledge assessments, these expert organisations are epistemic authorities in their field of expertise. To achieve and maintain epistemic authority, expert organisations constantly need to reproduce and develop their expertise. By using the first cohort of IPBES’s fellowship program as a case study, the current paper examines the production of expertise and the socialisation of new experts into expert organisations. The paper also examines the importance of these socialisation processes in the institutionalisation of expert organisations. By analyzing interviews, observations, and documents, the current study explores the expected goals, the performance, and the results of the socialisation. The study shows how the fellows learned and acquired new roles and norms. The study also shows that whoever controls the socialisation process also control the production of expertise and the institutionalisation of the expert organisation.

Organizing international experts: IPBES’s efforts to gain epistemic authority

ABSTRACT What role do organizational preconditions play in the constitution of expertise? This is the guiding question for this paper, which studies how expertise is shaped in the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). By organizing the world’s experts on biodiversity, IPBES sets out to produce policy-relevant knowledge. However, in contrast to many other international expert bodies such as the IPCC, IPBES assesses not only scientific knowledge, but also other forms of knowledge, including indigenous and local knowledge. In light of IPBES’s ambition to become an epistemic authority by synthesizing heterogeneous knowledge forms, it is of great interest to investigate how this expertise is constructed. What does ‘expertise’ mean for IPBES, and how are experts selected? Based on documents studies, this study explores the organizational structure through which IPBES assesses and selects experts. The analysis finds that the construction of expertise involves scientific as well as political dimensions. In the conclusions, problems are raised that are related to the outcome of this process and may threaten the epistemic authority of IPBES.

Narrating the Monarch Butterfly: Managing Knowledge Complexity and Uncertainty in Coproduction of a Collective Narrative and Public Discourse

In January 2014, the monarch butterfly reached North American political agendas due to reports of a long-term population decline. Requests were made for reliable descriptions of what was known about the butterfly, its population and migration, and the actions needed to protect it. This article studies the construction of the collective narrative that has come to dominate the public discourse on the butterfly. The analysis demonstrates how complexity and uncertainty in monarch knowledge have been managed through a process of coproduction, where focus has been on emphasizing knowledge certainty by portraying science and conservation as two separate but dependent social spheres.