Global environmental assessments: Impact mechanisms

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Global environmental assessments: Impact mechanisms Pauline Riousseta,b,* , Christian Flachslandb,c , Martin Kowarschb a

Freie Universität Berlin, Environmental Policy Research Center, Ihnestraße 22, D-14195 Berlin, Germany Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), EUREF-Campus 19, 10829 Berlin, Germany c Hertie School of Governance, Friedrichstraße 180, 10117 Berlin, Germany b

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history: Received 7 August 2016 Received in revised form 13 January 2017 Accepted 20 February 2017 Available online xxx Keywords: Global environmental assessment Policy learning Social learning Discourse theory Impact Science-policy interface

A B S T R A C T

Many impacts of Global Environmental Assessment (GEA) processes on policy processes, and the mechanisms underlying these impacts, remain underappreciated. In this research, we focus on the 5th Global Environment Outlook and the Working Group III contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Based on the perception of GEA process participants, we describe the mechanisms through which assessments create or alter interpersonal interactions which can affect the dissemination of ideas. In particular, we find that GEAs can contribute to framing international coordinative discourses in intergovernmental negotiations. This can be achieved by widening, improving and/or maintaining the active participation of policy actors in the discussions of global environmental risks and by creating the scientific foundations for intergovernmental negotiations. GEAs can also contribute to national coordinative discourses by facilitating reflexive learning amongst participants, empowering them to diffuse and translate global information, and by providing methodological guidance. They can contribute to national communicative discourses by reviving interest and awareness of the urgency to address environmental problems. In this way they provide powerful arguments for governmental societal actors to challenge or strengthen existing national coordinative discourses. Finally, GEAs can improve scientific discourses worldwide by enhancing the capacity of individual researchers to produce and communicate relevant research insights. This is achieved by participating in a learning exercise with an extended community of peers and policy actors. This article is part of a special issue on solution-oriented global environmental assessments. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Many global environmental problems continue virtually unabated and are among society’s major concerns. Large-scale scientific assessments can play a major role in addressing these environmental problems and achieving sustainable development. Global Environmental Assessments (GEAs) are “formal efforts to assemble selected knowledge with a view toward making it publicly available in a form intended to be useful for decision making” (Clark et al., 2006). In the past, some assessments have been described as highly influential, while others have been found to lack influence (Mitchell et al., 2006a, 2006b). The question that drives this paper is the following: how can such assessments really live up to these high expectations and significantly influence policy processes via the policy discourses that lead to them? Understanding the

* Corresponding author. Permanent address: Kurfürstenstr. 10, 10785, Berlin, Germany. E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Riousset).

impacts of scientific knowledge on policy change has attracted much scholarly attention. However, analyzing these impacts appropriately remains a formidable challenge in need of better conceptualizations to which this paper aims to contribute. As GEAs are social processes that are often conducted over several years covering a wide range of issues, they have the potential to yield many different outcomes. The Social Learning Group (2001) pioneered research into the role played by scientific assessments produced by international institutions in attention cycles on global environmental risks. They explored the complexity of the network of actors involved and investigated the role of option assessments and their criteria of efficiency (e.g. Clark et al., 2001; Schreurs et al., 2001). The GEA Harvard project widened the approach by looking at a large number of scientific assessments, based on which they further explored the criteria of influence of GEAs (Mitchell et al., 2006a, 2006b; Farrell and Jäger, 2006; Jasanoff and Martello, 2004). Thus they advanced the conceptualization of GEAs as eliciting an influence (or lack of influence) in various issue domains. In particular, three main criteria of the effectiveness of GEAs were identified: salience, credibility and

