While speaking truth to power has long been a major theme in political science and policy studies, commentators are increasingly skeptical about whether modelers and scientists are capable of developing truth, and whether power ever listens to them anyhow This paper asks when does power listen to truth, and what lessons may be drawn from the last thirty years of multilateral environmental governance for improving the prospects for scientific advice for sustainable development? It focuses on the limited notion of truth called 'usable knowledge' and elaborates the political and institutional channels by which usable knowledge may be developed and better circulated and applied by policy-makers

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When does power listen to truth? A constructivist approach to the policy process

In 2001, the four global change research programmes ‘urgently’ called for ‘an ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management’. Yet this notion of ‘earth system management’ remains vaguely defined: It is too elusive for natural scientists, and too ambitious or too normative for social scientists. In this article, I develop an alternative concept that is better grounded in social science theory: ‘earth system governance’. I introduce, first, the concept of earth system governance as a new social phenomenon, a political programme and a crosscutting theme of research in the field of global environmental change. I then sketch the five key problem structures that complicate earth system governance, and derive from these four overarching principles for earth system governance as political practice, namely credibility, stability, adaptiveness, and inclusiveness. In the last part of the article, I identify five research and governance challenges that lie at the core of earth system governance as a crosscutting theme in global change research. These are the problems of the overall architecture of earth system governance, of agency beyond the state, of the adaptiveness of governance mechanisms and of their accountability and legitimacy, and of the modes of allocation in earth system governance—in short, the five A's of earth system governance research.

Earth system governance as a crosscutting theme of global change research

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'Earth system governance' as a crosscutting theme of global change research

The Earth System Science Partnership, which unites all major global change research programmes, declared in 2001 an urgent need to develop “strategies for Earth System management”. Yet what such strategies might be, how they could be developed, and how effective, efficient and equitable such strategies would be, remains unspecified. It is apparent that the institutions, organizations and mechanisms by which humans currently govern their relationship with the natural environment and global biochemical systems are not only insufficient—they are also poorly understood. This article presents the science programme of the Earth System Governance Project, a new 10-year global research effort endorsed by the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). It outlines the concept of earth system governance as a challenge for the social sciences, and it elaborates on the interlinked analytical problems and research questions of earth system governance as an object of study. These analytical problems concern the overall architecture of earth system governance, agency beyond the state and of the state, the adaptiveness of governance mechanisms and processes as well as their accountability and legitimacy, and modes of allocation and access in earth system governance. The article also outlines four crosscutting research themes that are crucial for the study of each analytical problem as well as for the integrated understanding of earth system governance: the role of power, knowledge, norms and scale.

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Earth system governance: A research framework

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/45223/1/501355901.pdf

Landscape governance: The “politics of scale” and the “natural” conditions of places

This book addresses the various new channels of multilateral environmental governance that have appeared within an increasingly globalised international system. While states ultimately continue to make and enforce international law, they are increasingly dependent upon multilateral institutions, organised science, NGOs and social movements, and business and industry for formulating their views and for conducting policy. This volume focuses on clarifying the key actors and the governance functions they perform in addressing environmental threats.

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Haas Peter M

Papers

Emerging Forces in Environmental Governance