Global environmental knowledge synthesis: What’s in it for national action?

Abstract

Global environmental assessments (GEAs) support international environmental governance by synthesizing state-of-the-art scientific knowledge. Increasingly, they also articulate solutions to environmental risks. The interlinked “triple planetary crisis” (biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution) requires action that considers potential tradeoffs and seeks to harness synergies between the responses. Subsequently, there are concerted efforts to collaborate across different global assessments and to synthesize messages on synergistic action. But how could these global syntheses and messages be leveraged for national action? We explored the question through two multi-stakeholder workshops organized in Finland in 2020 and 2021, complemented through a literature review. Adopting systemic perspectives, syntheses that integrate various environmental dimensions are well-placed to inform sustainability transformations through shaping national debates and public discourses on the interconnected environmental crises, helping to legitimize contentious, difficult decisions. As processes, they support transdisciplinary learning and capacity-building, understanding different worldviews and challenging assumptions and value systems, while communicating the urgency of action. Yet, while scientists are increasingly bridging disciplinary and thematic silos, corresponding governance structures remain highly sectoral, and a capacity deficit in systems thinking by policymakers prevails. Interlocutors of global knowledge synthesis, including national scientific experts, can be crucial in interpreting messages and catalyzing action that accounts for cross-sectoral synergies and tradeoffs. By empowering local experts and actors not only in utilizing global knowledge syntheses but in participating in the knowledge co-production processes, both the impact and the accuracy of new global assessments can be improved.