Hirt LF, De Pryck K (2023) Diversifying knowledge for climate change mitigation: Illuminating the common good and desirable futures. PLOS Clim 2(12): e0000321

There is a need to expand our knowledge on climate change to engage more readily with what constitutes the common good and desirable futures, and thus shed new light on climate mitigation pathways. In this context, interdisciplinary studies are paramount to find ways to better emphasize the human dimensions that complement techno-oriented approaches.

The commentary is available here

Ahead of COP 28, an issue paper from CSSN reviews the history of Saudi Arabia’s role in global climate negotiations. It finds the Saudi Arabian state regards the UN climate talks and IPCC as diplomatic areas where it must slow, obstruct and –  if need be – block progress.

With Joanna Depledge and Timmons Roberts

The issue paper is available here

Pflieger G, De Pryck K (2023). Contextualizing discourses of climate delay: a response to Lamb et al. (2020). Global Sustainability 6, e20, 1–2

Individuals and institutions seeking to delay climate action use a variety of new discursive
strategies, emphasizing the downsides, spreading fatalism, or betting on technological fixes.
This commentary highlights the importance of context when investigating discourses of climate delay. Depending on who holds them and why, some discourses can take on different
meanings, hinder or enhance climate action.

The commentary is available here

Edited by F. Badache, L. R Kimber and L. Maertens 

The book compiles an inventory of the methods developed in the study of IOs under the five headings of Observing, Interviewing, Documenting, Measuring, and Combining. It does not reconcile diverging views on the purpose and meaning of IO scholarship, but creates a space for scholars and students embedded in different academic traditions to reflect on methodological choices and the way they impact knowledge production on IOs.

I contributed to two chapters: one on Direct Observation, with S. Rauch, and one on Interviews and Observations

The Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency was a pioneering civil society-led initiative. It was the world’s first citizens’ assembly that brought together 100 randomly selected citizens from around the globe to deliberate on the topic: ‘how can humanity address the climate and ecological crisis in a fair and effective way?’ The Assembly aimed to set an institutional precedent for bringing the voices of ordinary citizens to multilateral negotiations, a space where they are largely absent.

The Evaluation Report examines the extent to which the Global Assembly upheld principles of good practice in the process design, deliberative experience, and impact.

The report is available here

Asayama, S., De Pryck, K., Beck, S. et al. (2023). Three institutional pathways to envision the future of the IPCC. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 877–880

The IPCC has been successful at building its scientific authority, but it will require institutional reform for staying relevant to new and changing political contexts. Exploring a range of alternative future pathways for the IPCC can help guide crucial decisions about redefining its purpose.

The commentary is available here

The commentary was discussed in The Guardian and Climática

Some reflections on the Bonn Climate Change Conference organized in June 2023. While these intersessional meetings are less known than the COPs to the UNFCCC, they constitute essential sites for the preparatory technical work of the COPs. With discussions about the implementation of the Paris Agreement becoming increasingly politicized, this year’s talks were particularly interesting to take the pulse of the negotiations for the next COP in Dubai (COP28).

Version française

English version

Retour sur l’élection de Jim Skea à la tête du GIEC et sur le rôle du Bureau de l’organisation

Dans Le Monde

Par Audrey Garric

In Reuters

Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Emma Farge

De Pryck, K. and Gaveau, A. (2023) Scientists in Multilateral Diplomacy. The case of the Members of the IPCC Bureau, PARISS, forthcoming

Scientific experts have become structuring actors in global environmental governance. They have put environmental problems on the agenda, facilitated the establishment of multilateral agreements, and continue to provide the information to support international policymaking. This paper, drawing on the literature on transnational professionals, introduces the notion of ‘transnational diplomat-scientists’ to describe a group of influential scientific experts that has risen to considerable power and increasingly acts as diplomatic actors in environmental agreement-making processes.

Pre-peer review version

De Pryck, K. (2023). Speaking Truth to Power? Socio-histoire de l’institutionnalisation de l’expertise scientifique dans la gouvernance mondiale de l’environnement. Dans : L’Académie des sciences morales et politiques éd., Annuaire français de relations internationales: 2023 (pp. 205-217). Éditions Panthéon-Assas.

Cet article propose de revenir sur plus de trois décennies d’évolution de l’interface science-politique au sein de la gouvernance globale de l’environnement et de dresser le récit d’un dialogue entre scientifiques et gouvernements souvent présenté comme un succès. Il explore les dépendances au sentier et les changements qui caractérisent l’institutionnalisation des évaluations globales de l’environnement au sein de plusieurs grands régimes environnementaux (ozone, climat, biodiversité, etc.).

