In the context of accelerated global socio-environmental change, the Water-Energy-Food Nexus has received increasing attention within science and international politics by promoting integrated resource governance. This study explores the scientific nexus debates from a discourse analytical perspective to reveal knowledge and power relations as well as geographical settings of nexus research. We also investigate approaches to socio-nature relations that influence nexus research and subsequent political implications. Our findings suggest that the leading nexus discourse is dominated by natural scientific perspectives and a neo-Malthusian framing of environmental challenges. Accordingly, the promoted cross-sectoral nexus approach to resource governance emphasizes efficiency, security, future sustainability, and poverty reduction. Water, energy, and food are conceived as global trade goods that require close monitoring, management and control, to be achieved via quantitative assessments and technological interventions. Within the less visible discourse, social scientific perspectives engage with the social, political, and normative elements of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. These perspectives criticize the dominant nexus representation for its managerial, neoliberal, and utilitarian approach to resource governance. The managerial framing is critiqued for masking power relations and social inequalities, while alternative framings acknowledge the political nature of resource governance and socio-nature relations. The spatial dimensions of the nexus debate are also discussed. Notably, the nexus is largely shaped by western knowledge, yet applied mainly in specific regions of the Global South. In order for the nexus to achieve integrative solutions for sustainability, the debate needs to overcome its current discursive and spatial separations. To this end, we need to engage more closely with alternative nexus discourses, embrace epistemic pluralism and encourage multi-perspective debates about the socio-nature relations we actually intend to promote.

The rising demand for policy-relevant knowledge has supported the emergence of global boundary organizations at the science–policy interface. By synthesizing environmental knowledge for policy-makers, boundary organizations influence how we know and govern sustainability challenges. Therefore, it is essential to better understand what happens in and through these organizations. This paper examines the very practices that configure science–policy relations in global boundary organizations by studying the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Through Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Political Ecology perspectives, we disclose mechanisms of boundary work that demarcate science from non-science and, hereby, determine which expertise becomes authoritative in IPBES. Building on original empirical data, we first examine how science and policy domains were interrelated during the IPBES global assessment process (2016–2019). Second, we investigate how this boundary work shaped the production of biodiversity knowledge. Our findings indicate that integration and demarcation efforts configured science–policy relations through formalized and informal mechanisms. We argue that this boundary work continuously established science as authoritative voice for addressing biodiversity loss in IPBES. Spatial aspects of boundary work highlight power differentials between IPBES member States that manifested in uneven geographies of knowledge. Instead of concealing these inequalities through the norm of political neutrality, we need to recognize boundary organizations as political spaces in which science and policy are co-produced. By adopting a critical and reflexive co-productionist approach, it becomes possible to addresses uneven knowledge–power relations through more inclusive and transparent practices. Boundary organizations, such as IPBES, are then able to provide more diversified environmental explanations and transformative solutions.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) plays a critical role in environmental governance by synthesizing knowledge for policy-makers. In this context, the co-production of knowledge among scientists, indigenous knowledge holders, and societal actors is increasingly important. Despite inclusive goals, the organization often overlooks how uneven geographies and power relations shape collaborative knowledge production. Drawing on qualitative interviews with IPBES experts, administrators, and government representatives, we apply Science and Technology Studies perspectives to analyze the co-production of knowledge among geographically diverse scientists in the IPBES global assessment. Our findings indicate that IPBES’s approach to co-production neglects the political and situated nature of knowledge production, inadvertently reinforcing contemporary colonial power dynamics within the organization. These dynamics influence the abilities of member states to participate in IPBES, perpetuate the North/South divide, and reproduce geographical biases within global academia. This has led to an overrepresentation of Western scientists and enhanced their epistemic authority during the global assessment. We highlight a disconnect between IPBES’s ambitions to transcend the traditional dominance of Western perspectives through inclusive approaches and its actual knowledge-making practices. We discuss the interrelations between knowledge, power, and social orders at the science-policy interface from a geographical perspective and propose six measures for a more reflexive and inclusive approach to knowledge co-production. These recommendations emphasize the importance of recognizing the contextual nature of knowledge, thereby strengthening IPBES’s transformative potential.