We analyze the development of biodiversity offsetting governance through a research-weaving approach. Here, we combine information from a systematized review of the literature and a qualitative analysis of the institutional developments in different world regions. Through this triangulation, we synthesize and map the different developmental streams of biodiversity offsetting governance around the globe over the last four decades. We find that there is a global mainstreaming of core principles such as avoidance, no-net-loss, and a mitigation hierarchy, as well as pooling and trading of offsets for unavoidable residual damages. Furthermore, we can observe an ongoing diversification of institutional designs and actors involved. Together this constitutes an emerging regime complex of biodiversity offsetting governance that comes with both a set of shared norms and a growing institutional complexity. While this may imply institutional innovation through diversification and policy experimentation, it also raises questions regarding the effectiveness of offsetting practices.

This article explores how policy-makers are managing scientific uncertainty in policy-making. This is done through a case study of the Swedish climate change policy process from 1975 to 2007, based on interviews and an extensive review of official publications and documents. The study shows that scientific uncertainty played a very marginal role in the development of Swedish climate politics. When faced with scientific uncertainty, policy-makers came to rely more on knowledge of what was politically possible to do, than on what was desirable from a scientific perspective. Thereby, policy-making became incremental in character. The article argues that in order to understand the dynamics involved, we need to pay attention to how scientific knowledge and uncertainty are translated from a scientific context into a political one. These framings, done by knowledge brokers, are crucial for the use of scientific knowledge in politics. Scientific uncertainty negatively impacts scientists' willingness to act as knowledge brokers and thereby the possibility of policy-makers to use knowledge. The article argues that despite the lessons from previous research, there seems to be a need for empirically grounded studies that highlight the limits of the rational paradigm captured in, for example, evidence-based decision-making

Knaggård, Å., B. Ness, and D. Harnesk. 2018. Finding an academic space: reflexivity among sustainability researchers. Ecology and Society 23(4):20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10505-230420

Green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly used in policymaking to promote biodiversity and enhance ecosystem services through the protection, creation, restoration and connection of natural and man‐made green areas. The EU Commission adopted in 2013, the concept as a strategy. When member states apply the policy, it is translated into specific bureaucratic and political systems, creating different ‘policy assemblages’ of ideas and institutional features. We analyse the Swedish GI policy to draw conclusions about how it has been assembled in one particular member state and what that particular assemblage will imply for biodiversity conservation. In combination with understanding policies as assemblages, we use the ‘What's the problem represented to be’‐approach as method. We show that the Swedish GI policy assemblage consists of a mix of policy ideas developed in Sweden and the EU. Despite the current strong focus on biodiversity conservation, the notion of land's multifunctionality, characterizing the EU strategy and the possibility to conserve biodiversity on land used for purposes other than conservation increasingly influence the Swedish policy as it is formed. Although the policy has the potential to mainstream biodiversity conservation measures across different sectors, based on our analysis of current discourse, its implementation will likely promote GI measures less disruptive to existing land use activities, making its capacity to halt biodiversity loss marginal. Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.

Distribution of responsibility is one of the main focus areas in discussions about climate change ethics. Most of these discussions deal with the distribution of responsibility for climate change mitigation at the international level. The aim of this paper is to investigate if and how these principles can be used to inform the search for a fair distribution of responsibility for climate change adaptation on the local level. We found that the most influential distribution principles on the international level were in turn built on one or more of seven basic principles: (P1) equal shares, (P2) desert, (P3) beneficiary pays, (P4) ability, (P5) self-help, (P6) limited responsibility for the worst off, and (P7) status quo preservation. It was found that all the basic principles, but P1, P3, and P7, are to some extent translatable to local climate adaptation. Two major problems hamper their usefulness on the local level: (1) several categories of agents need to take on responsibility; and (2) emissions do not work as a base for all principles. P4, P5, and P6 are applicable to local adaptation without changes. P4 is of particular importance as it seems to solve the first problem. P2 is applicable only if the second problem is solved, which can be achieved by using risk of harm instead of emissions as the basis for desert.