Global environmental knowledge synthesis: What’s in it for national action?

Abstract

Global environmental assessments (GEAs) support international environmental governance by synthesizing state-of-the-art scientific knowledge. Increasingly, they also articulate solutions to environmental risks. The interlinked “triple planetary crisis” (biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution) requires action that considers potential tradeoffs and seeks to harness synergies between the responses. Subsequently, there are concerted efforts to collaborate across different global assessments and to synthesize messages on synergistic action. But how could these global syntheses and messages be leveraged for national action? We explored the question through two multi-stakeholder workshops organized in Finland in 2020 and 2021, complemented through a literature review. Adopting systemic perspectives, syntheses that integrate various environmental dimensions are well-placed to inform sustainability transformations through shaping national debates and public discourses on the interconnected environmental crises, helping to legitimize contentious, difficult decisions. As processes, they support transdisciplinary learning and capacity-building, understanding different worldviews and challenging assumptions and value systems, while communicating the urgency of action. Yet, while scientists are increasingly bridging disciplinary and thematic silos, corresponding governance structures remain highly sectoral, and a capacity deficit in systems thinking by policymakers prevails. Interlocutors of global knowledge synthesis, including national scientific experts, can be crucial in interpreting messages and catalyzing action that accounts for cross-sectoral synergies and tradeoffs. By empowering local experts and actors not only in utilizing global knowledge syntheses but in participating in the knowledge co-production processes, both the impact and the accuracy of new global assessments can be improved.

Keywords:

• Global environmental assessment
• knowledge synthesis
• environment
• sustainability
• science-policy interface

Introduction

Global environmental assessments (GEAs) support international environmental governance by synthesizing scientific knowledge (Alcamo 2017) and are widely considered by practitioners and researchers as “an established feature of the international policy landscape” (Jabbour and Flachsland 2017). These inherently social proceedings that function in a highly institutionalized setting at the science-policy interface have provided a participatory-deliberative process for experts to elaborate and inform public policy (Mitchell et al. 2006; Kowarsch et al. 2016; Jabbour and Flachsland 2017; Kowarsch and Jabbour 2017; Maas et al. 2021; UNEP 2021a). In particular, GEAs have influenced multilateral negotiations by providing knowledge foundations and boundary-spanning functions (Kowarsch et al. 2017; Riousset et al. 2017; Maas et al. 2020).

Over the past two decades, the number of global assessments has increased exponentially (see Figure 1). At the same time, the epistemic and process complexity of GEAs has amplified. The scope of assessment objectives and output reports, as well as the body of literature and the number of authors and reviewers involved in the process, have increased steadily over time (Jabbour and Flachsland 2017).

Figure 1. Trends in multilateral environmental agreements and global environmental assessments (Jabbour 2022).

Arguably, the most notable trend in global assessments in the past decade has been the movement toward a solution-oriented approach. Today, many GEAs are being produced in the wider context of the international agenda on sustainability, recognizing the environment as an “indispensable dimension of sustainable development” (Jabbour et al. 2012; Kowarsch and Jabbour 2017). Subsequently, GEAs increasingly present and assess solution pathways and policy options to achieve sustainability, in addition to their traditional focus on the status of environmental problems and their associated trends (Kowarsch et al. 2017; Pereira et al. 2021a). In doing so, GEAs have struggled “to walk a fine line between being policy-relevant and policy prescriptive” (Rothman et al. 2009) amid the societal and political choices that they invoke.

Meanwhile, GEAs are produced in a world in which the role and prospects of our multilateral system must also contend with the shift toward polycentric governance (Maas et al. 2021; Baste and Watson 2022). Some assessments have reacted to this shift by broadening their target audience, yet with a limited impact on non-state actors (Maas et al. 2020). While contemporary GEAs have made some inroads to promote greater inclusivity, the scenarios and models they employ, by and large, have yet to adequately engage with diverse audiences, reflect their values and local realities (Solé and Ariza 2019; Beck and Forsyth 2020; Pereira et al. 2020; Fawkes et al. 2021), or utilize and integrate their knowledge (Petersen et al. 2015; Kowarsch et al. 2017; Díaz-Reviriego et al. 2019; Maas et al. 2020). Moreover, GEAs are expected to empower and deliver actionable knowledge and information across multiple scales and governance levels while reconciling the demands of reframing toward solutions (Maas et al. 2021; Pereira et al. 2021a).

