Expert organizations’ institutional understanding of expertise and responsibility for the creation of the next generation of experts: comparing IPCC and IPBES

Abstract

This perspective paper argues for the importance of a better understanding of expert organizations’ roles in creating expert knowledge and these organizations’ responsibilities in building the next generation of experts. To what extent is this responsibility theirs, do they take it on, and what are the consequences if they do or do not? The argument is based on a comparison of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES). Using a theoretical framework that defines expertise, expert communities, and expertise in organizations, the analysis explores and explains the structural preconditions that guide these organizations in their work. The paper shows how the IPCC and the IPBES play similar but different roles in developing expertise and creating the next generation of experts due to differences in their current organizational structures. The paper also shows how the IPCC and the IPBES are not mere facilitators or coordinators of existing expert knowledge. Instead, the IPCC and the IPBES also create experience-based situated expert knowledge that influences the epistemic communities that inform environmental governance on climate change and biodiversity loss and enable transformative change for a sustainable future.

Keywords

• nadia sitas