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legitimacy. While these concepts have been widely employed, Sarkki et al. (2015) point out that these criteria need to be amended to better capture the “dynamic, continuous and multi-directional interactions between science, policy and society” in science-policy interfaces. Pregernig (2007) argues that science-policy interfaces in assessments should be conceptualized as dynamic processes which exist in the long-term social interactions between scientific experts, policy-makers, interest groups and citizens. Recent scholarship points to the importance of focusing on these interactions to better understand the impact of scientific research on policy processes (Molas-Gallart and Tang, 2011). It also considers the importance of the processes within which knowledge is co-produced as central determinants of the capacity of knowledge to impact policy (Posner et al., 2016). However, despite the existence of single case research on the influence of some of the main GEAs (see e.g. Hulme and Mahony, 2010 on the IPCC), it remains unclear how GEA insights may filter through relevant sites of policy-making i.e. how GEAs can reduce disconnections between researchers, policymakers and citizens. This also shows that no consensus exists on the mechanisms underlying their (lack of) influence to date. In this article, we look across two very different assessments to analyze particular mechanisms by which GEAs can contribute to policy-making via discourses. The two cases we focus on are the solution-oriented Working Group III contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC WGIII AR5) and the fifth Global Environment Outlook from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP’s GEO-5). Drawing on theoretical literature of the role of knowledge and discourses in policy-making, as well as on empirical material, these two GEAs are analyzed from the perspective of discursive politics. We show that GEAs can contribute to changes in policy discourses and analyze how, i.e by which mechanisms, this can take place. In particular, this allows us to explore the multiple effects of coproducing knowledge in these GEAs. Several of these impact mechanisms have been identified in previous research (cf. Sect. 2). However, we go beyond previous literature by providing a unique conceptual overview of these impact mechanisms in our analytical framework, by further specifying them, and by offering novel empirical substantiation. This empirical research contributes to improving the qualitative understanding of the ways in which GEAs can contribute to policy discourses. This way, we put emphasis on the dynamic character of GEA processes. The focus on policy discourses helps us to understand, in a nuanced manner, how GEAs might indeed reduce disconnections between researchers, policy-makers and citizens by showing how their insights can filter through relevant sites of policy-making. This also provides a framework for comparing GEA effectiveness more systematically in the future. It should also enable GEAs to be deliberately designed to harness their full potential in terms of influence on policy processes. 2. Analytical framework Understanding policy-making as discursive politics (Fischer, 2003) has proven to be an insightful way of understanding the role of ideas in policy change. According to this theory, we understand discourses as informing and epistemically underpinning policy processes. As such, we do not examine policy process elements but rather focus on the preceding stage of the formation and legitimization of discourses in policy and society. Discourses are “an ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to a phenomenon” (Hajer, 1993, p. 45). They are typically constructed and reconstructed, by a multitude of actors, through a distinguishable set of practices in many sites, simultaneously and often independently from one another (Miller,

2000; Fischer, 2003; Hajer, 2005). These practices of argumentative interactions, in which different actors confront their fragmented and divergent statements, contribute to the framing and understanding of problems and the identification of solutions (Hajer, 1995; Silverstein, 1982). A “discourse helps to create an opening to policy change by altering actors’ perceptions of the policy problems, policy legacies and ‘fit”', influencing their preferences, and, thereby, enhancing their political institutional capacity to change’ (Schmidt and Radaelli, 2004, p. 188). Thus, changes in discourses should not be considered as being independent from changes in interests and beliefs as assumed by previous major research efforts on GEAs. Rather, discourses should be considered to be a reflection of the changes in beliefs, values and interests of those who express them. They are also a medium that has the potential to frame and change interests, institutions, and culture, being used in argumentative interactions (ibid). Hajer (1995) argues that scientific knowledge, as a particular set of ideas, has an important role to play in political discourses. Schmidt and Radaelli (2004) show that discourses are the medium by which ideas travel from the professional fora in which they are generated, to policy arenas. Here actors, with the power to formulate policies, argue with one another and rely on the intellectual resources provided by the forum (Radaelli and Schmidt, 2004). However, practices and institutions are needed for scientific findings to be transformed into ideas relevant to such political discourses. In particular, a discourse is defined by way of its substantive matter, as a set of policy ideas and values, and in terms of its usage, as an interactive process focused on the formulation of policies and the communication of ideas (Schmidt and Radaelli, 2004). Accordingly, usable knowledge needs to encompass a substantive core as well as a process that organizes the transmission of knowledge (Haas, 2004). We assume that the value of GEAs not only lies in their substantive content but also in the activities and practices they facilitate through which scientific insights are negotiated and common understanding produced, transformed and disseminated. For ideas to influence policy-making, a group of like-minded individuals has to persuade a majority of policy actors, experts and civil servants involved in the formulation of policies, of the relevance and appropriateness of these ideas. This persuasion process in policy-making realms is called coordinative discourse (Schmidt and Radaelli, 2004). Furthermore, these ideas have to be legitimized by the public in a discursive exchange between representatives of the civil society and policy-making actors. Indeed, the public and their representatives have to be convinced by these ideas to maintain their political sup- port for those in power. This process is called communicative discourse (Schmidt, 2008, p. 310). This means that, to be effective in influencing policy processes, GEAs should contribute to both coordinative and communicative discourses in relevant policy arenas. This paper explores whether and how the practices organized by GEAs enrich coordinative discourses in international and national policy arenas and communicative discourses involving their population. In addition, we hypothesize that GEAs feed back to scientific discourses. By exposing scientific arguments on policy issues in an open political process where they are discussed by various stakeholders, researchers can learn from these exchanges and enhance their effectiveness at producing useable scientific knowledge (Haas, 2004). Thus, assessments can also contribute to strengthening the skills of researchers in responding to policymaking needs for scientific advice in the future. Based on this theoretical background, we hypothesize that GEAs affect international discourses (H 1), national coordinative and communicative discourses (H 2) and scientific discourses (H 3). Previous research on single cases hint at how GEAs may affect these various policy discourses (see below). Based on our analysis of the evidence we have identified, we formulate sub-hypotheses