In this Brief Report, we spotlight recent developments arising from these trends and contrast them with the aspiration that GEAs should also stimulate national action toward sustainability. Our starting point is that the increased emphasis on solutions and the need to interact with diverse audiences in polycentric governance has resulted in growing attention to the interrelated nature of global environmental crises and responses. More specifically, we need knowledge on how the relative efficiency and effectiveness of actions to address one environmental problem depend upon actions in other sectors in multi-scale, multi-actor contexts, and ideally, how to harness synergies while mitigating tradeoffs. To support the production of this complex, multifaceted knowledge, recent efforts to strengthen collaboration between different global assessment bodies include the co-sponsored workshop on biodiversity and climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (Pörtner et al. 2021), and the Ad Hoc Global Assessments Dialogue facilitated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP 2020a). Much attention has been paid recently to the integration of the results of various thematic global assessments (the production of “synthesis of syntheses”) that account for the interactions between major environmental crises and seek to inform action with the potential for wide-ranging sustainability benefits. Examples include UNEP’s Making Peace with Nature report (UNEP 2021b; Baste and Watson 2022) and the seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook now underway (UNEP 2022a).

Despite their inherent global framing of risks and threats, GEAs and their syntheses are expected to inform national decisions and discourse. Yet, they have been critiqued for being merely superficially relevant (Maas et al. 2021; Pereira et al. 2021a) when confronted with different cultures and rules of policymaking (Beck 2012) and framings of issues (Maas et al. 2020). It can be reasonably expected that the level of contextualization and deliberation needed to infer actionable messages for sub-global contexts will only increase in the case of “synthesis of syntheses” that seek to account for “everything” – or even for the most important interactions between different environmental emergencies. Thus, we ask, what is the meaning of the recent developments in the global science-policy interfaces for national efforts to achieve sustainability? Are global syntheses that integrate various environmental dimensions just re-stating the problems in an increasingly general and abstract manner, or how could they be leveraged for national action? What is the role of knowledge intermediaries in bridging global and local contexts?

In our initial exploration of these questions, we draw from insights from two workshops that brought together GEA knowledge producers, brokers, and users in Finland¹ and reflect on them in light of recent literature on the evolving context of GEAs.² At the first workshop, organized in August 2020, over 40 participants representing academia, different national ministries, municipalities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector gathered to debate the question: “Global environmental assessments: what do we need them for?” (Forum for Environmental Information 2020). In September 2021, a second workshop specifically sought to engage knowledge brokers and users to deliberate the added value of global knowledge synthesis that integrates various environmental dimensions through systemic perspectives. To explore how cross-thematic collaboration could be strengthened on the national science-policy interface, the workshop participants included representatives of the three Finnish national expert panels on climate change, nature (biodiversity), and sustainable development, in addition to government officials and international experts representing the global perspectives (Forum for Environmental Information 2021). The reflections presented here compare the Finnish insights from the workshops with the trends on the global science-policy interfaces. We conclude by outlining key issues and directions for exploration in re-imagining GEAs that could strike a balance between global trends and relevance across scales.

Rethinking science-policy interactions: the integration imperative

Owing to their original mandate of informing multilateral environmental agreements and processes, GEAs have, for a long time, conformed to the prevailing approach of international environmental governance where different issues have been treated in isolation, one problem at a time. This approach has contributed to a proliferation of scientific assessments at the international science-policy interface (Figure 1) and brought about the practical need to coordinate the processes and content of GEAs. Although formal coordination and integration have proven difficult to achieve, due in part to differing mandates and a lack of incentive structures for better integration as well as competition for increasingly scarce resources, informal coordination exemplified by UNEP’s Ad Hoc Global Assessments Dialogue offers potential as a middle-ground approach (Maas et al. 2020). The Ad Hoc Global Assessments Dialogue is meant to promote greater coherence and coordination of global assessments, particularly by fostering collaboration and synergy across three areas: (1) optimizing production schedules to increase overall efficiency visibility and uptake of the respective assessment processes; (2) standardizing terminologies and taxonomy to increase coherence across the various efforts; and (3) streamlining work across the respective modeling and scenarios underpinning the various GEAs (UNEP 2020a).

