The role of expert assessments in international environmental affairs

1. The role of expert assessments in international environmental affairs William Clark Global Environmental Assessment Project Harvard University http://environment.harvard.edu/gea

2. The Problem… • > 200 international environmental treaties • … most requiring periodic assessments of • scientific information on causes, prospects • evaluations of impacts • efficacy of response strategies. • Through complex processes engaging ‘000s • How are we doing? How to improve?

3. The broader context • If the “information age” is changing relationships of “power & interdependence” in the international arena (Keohane & Nye ‘98) • Just how does it do so? • What kinds of information, produced in what kinds of institutions, have what kinds of impacts on international affairs? • What does this mean for practice of analysis & assessment in international contexts?

4. The Global Environmental Assessment (GEA) Project • 5 yr research and training program to address these issues for environmental info • international, interdisciplinary team • Clark, Parson, Jasanoff, Holdren, Dickson • Keohane, McCarthy, Schrag, Jaeger • Doctoral and postdoctoral fellows (23 + 5) • research papers, seminar, workshops, web

5. What is an “Assessment”? • A technical report produced by a suitably sanctioned international committee? • A social process conducted within a framework of international institutions? • A distributed information and decision support system linking knowledge and action across scales?

6. What are the effects of assessments on action? • Potentially, contributing to change across a spectrum covering: • contents of the global “garbage can” • issue frames and agendas • strategies of actors • policy commitments • In practice, more on upper end of spectrum

7. What distinguishes effective assessments? • Saliency… • responsive to changing needs of specific users • avoiding the pitfalls of “universalism” • Credibility… • to specific audiences, not necessarily the user • avoiding the pitfall of making only the consensual credible.

8. On what do saliency and credibility most depend? • Historical context • position in the issue cycle influences audience, thus what is salient, credible to whom; • avoid pitfall of anachronistic assessment • Characteristics of the assessment • Characteristics of the user

9. Characteristics of assessments that affect saliency, credibility • Structure • “embeddedness” in decision making institutions • provision for linking knowledge, users x-scales • Participation • universal vs. local knowledge • scholarly vs. political credentials • Scope of content: causes, effects, options • Treatment of dissent, technical uncertainty

10. Characteristics of audience that affect saliency, credibility • Interests • Political openness / amplification channels • Technical capacity

11. Implications for practice • Many details of design... • Reconceptualize international assessment as process of co-production through which interactions of experts and users define, shape, validate a shared body of usable knowledge. • Work for international system of research and assessment, coupling global knowledge and local use through national institutions.