‘Getting the Science Right’? Epistemic Framings of Global Soil and Land Degradation

Abstract

International environmental advisory bodies are tasked with the daunting challenge of collecting and synthesizing knowledge about a specific issue-area by speaking in one ‘global scientific voice’. However, the ‘type of knowledge’ issuing from these bodies can hardly meet the expectations of ‘getting the science right’, as scientific issues inevitably end up being framed in different ways. Although accounts of contestation between various knowledge claims are abundant in the literature focusing on international advisory bodies, the implications of these tensions for science–policy interplay remain poorly understood. In particular, analyses of and reflections on the relationship between knowledge outputs and particular institutional arrangements are underdeveloped. This paper attempts to address this gap, postulating a link between knowledge outcomes and institutional design. By introducing the concept of ‘epistemic framings’, it explores the different ways in which soil and land degradation issues are framed by scientific advisory bodies at the global level. The analysis, conducted through the Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) method, suggests that international scientific advisory bodies may frame epistemic issues in ways that are influenced by the policy setting to which they are institutionally bound. Further research on the dynamics of science–policy interaction at the global level could test the assumptions made in this paper and shed light on the structural (including institutional design) and agential factors influencing advisory bodies’ epistemic framings.