The shift toward polycentric governance emphasizes the embeddedness of environmental challenges in economic and social systems (Maas et al. 2020). More recent GEAs tend to embrace a systems approach and the need for transformative change to achieve global sustainability (IGS 2019; Lucas et al. 2020; Maas et al. 2020; Baste and Watson 2022). The actions to achieve the required transformations – for example of economic and financial systems, energy systems, and food systems – need to be aligned to be effective, and hence the solution pathways explored ought to pay attention to synergies and tradeoffs among the potential responses, as well as regional and local differences. Moreover, attention to the interlinkages between different “environmentally-labeled” targets is not enough. The solutions should also support socially acceptable and just transformations instead of perpetuating inequalities or creating new social problems that compromise the sustainability of the efforts (Bennett et al. 2019).

Adopting systemic perspectives, syntheses that integrate various GEAs are well-placed to inform sustainability transformations. In the workshops organized in Finland, it was noted that one of the most important ways in which these syntheses can add value to national debates and public discourse is by drawing attention to the systemic and multi-scalar nature of various interconnected environmental crises and communicating them to a range of societal actors from politicians to ordinary citizens. The focus on relationships across scales is particularly valuable for understanding how the converging crises of climate, biodiversity loss, and pollution, for example, are reinforcing each other and thus, require multifaceted responses and intersectoral strategies. While explaining why simple solutions are rarely available, they underscore what needs to change – fast – to achieve sustainability transformations. Even when repeating messages from different GEAs and constituencies, the syntheses can be important in shaping public discourses, attitudes, and the required social embeddedness central to understanding how humanity could live sustainably within the finite capacities of the Earth.

As processes, synthesis assessments may provide a unique space for bringing actors together to deliberate global systemic risks and generate new insights to help tackle collective action problems. These processes support capacity-building, allowing the participants to network and acquire new knowledge and skills. Ideally, they serve as fora to understand different worldviews and challenge deeply embedded assumptions and value systems. Knowledge synthesis may also encourage scientists to utilize more transdisciplinary research approaches, supporting out-of-the-box thinking and capacities for multi-dimensional problem-solving.

Several workshop participants noted that in addition to cross-thematic synthesis, there is still a place for the traditional thematic assessments, in making the case for urgent action to tackle a particular global emergency. In February 2022, the fifth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2) adopted a resolution on the establishment of a new comprehensive global Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution Prevention (United Nations 2022b). At first sight, the new intergovernmental panel may seem to run counter to the integration trend and reinforce thematic isolation. However, it seeks to build on previous related assessments (e.g., Global Chemicals Outlook (UNEP 2020b, 2019, 2013)) and integrate a highly fragmented science-policy interface on chemicals and waste (Wang et al. 2021). Core functions envisaged for the new platform include horizon-scanning and foresight in the identification of issues of relevance to policymakers and proposing evidence-based options, particularly those relevant to developing countries (United Nations 2022b). In seeking to engage the wider scientific community in bi-directional interaction on the science-policy (or policy-science) interface (Wang et al. 2021), it exemplifies how the integration imperative of GEAs is not just about addressing complexity through systems thinking, but also about integrating different kinds of scientific information and knowledge – the integration of natural scientific data and insights from the social and behavioral sciences, as well as local and traditional knowledge systems. This is a major development in the evolution of GEAs and an ongoing priority and challenge for existing intergovernmental platforms, not least the IPCC and IPBES (Castree et al. 2021; Jabbour 2022).

Localizing global knowledge syntheses for impact

The added value of GEAs and their syntheses for the national science-policy interface was well-recognized in the two workshops. Through the sheer volume of knowledge synthesized, beyond the capacities of any individual expert or decision-maker, they provide the knowledge basis for understanding complex phenomena and communicate urgency and the rationale for taking action. The influence of their widely perceived credibility and epistemic authority can help legitimize contentious, difficult decisions in the national context.

