Keeping global environmental assessments fit for purpose: Challenges and opportunities for a changing context

Abstract

PBL Global Environmental Assessments (GEAs), such as those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), play a prominent role in global environmental governance. They aim to improve the quality of environmental decision-making by synthesising the state of scientifc knowledge in a manner that is relevant to policy-making. However, in light of changing dynamics in science, policy and society, regular maintenance is required to retain their value. At the request of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and the Ministry of Foreign Afairs, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency analysed the logics underlying the role and design of GEAs, and if and how these may need revision. The study is based on a literature review, interviews with scientists, practitioners and policymakers closely involved in such assessments, and a workshop with scientists and policymakers. This report discusses the purposes GEAs serve and how their production processes are organised, as well as the implications of changing dynamics in science, policy, and society for their performance and usefulness. It creates insight into choices and options infuencing the efectiveness of future assessment processes, while acknowledging that there is no one-sizefts-all model and that individual assessments are part of a wider assessment landscape. In this way, it aims to inform decision-makers on how to keep global environmental assessments ft for purpose. Many GEAs are complex processes that are highly institutionalised. This means they tend to become path-dependent: procedures followed in the past are likely to be followed again in the future. Although these processes are designed to ensure the efectiveness of GEAs as science-policy interfaces, this path-dependence reduces their ability to readjust to changing dynamics in science, policy, and society. In the frst place, the growing number of GEAs raises the question about the degree to which GEAs address possible overlap and interrelationships. Second, environmental governance is increasingly characterised by the involvement of non-state actors, whose perspective for action is only slightly refected in GEAs that traditionally focus on national governments acting in multilateral setings. Third, GEAs operate in a politically charged context, in which science is not self-evidently authoritative, while environmental issues are increasingly at the centre of political debate.