Presentation short abstract

This presentation investigates the conventions of the science-policy interface, outlining a regime of environmental politics so well-established that nearly all actors adhere to its script, to the detriment of convincing climate action.

Presentation long abstract

The urgency of political action to halt environmental degradation and safeguard against anthropogenic climate change is widely acknowledged. This urgency stems from dire projections of environmental scientists. A key part in providing such projections with credibility and political legitimacy are various science-policy interface arrangements, which influence both the ways in which knowledge is produced and the ways in which political actors respond to environmental crises. As such, as it is crucially important to understand the ways in which the science-policy interface is configured, how it shapes knowledge, and what its constraints are. Although processes of negotiation and calibration between scientific knowledge and policy demands are widely recognized, in-depth understanding of the ‘script’ that the science-policy interface follows remains absent. In this contribution, we investigate the implicit rules of the science-policy interface, outlining a regime of regime of environmental politics so well-established that nearly all actors adhere to its script, sometime full-heartedly (when they are asked to take up high-status positions), often implicitly or unknowingly. Drawing on the literature on the co-production of knowledge and Foucauldian studies of governmentality, we investigate this script of the science-policy interface as a technology of governance.