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about the mechanisms of influence of GEAs, i.e. the specific mechanisms by which they create or alter the formal and informal exchanges of ideas among participants and their networks. Regarding the contribution of GEAs to coordinative discourses in intergovernmental negotiations (H 1), previous research shows that assessments can mobilize a wide range of actors (Selin, 2006), change the balance of power between them and allow minority voices to be heard (Stokstad, 2008; Labbouz and Treyer, 2010). They can facilitate negotiations by creating contacts between participants (Selin, 2006) and help countries acknowledge their domestic interest in treating an issue (Farrell and Keating, 2006). Beyond that, Selin (2006) shows that GEAs can create “a shared cognitive account” and “bargaining focal points and roadmaps” (p. 185) for international negotiators. So, we hypothesize that GEAs contribute to international coordinative discourses by shaping the network of actors who engage in policy discourses addressing environmental degradation (H 1.1), and legitimize the scientific grounds on which their decisions are based (H 1.2). Regarding the contribution of GEAs to national policy discourses (H 2), previous research has highlighted three types of mechanisms by which GEAs affect coordinative discourses in governments (H 2.1). First, the breadth of information that policy actors are confronted with in an assessment provides them with an opportunity to reframe the interconnectedness of environmental, societal and economic issues, and nest problems in an innovative manner (Haas, 1990). This may help assessment participants to overcome the boundaries to learning that were identified by Haas (2004) in national administrations. As such, learning processes in GEAs may enrich national coordinative discourses (H 2.1.1). Second, the ability of an assessment to spur interactions between scientists and policy actors was shown to be crucial for their impact on policy agendas (Clark et al., 2001; van Eijndhoven et al., 2001), both via institutionalized bridges (Farrell et al., 2001) and personal contacts (van Eijndhoven et al., 2001). Biermann (2001) and Cash and Clark (2001) note that the lack of relevance of global assessments in domestic contexts has been a crucial barrier to their effectiveness. In the last fifteen years, GEAs have opened up to a larger participative base and evolved towards more integration. Thanks to this new dynamic, GEAs have been increasingly shaped by a large range of actors, from a variety of disciplines and national backgrounds (Jabbour and Flachsland, this issue) and generated substantial dissemination via personal channels (H 2.1.2). Third, in the case of integrated assessment modeling for negotiations under the convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) assessment (VanDeveer, 2006), capacity building has constituted an important contribution to policy-making. International assessments have helped to legitimize and improve the quality of national assessments (van Eijndhoven et al., 2001) and have enhanced expert knowledge of methods and analytical tools used worldwide (see Norgaard, 2008). Consequently, GEAs may spur the improvement of the methodological grounds upon which national data collection and monitoring relies, improving the data base for national decisions (H 2.1.3). Furthermore, by making the title page of a newspaper, assessments contribute to the public recognition of a problem and increase the perception of urgency to treat it (Beck, 2009). The former is an important dimension of communicative discourses on the environment (H 2.2). They contribute to ‘prompt scientific, public and political debate’ about a previously undiscussed environmental issue (Mitchell et al., 2006a, 2006b). The constructionist approach to issue attention cycles argues that they are not primarily determined by the nature of an issue, but are socially constructed (e.g. Brossard et al., 2004). Cultural frames (Brossard et al., 2004) or political engagements such as commitments under the Kyoto protocol (Schmidt et al., 2013) might play a role in the level and scope of attention given to an issue. Nevertheless, “as

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Gandy (1982) points out, the media will always rely on information providers (scientists, in this case) to provide grist for their mill” (cited in McComas and Shanahan 1999). The situation is now different, as many issues tackled by GEAs are now well-known to the public (e.g. climate change, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss etc.), and the role of GEAs may have shifted from creating to maintaining attention on these issues in political settings (H 2.2.1). Policy analysis can improve the state of scientific understanding, the reflection of society on policymaking, and the mobilization of stakeholders around an environmental issue (Shulock, 1999; Martello and Iles, 2006; Gough and Shackley, 2001). One major impact mechanism is its use by civil society organizations as a vehicle for knowledge about environmental issues (H 2.2.2). Finally, if civil society actors use GEAs in their communicative discourses with governmental actors, the latter may also do the same (H 2.2.3). This aspect has not, to our knowledge, been researched. Last but not least, previous publications hint at impact mechanisms on scientific discourses (H 3). Schreurs et al. (2001) identified the importance of scientists raising awareness about global environmental risks worldwide in the 1970s and the 1980s. They found that the linking of domestic and international scientific communities played an important role in shaping new lines of inquiry. The GEAs that have been produced in the 1980s and 1990s have been found to influence the conduct of research (Farrell et al., 2001). In particular, some assessments have facilitated the creation of professional networks around an issue (Farrell and Keating 2006). Interdisciplinary scientific assessments for environmental governance also help scientists gain a broader understanding of issues across scales, disciplines, and sectors (Norgaard, 2008). This broadens their perspectives and helps them to develop deeper and richer analyses of complex systems (ibid). GEAs make scientists more interested and capable of analyzing specific issues (Mitchell et al., 2006a, 2006b). Recent research highlights the increasing impact of IPCC reports on scientific publications (Vasileiadouet al., 2011). Based on these premises, we hypothesize that assessments generate learning benefits for researchers. These are reflected in changes in their research agendas and lines of inquiry. Starting from these premises, we employ an empirical approach to verify these hypotheses. 3. Cases and methods This paper focuses on UNEP’s GEO-5 and the IPCC WGIII AR5. Previous research has shown that UNEP has played a crucial role in the formation of coherent and powerful environmental discourses over recent decades (both regarding environmental problems and solutions), especially through the various reports it has produced (Hajer, 1995; Epstein, 2008). UNEP has directly contributed to the production of GEA reports through the regular releases of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) reports as UNEP’s flagship assessments, and indirectly, by participating in the creation of scientific bodies such as the IPCC. UNEP’s GEO-5 and IPCC WGIII AR5 are considered to rank among the most important contemporary GEAs (Kowarsch et al., 2016). Thus, the UNEP’s GEO-5 and the IPCC WGIII AR5 constitute two comparable and relevant, but highly different cases, which lend themselves perfectly to a Most Different Systems Design (Anckar 2008). We therefore employ this method to explore the mechanisms by which GEAs exert influence on policy discourses. Identifying similar impact

