Research projects

Participation, Deliberation and Sustainablility. Governance beyond Rhetoric in Domains of Climate, Forestry and Food Safety (2006-2009)

In this Formas-funded project, coordinated by the Political Science Department in Lund, we have critically examined the widespread assumption that new modes of environmental governance that increase the participation of non-state actors will lead to more legitimate and effective policy outcomes than traditional state regulation. By studying and comparing participatory policy instruments in three environmental domains, the project provides insights about the challenges and opportunities of bottom-up governance.

Democratising Scientific Expertise in Practice. Learning from Climate Science Policy Decisions and Research Practice in the EU (2006-2009)

In recent years new ways of talking about science and expertise have gained ground in the academic literature and in environmental policy practice. Rather than approaching science as the provider of authoritative knowledge about the natual world, science in the environmental domain is today more often described as inherently uncertain, provisional, politicised and post-normal. In this project we examine these efforts to 'rethink' science and ask on what grounds attempts to establish more a legitimate science-society contract are based. The project rests upon a case study of the European ADAM project, and is funded by the US National Science Foundation through the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Earth System Governmentality. A Critical Agenda for Global Environmental Change Research (EarthGov) (ongoing) 

Since the 1980s when NASA launched Earth System Science as a new structuring concept for its future reserach efforts, a seemingly new way of studying the Earth and environmental change has gained ground among scientific institutions around the world. Building from a view from space provided by Earth observation satellites, advanced computer models and global databases, Earth System Science has emerged as a holistic super-discipline that tries to embrace all processes in nature and society as one interlinked system. In this project we examine where this new approach to global environmental change reserach comes from and what it does to our understanding of nature and human society as a governable domain. We call our project Earth System governmentality to suggest critical reflections on how Earth System thinking works upon our identities and enables new ways of being and acting in the Anthropocene era.

Making Climate Change Governable: Carbon Accounting as Rationality and Practice (ongoing)

This project stems from an effort to understand how climate governance is accomplished in practical terms. Rather than asking 'who get's what, when, how' within and beyond the international climate regime, this project draws attention to the processes that render the climate governable in the first place. In particular, we examine the techniques, tools and methods that have turned carbon into a coherent object of governance. Drawing upon Foucauldian governmentality studies, the project seeks to develop an 'analytics of carbon accouning' that allows us to look beyond grand political schemata or economic ambitions and instead examine how seemingly humble and mundane mechanisms (e.g. techniques of notation, accounting and auditing) have turned carbon into a governable reality. The project also seeks to elucidate which underlying systems of thought and bodies of knowledge that these practices rest upon and give rise to.

Non-State Actors in the New Landscape of International Climate Cooperation (2012-2015)

This research programme consists of two interlinked VR and Formas projects focusing on the role of non-state actors in international climate diplomacy, as well as non-state governance in the transnational sphere. More information will be posted soon.

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Last updated: Mon Feb 13 11:03:44 CET 2012