It was also recognized that the utility and uptake of a GEA’s key messages are hindered by a distinct lack of meaningful contextualization, thus requiring considerable effort to interpret and tailor broad narratives to local and national policy actors and decision-making processes. While the cross-thematic syntheses articulate the “culprits,” in other words, the common drivers and pressures of the different environmental emergencies at a highly aggregated level (e.g., unsustainable consumption and production, land-use change), pinpointing the context-specific leverage points is critical for driving transformative change. If recommendations are presented without articulating concrete actions or assigning unambiguous management and accountability frameworks, they may fail to find ownership and are often simply ignored by the actors who could be most pivotal for the intended change. While the political debates are sometimes feared as prematurely closed by the consensus procedures of intergovernmental negotiations concerning some GEAs, which preclude being more specific about national policies and drivers of environmental change (van Vuuren et al. 2012; Kowarsch et al. 2017; Pearce et al. 2017; Turnhout et al. 2020; Maas et al. 2021), these debates are re-opened in the national processes of interpreting GEA key messages and deliberating the required action.

This is the point where, we argue, the key challenge for effective operationalization of global cross-thematic syntheses materializes. While scientists are increasingly bridging disciplinary and thematic silos, including in knowledge production for global assessments, corresponding governance structures and strategies, at national and international levels alike, remain highly sectoral. Despite increasing attention to the systemic views and solutions required for sustainability transformations, these are yet to translate into policies, programming, or joined-up and shared ways of working that would draw from the resources and expertise across different national government departments. There is also a notable capacity deficit in systems thinking by policymakers (Voulvoulis et al. 2022). Thus, each sector interprets the messages from its own point of view and may operationalize the knowledge fairly independently, for instance in preparatory work for law-making, guidelines, and strategies (see Box 1). The impact of cross-thematic messages may, therefore, be limited to the extent that they manage to convey the need for integrated action to diverse audiences, not only different government sectors but also other important stakeholders that need to be onboard for sustainability transformations.

Box 1. Struggle over definitions: “overall sustainability” of Finnish forestry.

In Finland, the term “overall (or comprehensive) sustainability” has been coined and debated in relation to forest governance. Comprising the social, economic, and ecological dimensions of sustainable development, this term has been used in different ways by different actors to denote varying levels of integration and hierarchy of goals related to the three dimensions. The Finnish Expert Panel on Sustainable Development and the National Commission on Sustainable Development (https://kestavakehitys.fi/en/sustainable-development) define it based on the “doughnut” model developed by economist Kate Raworth, in which sustainability has a social foundation and an ecological ceiling, and in the area in between human well-being is realized within the limits of Earth’s carrying capacity. The economy has an enabling role but must not threaten environmental sustainability. In contrast, in Finland’s National Forest Strategy 2025, economic, ecological, social, and cultural sustainability are addressed as partially overlapping but distinct pillars of sustainability, with emphasis given to economic goals (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry 2019). This latter conceptualization has been the basis of Finland’s critique of the European Union Forest Strategy for compromising “overall sustainability” by not giving the economic, social, and ecological dimensions exactly equal weight but instead prioritizing climate and biodiversity goals (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry 2021).

These reflections add to a growing body of research (Girard et al. 2015; Mach and Field 2017; Mangnus et al. 2019; Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2020; Pereira et al. 2021b, 2019) which suggests that improved mechanisms for bottom-up explorations of futures in GEAs can help produce narratives in a more reflective or anticipatory manner so that policy interventions are framed in more tractable ways that offer specific moments, modes, and loci for action.

Knowledge brokers as local interlocutors of global knowledge synthesis

Much of the scholarship exploring the effectiveness of GEAs has been informed by the implicit assumption that influence is attainted directly through well-defined settings of decision-making, such as multilateral negotiations or national law-making (Maas et al. 2021). Such accounts have increasingly been debunked. Rather, the uptake and influence of GEAs may be best understood as a series highly iterative processes (nested within larger knowledge processes) that are more diffuse through policy discourses, policy learning and increased scientific literacy (Riousset et al. 2017; Maas et al. 2021).