1 More information on how both GEAs constitute two most different cases can be found in the supplementary material.

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mechanisms across two highly different GEAs suggests that these mechanisms may be valid for a very broad set of GEA designs.1 We conducted and analyzed 99 semi-guided interviews with assessment authors, producers, and government representatives involved in these two assessments, as well as with six members of target audiences who were neither directly involved in the IPCC AR5 process nor in the GEO-5 assessment. Their duration extended from 20 min to 2 h (mean duration: about 1 h). We chose to focus on GEA process participants to restrict the scope of the study and better understand how the social processes of collaboration, organized by scientific assessments, generate influence.2 In addition, participation in the intergovernmental and stakeholder meeting on GEO-6 provided us with an opportunity to observe the interests of governments at play in the design of this assessment. We also assembled a focus group of GEO-5 authors (October 2013, Berlin) to learn from their experiences. This contributed to our understanding of the value of the GEO-5 assessment and its influence. Observations at the February 2015 workshop on “The Assessment and Communication of the Social Science of Climate Change: Bridging Research and Policy” (February 18–20, 2015, Berlin, Germany), co-organized by members of the research team, provided an additional opportunity to collect information on how governments and scientific experts perceive the value of the IPCC WGIII AR5. In order to address the challenges inherent to our approach, particularly tracing individual learning processes and eliminating bias in self reported impacts, we triangulated sources of information. The lack of documents on the GEO-5 required us to conduct a higher number of interviews than for the IPCC which is very well documented. In addition, we took advantage of our insider knowledge of the IPCC and numerous informal opportunities to discuss issues with IPCC authors. This explains the smaller number of interviews conducted with IPCC authors than with GEO authors. This research does not attempt to assess the magnitude of impacts, nor the degree of effectiveness of the GEO-5 or the IPCC WG III AR5. Rather, it aims to improve the qualitative understanding of mechanisms of how GEAs may contribute to policy discourses. 4. Results Despite their numerous differences, the IPCC AR5 and the GEO5 present similar mechanisms by which they contribute to discursive policy-making. In the following section, we detail the mechanisms and channels through which these GEAs achieve impacts on three kinds of policy discourses. That is, how they contribute to international coordinative discourses (M.1); national coordinative and communicative discourses (M.2); and scientific discourses (M.3). 4.1. GEAs contribute to international discourses (M 1) Our research shows and confirms that one main potential contribution of GEAs is to strengthen coordinative discourses in the international governance of the environment (M 1). This is done by shaping the network of actors who actively engage in addressing environmental degradation (M 1.1), and by creating a platform through which governments can generate the scientific foundations and precedents in intergovernmental negotiations (M 1.2). Empirical work shows that the GEO-5 and the IPCC

1 More information on how both GEAs constitute two most different cases can be found in the supplementary material. 2 More information can be found in the supplementary material.

