Staging science: Dramaturgical politics of the IPCC's Special Report on 1.5 °C

Abstract

The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) first report after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, attracted substantial attention in science, media, and politics. In a climate regime where discursive and symbolic elements are important aspects of climate governance, how the IPCC's products are strategically mobilized and staged provide insights into an important facet of science-policy-politics interfaces. Drawing on a novel analytical framework for dramaturgical governance analysis, this article presents an in-depth case study of the IPCC's SR15. It examines how, where, why, and in front of what audiences it was brought out onto stage. The analysis, based on ethnographic observations at COP24 and COP25, expert interviews, background discussions, and document analysis, shows that the IPCC – now more than ever – is mobilized for different and sometimes contradictory political purposes. Different performance patterns reveal organizational strategies that the IPCC had already used during its sixth assessment cycle to meet the diversifying and increasingly incompatible expectations it is facing. At the same time, the analysis shows that questions about the IPCC’s official mandate and practices of fulfilling and interpreting it, responses to misrepresentation of the report, and the problem of political venue shopping within IPCC processes remain unanswered. The study concludes that the production and performance of global environmental assessments are inextricably linked. In addition to the notion of co-production, future research and efforts to design interfaces between science, policy and politics should therefore put more emphasis on the politics inscribed in practices of co-performance.