Particularly when the environmental crises and their solutions are understood as intertwined and complex, the role and importance of interlocutors of relevant knowledge for the formation of policy discourses may be understated. Such knowledge brokers, including national expert bodies, science-policy networks, scientists, and civil society actors, can be crucial in communicating GEA messages in national contexts, challenging existing coordinative discourses and directing them toward more progressive policies (Riousset et al. 2017). Some of these actors may play the dual role of participating in both the production of GEAs at the global level as well as in the “domestication” of the knowledge and key messages for the national and local contexts. They may be particularly well prepared for their national knowledge-brokering role by having a thorough understanding of the evidence base and the key conclusions of GEAs, formed through transdisciplinary learning in international co-production processes.

At the second workshop, it was discussed how the Finnish national expert bodies on climate change and nature (biodiversity) have successfully contributed to media and public discourses on the action implied by the IPCC and IPBES reports. The National Expert Panel for Sustainable Development by default integrates viewpoints across different dimensions of sustainability. As attention to the interlinkages between environmental emergencies has increased, reflected in the content and key messages of also the thematic GEAs, the national expert panels have sought to join forces and identify common areas of interest. The production of joint statements and, for example, policy briefs to support relevant policy processes was seen as both impactful as well as resource-efficient by the experts who participated in the workshop. They saw an opportunity in joint media releases to increase the coverage of topics and the interlinkages between systems, to enable wider uptake beyond the panels’ traditional stakeholders and to develop systems thinking among the public as well as policymakers (cf. Voulvoulis et al. 2022). Thus, ways were found to address the need to reach diverse actors in polycentric governance. Common transparency policies for the expert panels were identified to increase the legitimacy of collaborative processes.

When the mandate of the national expert bodies is backed by national legislation, as has been proposed for the Finnish nature panel³ and legislated in the Finnish Climate Act about the climate-change panel,⁴ it makes them less beholden to the pursuit of “policy neutrality” than their global counterparts in translating the GEA messages. Coupled with intricate knowledge of the national and local settings, such bodies could help formulate applicable and targeted messages on potential solution-orientated pathways for national decision-making. Global knowledge syntheses that embody not only the perspectives of various environmental goals but also those of diverse stakeholders could form the basis for an inter- and transdisciplinary setting for national expert bodies to produce policy advice on achieving just and inclusive sustainability transformations.

Despite important efforts to the contrary, asymmetries in the representation of different knowledge systems, voices, genders, and regional perspectives (Beck and Forsyth 2020; Báldi and Palotás 2021; Maas et al. 2021) embedded across the scientific enterprise are invariably reflected in the assessment processes. This means that such direct links between GEAs and national discourses formed by national experts participating in both may not be found uniformly across countries and regions. Further solutions identified in the Finnish workshops can also be challenged in other contexts. The very existence of independent scientific expert bodies with an established advisory role in the national science-policy interface is also likely to be geographically biased.⁵ The concise, solution-oriented brief “Six paths towards sustainability”⁶ produced by the Finnish National Expert Panel for Sustainable Development based on the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 (IGS 2019) was highlighted as an example of successful “domestication” of global knowledge synthesis. Some GEA processes, such as IPBES, have actively developed guidance that encourages the establishment of parallel national-level processes.⁷ However, it was also acknowledged that countries are in widely different positions to produce such national versions of GEAs. Even the Finnish panels’ access to resources varies, and all rely primarily on in-kind support by the members and their background organizations (universities and research institutes).

Toward empowering and impactful knowledge synthesis

Currently, we are witnessing profound transformations in how scientific knowledge is produced, managed, and leveraged to inform choices and decisions. These transformations challenge the conventional approaches used to generate GEAs, but also give us an opportunity to reimagine how they are conducted – with what aims, scope, and means – and how to make them more impactful across scales of governance.