assessments constituted platforms through which the state actors who are proactive in the environmental domain come together with more reluctant state actors and negotiate the political meaning of scientific findings. The case of the IPCC illustrates this phenomenon; while neither the IPCC reports nor their line-by-line approved summaries are legally binding, the decisions made by government delegations during the IPCC process and the official political negotiations under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are closely intertwined. For most governments, the contents of the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) therefore constitute either an asset or a hindrance in intergovernmental negotiations; the authority that emerges from a governmentally negotiated document, grants any statement which is included a perceived binding force. Indeed, that which is negotiated during the production of the SPM is not re-negotiated under the UNFCCC. The government of Libya illustrates this by stating that “the aim of reviewing the IPCC's reports and participating in the sessions to adopt them is . . . [to prevent] binding recommendations which do not take into account the sovereign rights of developing countries”.3 Similarly, an ex-minister of the environment and chief negotiator at UNFCCC conferences of the parties for an emerging country interprets the summary for policymakers as the response to the fear of governments “that the technical summary alone, produced without [the input of governments], could be used to force mitigation in their countries (via the negotiations)”. As such, the setting offered by the IPCC via the negotiation of the Summary for Policy-Makers offers a unique opportunity for countries to negotiate the political legitimacy of scientific insights by negotiating them and giving these results a perceived normatively binding force. The UNFCCC Secretariat considers that the IPCC AR5 provides “the scientific foundation for the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP)”,4 and many countries consider it to be a reference point in international negotiations. The IPCC is widely perceived to create the epistemic foundations of UNFCCC negotiations. Although many examples of the IPCC illustrate this point particularly well, several examples of the close relationship between the GEO report and the negotiations under the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or the waste and chemicals conventions were also observed. They confirm the importance of the negotiations, in the context of GEAs, to create a perceived binding force of scientific findings and thus create the epistemic foundations of international conventions and agreements. The endorsement of a summary of the assessment by governments, creates a premise in the negotiations of environmental issues, on which intergovernmental negotiations draw. Consequently, the better an assessment is aligned with multilateral agreements, the easier it is for more pro-active countries to force reluctant actors into the discussions. Whether GEAs contribute to international coordinative discourses, or create a premise in intergovernmental negotiations, depends on the existence of longlasting and close relationships between the assessment and relevant multilateral agreements. For instance, a high-level representative of the UNFCCC described the existence of numerous interactions between UNFCCC and IPCC presiding offices “in an attempt of using the 5th assessment report for clarifying if the 2 degrees target will work or not” in an interview. To conclude this section, assessments reflect the state of scientific knowledge as it was negotiated, and given sense to, by political actors during the end phase of the assessment process.

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4.2. GEAs contribute to national coordinative and communicative discourses (M 2) Based on our empirical observations we confirm that, and present the mechanisms by which, GEAs contribute to national coordinative (M 2.1) and communicative discourses (M 2.2): 4.2.1. GEAs constitute unique learning and dissemination platforms of knowledge, experience and monitoring techniques on environmental policy topics in national coordinative discourses worldwide (M 2.1) First, for many interview respondents working in national public administration, the IPCC, as well as the GEO assessments, offer a unique opportunity through which to learn about the state of scientific knowledge in a manner that is not restricted by administrative routines and that draws inspiration from experiences abroad. In particular, interactive formats, through which the scientific and administrative policy communities exchange information, such as the IPCC-UNFCCC structured expert dialogues,5 have been particularly useful to both communities according to numerous interview respondents. One interview respondent explains: “I represent [a developed county] in the UNFCCC and have seen part of the past three or four structured expert dialogues. ( . . . ) They are really useful, really insightful. It actually gives you an opportunity of ( . . . ) a real-time Q&A that stakeholders aren't otherwise afforded ( . . . ) So we had a lot of really useful conversations with the authors . . . ( . . . ) [Through the Structured Expert Dialogue] you get to hear the concerns of different governments and their perspectives and you can kind of build off of it”. Since the scope of GEAs is much broader than any single scientific publication or the topic areas of policy officers working in national administrations, participants from both policy and research realms stressed the learning benefits they reaped from participating in assessment(s). They also emphasized how valuable the opportunity to learn about cross-boundary issues and interlinkages in the treatment of environmental issues had been to them. This helps them to be more innovative in their policy consultations and policy-making activities (M 2.1.1). Second, our empirical analysis of the recent activities of the GEO and the IPCC shows that participants in GEAs contribute to making them relevant and disseminate global information in a large number of domestic contexts and policy fields. Participants often act as “ambassadors” for the insights of GEAs in their national governmental administrations. According to the interviews we conducted, the focal points of the IPCC and the GEO collaborating centers have often incorporated dedicated channels to contribute to national coordinative discourses. For instance, a government official involved in the IPCC explains that the synthesis report helped him to set climate change as an issue on the national agenda in his country. He explains that it has been important “to pressure [its] government to move forward on these discussions . . . domestically”. Another IPCC focal point explains “I've seen how [GEAs] have trickled back into domestic policy. And, well, to be honest, the IPCC had a pretty good life”. The large majority of interview respondents of both assessments cited numerous examples of how they use GEAs in their daily work, teaching, policy consulting and/ or advocacy. We find that the nature and the extent of scientists’ personal policy networks, consultancy activities and more generally their ability to significantly contribute to national coordinative discourses is critical to the influence of GEA insights in national contexts (M 2.1.2). Third, GEAs also contribute to national coordinative discourses by catalyzing the diffusion and standardization of methodological

