Hi Carsten...I think should include Statistics in the middle of both paradigms. Everybody in any culture understands the language of numbers specially when we talk about efects in money. By the way, there are some papers talking about those conflicts, for example: Henle et al 2008: Identifiying and managing the conflicts between agricultural and biodiversity conservation in Europe - A review. Good luck¡

Hi Carsten...I think should include Statistics in the middle of both paradigms. Everybody in any culture understands the language of numbers specially when we talk about efects in money. By the way, there are some papers talking about those conflicts, for example: Henle et al 2008: Identifiying and managing the conflicts between agricultural and biodiversity conservation in Europe - A review. Good luck¡

Hi Carsten,

I believe this simply boils down to the incentives IPBES provides to scientists across the natural and social sciences to contribute and become involved. Once there is a clear convincing answer to the question "What exactly do I get out of the substantial amount of time, work and - in the case at least of many colleagues from 'developed countries' - also money I invest into IPBES?", recruitment will become much easier. Also, engagement of social scientists hopefully will increase over time once/if IPBES becomes more widely known both in the scientific community and to the general public as a very worthwhile exercise. Nonetheless, as it currently stands, I believe the platform will chiefly attract participation from colleagues who are generally passionate about its goals and do not worry too much about how their participation helps their career/personal circumstances - and this I assume is a rather limited pool, irrespective of what we do.

Cheers,

Jan

HI Carsten

I agree with Jan. There is no shortage of social scientists who are passionate about work addressing the human dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, mainstream incentives are lacking. Integrated multi-disciplinary research involves more than just inviting an economist or sociologist to the team in an ad hoc way.

Wei

Hello Carsten, 

It is interesting that, for already quite some time, a similar question has been asked on other international policy making and advisory fora (a.i. the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the UN ruling instrument on genetically modified organisms).

I believe that the explicit acknowledgement - in both research and policy making - that ecological issues are multi-dimensional, and closely related to social, cultural and economic processes, could contribute to get higher involvement of social scientist on such discussions. As strange as it may sound, it is amazing the amount of scholars and policy makers who still think that biodiversity and biosafety are still subjects of natural sciences, only.

Best wishes,

Georgina 

The article in Nature is behind a paywall! -- The problem of getting social scientists into the process is serious BUT more difficult is getting local (peasant and indigenous) participants in. Our work attempts to do this by incorporating them as community researchces (with appropriate compensation) and by bringing them into the evaluation process itself -- this involves a recognition that 'scientists' have to "learn to learn" -- a rather humbling process that I suspect the German academic community might find alienating! 

I am at the Humboldt U. in Berlin for the semester and would welcome direct communication about this! ([email protected])

I agree about the problem of lack of fit with career incentives or structure, although to some extent this can be true of natural science colleagues too.  I think Georgina's and David's points are both useful: basically many processes and outputs assume the 'primacy' of natural science knowledges and ways of understanding. As a result, getting involved as a social scientist can feel a bit thankless, and can entail a lot of diplomatic effort in trying to open minds to recognise and question this assumption. If natural scientists' training involved more on the epistemology and ontology of sciences, a subject more familiar many social scientists, this might reduce this challenge.

Great reflexion. I recommend Henle, et al 2007, Identifying and managing the conflicts between agriculture and biodiversity conservation in Europe. Any way I think, Agroecology have been doing that job for along may be at least 20 years. Also recommend Ruiz-Rosado, 2006, Agroecology, a discipline leading towards transdiscipline.  

Dear all,

thanks for the feedback, on which most I tend to agree on, especially the incentives questions is crucial, and so is the view that "all relevant knowledge forms" are needed - our focus recently was on the social sciences, so I raised this.

We have currentyl discussed some of the issues in a European context in a special issue of Biodiversity and Conservation, you might want to take a look at:

7/11 papers are open access, we couldn't makle all, I am afraid...

http://link.springer.com/journal/10531/25/7/page/1

Hi That is really interesting topic . I am sending herewith some research papers that relevant to your topic . I believe that will be useful for your needs 

Hi Carsten et al,

I am an ethno-ecologist ( social/ cultural scientist) working with IPBES as a CLA for the Asia Pacific Assessment. plus I was an expert adviser for the scoping of the IPBES Global Assessment.

I think there are three related   keys to engaging more social scientists in the IPBES Assessments.

The first involves people and nature ( human and natural systems)having equal weighting in the IPBES assessments. Despite the considerable efforts of IPBES and others, natural systems are generally weighted  more heavily. Keeping this in context, the regional and global assessments are aiming to report on the status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services that support human wellbeing... or natures contributions to human well being. So an understanding of human factors contributing to human well being is essential in such bodies of research.

The second part relates to the first... because these assessments are 'perceived' to be focused more on nature, when the recruitment process for scientists occurs, bio-physical scientists and environmental economists re more likely to be nominated by NGOs, government agencies etc.

The third part  links to recruitment. It would be beneficial for IPBES to target social and cultural scientists with expertise in human-nature relationships including fields such as: behavioural sciences, environmental psychology and  ethno-ecology.

At the crux of this problem is a broader global recognition ( beyond IPBES) of the significance of coupled human and nature   ( or socio-ecological) systems approaches to problems, such as responses to climate change.

The IPBES Assessments offer a critical progression and important opportunity to apply a coupled approach that I am sure will attract more social/ cultural scientists in the future.

Happy day/night

Kirsty

Thanks Kirsty,

though I posed the question quite some time ago, I think your insights from the actual work are quite helpful, and IPBES tries to address them... But I guess it will take some time ;-)

Carsten

IPBES needs to include urban landscapes in its analysis.  Doing this will force them to give greater weight to socio-political issues; underlying drivers of biodiversity loss such as overconsumption and lack of connection to the sources of what we consume, and the need for biodiversity engagement programs in cities.