Acknowledging interactions between different dimensions of sustainability, global environmental emergencies, and the solutions that the assessments propose, is a crucial step in the right direction. But breaking down thematic silos in global knowledge production alone will not do the trick, unless these efforts trigger changes in how the knowledge is leveraged for cross-sectoral action to address the multiple challenges at various scales of governance. Maas et al. (2021) suggest that GEA effectiveness hinges on being able to empower a broad range of actors and on more diversity in problem and solution framing. When the impact of global environmental knowledge synthesis is understood as materializing through diverse policy discourses, policy learning, and increased scientific literacy (Riousset et al. 2017; Maas et al. 2021), the extent to which they support learning, empowerment, and action based on holistic systems thinking by various actors, is key.

Systems thinking means understanding the interrelations that create complex problems and how change happens in such complex systems (Voulvoulis et al. 2022). “Localizing” global knowledge synthesis to leverage action in national contexts could ideally constitute reflexive learning processes about governance problems and potential solutions that make explicit not just the aspects on which consensus exist, but also multiple conditional perspectives. Hence, empowering not only actors but also a broader range of knowledge systems (Maas et al. 2021) – attuned with the complexity and responsive to the uncertainties inherent in complex systems.

However, there is also a point at which integration has diminishing returns. In other words, too much complexity and too many variables can result in interventions that are overdetermined or perceived as impractical and detached from the inherent local realities and constraints on decision-making. Decision-makers need help in navigating this difficult space. Scientists and experts involved in increasingly transdisciplinary, cross-thematic global knowledge-synthesis processes could play an important role as actors relatively advantaged in complex systems thinking, yet often capable of offering simplified insights into locally relevant issues and potential solutions. While we do not suggest that scientists are detached from local political realities, they may contribute to the content and diversity of policy discourses and support societal agency in their knowledge-brokering roles. In that sense, increasing access by experts worldwide to equitably participate in global knowledge co-production processes is important.

Empowerment about global knowledge synthesis should be a two-way street. That is, not only do we need to empower actors to make use of the knowledge produced in GEAs, but to also enable them to participate in reflexive knowledge co-production (Beck and Forsyth 2020) so that the development of new global assessments and their accuracy is improved by more firmly grounding them in local realities (Pereira et al. 2021a). At the same time, while the most pressing and complex environmental challenges are seemingly local in their impacts, they are often driven, if not ostensibly, by cross-scale interactions and transnational phenomena. Therefore, response options highlighted by global assessments need to be rooted in the potential to optimize integration across boundaries – in addition to the imperative to be synergistic. Finally, given the socially constructed nature of both policy problems and the knowledge that global synthesis brings to bear, GEAs need to engage more explicitly with behavioral levers and other diverse fields of inquiry in the social and cognitive sciences, to ensure that response options and intervention strategies are attuned to both collective and individual motivation.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ministry of the Environment, Finland.

Notes

1 The facilitated workshop discussions were carefully documented by dedicated note-takers, and the second workshop was also recorded at the participants’ discretion. A qualitative thematic analysis of the material was conducted to distill the benefits of global knowledge synthesis and barriers to its use in the national science-policy interfaces, with specific attention devoted to the role of knowledge interlocutors such as scientific expert advisory panels.

2 Relevant literature was retrieved by using the search string “global environmental assessment*” which resulted in 58 scientific articles in the Web of Knowledge/Science database in November 2021. These articles were read and screened for their relevance, resulting in the subset of the articles referenced. The literature used was complemented with relevant references found in the articles produced by the initial search as well as new, pertinent articles published during the writing of this Brief Report.

3 https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/vaski/HallituksenEsitys/Sivut/HE_76+2022.aspx (in Finnish)

4 https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/alkup/2022/20220423, https://www.ilmastopaneeli.fi/en/ (in Finnish)

5 See reviews by Kaaronen (2016), Weaver et al. (2019), and the following: https://ipbes.net/national-regional-platforms-networks, http://www.eca-ipbesnetwork.org/2125, https://eeac.eu/member-counsils, and https://sdg-advisorybodies.net/resources.

6 https://www.kestavyyspaneeli.fi/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2020/03/Finnish_Expert_Panel_on_Sustainable_Development_Publications_1_2020.pdf

7 https://www.ipbes.net/guide-production-assessments