capacities in national constituencies. Our analysis of countrywritten contributions to the discussion on the future work of the IPCC after the completion of the Fifth Assessment cycle6 showcases the strong attachment of governments to the IPCC methodological guidance. Countries which consider themselves to lack the necessary capacities to organize monitoring processes, appreciate the contribution of IPCC methodology reports to fill these gaps. For their part, developed countries value the contribution of these reports to the international standardization of greenhouse gas reporting under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. Some countries have even domestically mimicked the institutions of the IPCC (e.g. Austrian Panel on Climate Change). Similarly, the GEO-5 assessment process was perceived both as a means by which to generate interest to conduct foresight processes at other jurisdictional scales and a means by which to build capacity in the conduct of national and regional assessments through interview respondents. Assessments and monitoring initiatives in Eastern Europe, South Asia (e.g., Sri Lanka), Latin-America, the Caribbean, Africa, South America, China and the Arab region were mentioned as having been influenced by the GEO-5 procedures, training and methodologies. For numerous interview respondents, methodological capacity building has been one of the main reasons to conduct the IPCC, the GEO and also the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) assessments. Thus, our analysis confirms that GEAs can provide the necessary methodological guidance to conduct assessments and monitor environmental threats at national and local levels (M 2.1.3). 4.2.2. GEAs offer national actors and civil society an opportunity to negotiate and legitimize the meaning of environmental knowledge (M 2.2) Our empirical results show that the discussions that emerge from the release of an assessment report help to maintain the level of priority of these issues in political agendas over time, despite the emergence of competing priorities. For instance, a government representative from a developed country presents the GEO reports as “a unique communication opportunity . . . that's the moment where you have a chance to reach out to really top political level to the world leaders . . . but also to the public at large around an issue”. The Government of Belgium comments on the IPCC that “the publication of the mega comprehensive report had always a big impact on the media, policymakers and the public at large. It creates momentum for political decisions.7 ” A high-ranking expert of the IPCC explains that the IPCC Nobel peace prize, which was jointly awarded to the IPCC and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.8 raised the expectations for the 2009 United Nations climate change conference “because everybody was convinced that climate change is an issue”. GEAs help reassert the urgency to tackle environmental problems and revive the communicative discourse between society and policy-makers. They can create a momentum that sustains interest and a sense of urgency for environmental issues. They also create an opportunity to raise and/or maintain attention in environmental issues. Our empirical evidence shows that, from the point of view of some governments and civil society actors, assessments constitute opportunities through which to draw attention to environmental issues. As such, assessments not only prompt, but also re-animate a political debate on environmental matters and counterbalance changes in the socio-economic or political conditions (M 2.2.1).

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Document 3 of the Supplementary Material. Document 3 of the supplementary material. See remark 1 of the supplementary material.

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Table 1 Overview of mechanisms by which GEAs contribute to environmental policy discourses. Contributions to international coordinative discourses (M 1) Contributions to national coordinative discourses (M 2.1) GEAs shape the network of actors who actively engage in international GEAs function as learning platforms for cross-boundary issues and interlinkages in the negotiations (M 1.1) treatment of environmental issues (M 2.1.1) GEAs provide a platform through which policy actors create the scientific GEAs reframe scientists/policy-makers networks in national constituencies. GEAs foundations and a premise for intergovernmental negotiations (M 1.2) empower participants who diffuse, translate and multiply global information in local constituencies through their personal networks (M 2.1.2) GEAs contribute to reinforcing and standardizing methodological capacities and supporting the progress of individual countries by informing their coordinative discourses (M 2.1.3) Contributions to national communicative discourses (M 2.2) GEAs help reassert the urgency of tackling environmental problems, reanimate a political debate on environmental matters and counterbalance changes in the socioeconomic or political conditions (M 2.2.1) Knowledge brokers such as civil society actors and university lecturers are crucial links in the communication chain from GEAs to national populations, and in the process of challenging existing coordinative discourses and directing them towards more progressive environmental policies (M 2.2.2) Governments invest in GEAs to empower their top- down communicative discourses on the environment (M 2.2.3) Contributions to scientific discourses (M 3) Assessments have the potential to reshuffle and internationalize expert communities and networks by integrating new dimensions, linking issues and involving new participants. Both researchers (M 3.1) and policy-makers (M 3.2) take advantage of this opportunity to shape research agendas.

Policy analysis in particular, and scientific assessments more generally, can empower societal actors to develop convincing discourses in their communication with policy actors and élite communities. Civil actors and knowledge brokers engage in assessments and subsequently disseminate their insights in order to challenge the coordinative discourses of conservative dominant national policy actors. GEAs are perceived as tools for the civil society to work with the political opposition in countries and at times which are unfavorable to environmental progress. For a high level author from the Working Group III of the IPCC, the work of this institution aims to challenge common knowledge by provoking thinking, stirring mobilization, and increasing pressure on governments to seriously engage in ambitious public policies. The authority of such assessments is used by civil society actors to strengthen the credibility of their advocacy. They use some of the findings to update their position and to strengthen the authority of their arguments. An NGO representative whom we interviewed explains that “the media often wants to know what we think as an NGO ( . . . ) and then we can use the reports to highlight the parts that are particularly relevant to our work.” Similarly, despite the numerous controversies that have challenged the IAASTD, NGOs and civil society have made extensive use of this assessment. In addition, because of its comprehensive character and its authority, GEO-5 has been considered as a textbook. It is a useful teaching tool to introduce university students to environmental issues on a global scale, and the relationship between environment and development. A university lecturer explains: “I tell [the student I teach], here you can get a lot of information that is already processed, that has been reviewed, that is agreed by many countries, by many scientists. It's information that you can take without any doubt”. Knowledge brokers such as civil society actors and university lecturers can be crucial links in the communication chain from GEAs to national populations, in the process of challenging existing coordinative discourses and directing them towards more progressive environmental policies (M 2.2.2). GEAs constitute argumentative support in discourses not simply for civil society actors; educating the public has been one of the primary functions of environmental assessments for leaders in environmental policy in countries such as Finland, Germany or the EU, and international organizations such as UNEP. A government official involved in the IPCC and the UNFCCC negotiations explains: “Although IPCC is commissioned by governments, they want that society at large is educated on climate change.”

(IPCC Workshop). In addition, many of them value the fact that the IPCC findings also address the private sector. Outreach activities for the civil society and stakeholders have also been central to the GEO-5 assessment process. A member of the high-level intergovernmental panel of the GEO-5 puts it plainly: “the more the findings [of the GEO-5] are shared with a wide spectrum of the stakeholders, even at public level, . . . [the more] they become . . . sensitive about what is going around . . . on Mother Earth, and would gain the support of all consequent actions in the right direction . . . so that you would be having a larger number of supporters”. To summarize, governments invest in GEAs to empower their top-down communicative discourses on the environment (M 2.2.3). 4.3. scientific discourses (M 3) The last mechanism that we explore is whether and how international assessments contribute to research agendas and thereby scientific discourses worldwide. In particular, we observed that both researchers and political actors perceive assessments as a means through which to forge research agendas. First, a large majority of the researchers we interviewed considered their participation in the production of assessments as a beneficial learning experience. They attribute this learning process to their interactions with an extended community of peers, that is with policy-makers and stakeholders on the one hand, and with researchers working from different disciplinary viewpoints and adjacent research fields on the other. Participating in the assessment was perceived by numerous researchers as a way of unravelling policy-makers’ priorities, constraints and current needs for information; their thinking on critical research gaps and knowledge of policymaking and society was stimulated by working together with stakeholders and governments, which leads to the production of further research. Several assessment authors reported that participating in a GEA process also helped them to better contextualize their work and to communicate the costs of inaction and the co-benefits of addressing environmental risks. By deliberating with experts in adjacent fields of research, other researchers can strengthen their knowledge on the research gaps which need to be filled. As reported by several interviewees, contacts with experts from other fields of research through the GEA process prompted the initiation of interdisciplinary international research projects in both the GEO-5 and the IPCC AR5. A GEO-5 lead author gives the following example: “[I was asked to

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deliver] data [on] the cost of diseases . . . from climate change [for the assessment]. I didn't have those numbers at that time. But nowadays, I have my students working on this and we are developing this methodology and we will be publishing next year.” This illustrates that researchers use the assessments to reflect on critical research gaps and initiate new research projects (M 3.1). Political actors also perceive and seize the opportunity to reshape research agendas. The government of the Federal Republic of Germany, for instance, considers that assessments can nurture the integration of research across scientific disciplines.9 They perceive assessments as means through which to “influence climate research agendas worldwide” by creating a common background and standards for conducting research and stirring the creation of scientific networks worldwide.10,11 A high-level UNFCCC Secretariat representative suggests how the structured expert dialogue might contribute to forging research agendas: “In some cases, you end up in pointing where things are not clear yet. So science has to be further . . . developed to provide answers”. The research conducted showed that government representatives actively engage in the discussion of research gaps and use assessments as an opportunity to shape research agendas (M 3.2) Assessments have the potential to reshuffle and internationalize expert communities and networks by integrating new dimensions, linking issues and involving new participants. In addition, they empower the participants to communicate research to policy actors and the public. Our empirical material shows that assessments have such impact by providing researchers with an opportunity to discuss the issues with a large community of peers, composed of policy actors and stakeholders, as well as experts in adjacent research fields. Table 1 summarizes the discursive impact mechanisms of GEAs that we have identified and specified in this research paper. 5. Conclusions and outlook Considering the multiplicity of channels and pathways by which GEAs exercise influence on policy, it is difficult to agree that “[the IPCC’s] main affliction is pabulum — a surfeit of bland statements that have no practical value for policy” (Victor, 2015). We believe that policy-making should be understood as discursive politics, and as sites where actors construct the meaning of environmental change. Interviews revealed that although some GEAs may, at first sight, not have been tremendously impactful, a nuanced understanding of their mechanisms highlighted a much broader impact spectrum. Despite their noticeable dissimilarities, we find that GEO-5 exhibited comparable impact mechanisms to those of the IPCC AR5. This paper indicates some lessons on how GEAs, particularly those that are solution-oriented (Kowarsch and Jabbour, this issue), might (better) contribute to discursive politics in the future: 1. GEAs should be conceived as a means of contributing substantive insights and scientific facts to policy-making. They also operate as platforms for confronting and enriching environmental coordinative discourses, including disputed options, to address environmental issues. Consequently, enhancing the opportunities by which researchers and government representatives, in multilateral agreements, exchange knowledge in an iterative manner, is decisive to their success.

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Document 4 of the supplementary material (Germany’s contribution). Document 4 of the supplementary material (the contribution of the European Union). 11 Document 3 of the supplementary material (Cyprus). 10

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Creating more space for interactions between researchers, policy-makers and stakeholders might help better exploit this potential in the future. While there seems to be an increasing consensus on environmental challenges, the search for appropriate solutions might benefit from such spaces for interactions. 2. By ensuring a broad participation, and the cross-fertilization of policy fields and sources of knowledge across national and administrative boundaries, solution-oriented (and other) GEAs can facilitate various forms of policy learning. This learning can influence the beliefs, values and behavior of the diverse actors who contribute to coordinative and communicative discourses in multiple national constituencies. The institutional design of an assessment should consciously account for the mechanisms by which they exert influence via interpersonal interactions, in order to maximize their potential. For instance, the selection criteria of participants could go beyond geographic representation and excellence to include communication skills and networks. The advocacy of individual participants appears indeed crucial for the effectiveness of GEAs (Pintér, 2002). 3. Finally, by engaging with policy-makers and stakeholders, researchers learn how to produce and communicate their research in a policy-relevant manner. Assessments should be specifically designed to enhance these capacities, as they contribute to policy-relevant research in the future. Future research may enhance this contribution by empirically and theoretically specifying some of the impact mechanisms we have described, and may include quantitative content analysis methods. Funding This research was, inter alia, conducted as part of a larger research initiative on “The Future of Global Environmental Assessment Making” funded by MCC and UNEP (see https:// www.mccberlin.net/en/research/cooperation/unep.html) and was part of a doctoral research project funded by the by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The DAAD had no involvement in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the very valuable contributions of Jason Jabbour and Jennifer Garard to the development of this paper. References Anckar, C., 2008. On the applicability of the most similar systems design and the most different systems design in comparative research. Int. J. Social Res. Methodol. 11 (5), 389–401. Beck, S., 2009. Das Klimaexperiment und der IPCC: Schnittstellen zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik in den internationalen Beziehungen. Volume 84 of Ökologie Und Wirtschaftsforschung. Metropolis-Verlag, pp. 227. Biermann, F., 2001. Big science, small impacts in the South? The influence of global environmental assessments on expert communities in India. Global Environ. Change 11, 297–309. Brossard, D., Shanahan, J., McComas, K., 2004. Are issue-cycles culturally constructed? a comparison of french and american coverage of global climate change. Mass Commun. Soc. 7 (3), 359–377. Cash, D., Clark, W., 2001. From Science to Policy: Assessing the Assessment Process. John F. Kennedy School of Government Faculty Research Working Papers Series RWP 01-045 Available from: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/ getFile.aspx?Id=29 [Last accessed on January 27, 2016]. Clark, W.C., van Eijndhoven, J., Dickson, N.M., et al, 2001. Option assessment in the management of global environmental risks. In: Social Learning Group (Ed.), Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: A Comparative History of

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Prof. Dr. Christian Flachsland is head of the Governance working group at MCC Berlin, and Assistant Professor for Climate and Energy Governance at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. His research interests include: climate and energy governance and policy assess-ment, and the science-policy interface. Prior to joining MCC, Christian Flachsland worked for six years at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in the Policy Instruments Working Group as a PhD student and postdoc. He holds a PhD from Technische Universität Berlin and a Magister Artium degree in sociology, economics and phi-losophy from Universität Potsdam.

Dr. Martin Kowarsch is heading the “Scientific Assessments, Ethics, and Public Policy” working group at MCC Berlin. Kowarsch, who studied philosophy and economics, led the joint research initiative of MCC and UNEP on “The Future of Global Environmental Assessment Making” (2013–2016) to inform future choices, particularly in solu-tion-oriented assessment design. Jointly with Ottmar Edenhofer, Kowarsch developed the normative “Pragmatic-Enlightened Model” for assessment making. This model influenced, for example, the as-sessment strategy of the IPCC Working Group III (AR5). Kowarsch is member of the Network Development Group of the International Net-work of Government Science Advice (INGSA). For more information, see https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/institute/team/ kowarsch-martin.html.

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