Article sur CAIRN

Article avant évaluation par les pairs

De Pryck, Kari (2023). “Bridging science and diplomacy to build a universal agreement on the science of climate change: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance. Routledge, pp. 415-420.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the most complex intergovernmental expert organizations of our times, bringing together scientific and technical experts and government representatives to agree on the state of the knowledge on climate change, its impact and solutions. It draws its authority not only from the quality of its assessment reports, but crucially also from the processes that seek to aggregate the collective intelligence of researchers, government representatives, and, to a lesser extent, observer organizations. As this case illustrates, these processes, however, are not without limits.

Read the chapter in open access

« Le seul fait de communiquer des faits n’est pas suffisant pour mener à l’action, en raison de l’existence de nombreux messages contradictoires, notamment en provenance de la publicité, qui nous incite constamment à la consommation. Les scientifiques ont sous-estimé ces rapports de force et à quel point ils freinent les changements de comportement », estime Kari De Pryck, chercheuse en gouvernance de l’environnement à l’Université de Genève.

Article disponible sur le site de Le Temps

Published in the Green European Journal, March 30, 2023

With the final instalment of its Sixth Assessment Report, the IPCC has once again entered the limelight. Its findings present the latest trends in climate change and provide a basis for negotiations. Impossible to limit to a scientific and technical exercise, Kari De Pryck argues that the IPCC should accept its political role or become obsolete.

Commentary available here

Pour la chercheuse Kari De Pryck, le groupe d’experts sur l’évolution du climat, qui rendra publique lundi la synthèse de sa production de ces huit dernières années, s’est imposée dans la lutte contre le changement climatique, mais les chercheurs subissent des pressions de la part des Etats.

Par Audrey Garric

English version

Version française

Toute la semaine, scientifiques et États vont négocier le 6^e rapport de synthèse du Giec. Les pourparlers s’annoncent « difficiles », selon la chercheuse Kari De Pryck, tant les États veulent que « leurs intérêts soient servis ».

Par Alexandre-Reza Kokabi

Article disponible sur le site de Reporterre

Published by Nature, March 2, 2023

“A new book that takes an in-depth look at the IPCC helps to explain why the climate panel and IPBES remain two of a kind — and why we might not see their like again”.

The editorial is available here

De Pryck, Kari and Hulme, Mike (eds) (2022) A Critical Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

This book introduces the IPCC as an institution, covering its origins, history, processes, participants, products, and influence. Discussing its internal workings and operating principles, it shows how IPCC assessments are produced and how consensus is reached between scientific and policy experts from different institutions, countries, and social groups. A variety of practices and discourses – epistemic, diplomatic, procedural, communicative – that make the institution function are critically assessed, allowing the reader to learn from its successes and failures.

The book is available in open access on the CUP website

Dans Questions de communication, décembre 2022, p. 279-290

L’« urgence climatique » fait aujourd’hui partie de notre quotidien. Elle n’est plus seulement un discours abstrait, produit par les climatologues, mais une dure réalité. Cet article revient sur l’origine et les implications des déclarations d’état d’urgence climatique qui se sont multipliées ces dernières années. Il montre le pouvoir mobilisateur de ces déclarations, mais également les dérives sécuritaires qu’elles peuvent légitimer.

Article disponible sur journal.openedition.org

Dans « Giec. La voix du climat », Kari De Pryck livre une fascinante étude de terrain sur une institution devenue centrale.

Par Sébastien Billard et Rémi Noyon

Article disponible sur le site de l’Obs

De Pryck, Kari (2022). GIEC. La voix du climat. Paris, Presses de Sciences Po

Cet ouvrage ouvre pour la première fois la boîte noire du GIEC. Il raconte la rigueur du processus d’évaluation et la lourdeur bureaucratique que cela induit. Il décrit le travail de négociation des experts avec les États sur les principales conclusions et pointe le risque de dépolitisation des enjeux climatiques. 

Plan de l’ouvrage sur le site des Presses de Sciences Po

De Pryck, Kari (2021). Controversial Practices. Tracing the Proceduralization of the IPCC in Time and Space. Global Policy, 12 (S7), pp. 80-89.

This paper starts from the premise that international practices are neither stable nor universal but are in fact the product of time and space. It analyzes the processes of formalization and change in international practices using the case of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an intergovernmental institution producing regular assessment of the state of the knowledge on climate change. The IPCC is particularly interesting because of the numerous external and internal controversies that it has faced since its establishment in 1988 and the institutional and organizational changes that they triggered.

Read the article online

Accepted in Social Networks
With Tommaso Venturini and Robert Ackland

In this paper, we investigate the relational architecture of the IPCC focussing on the individuals that, in the thirty years of its existence, have assured the connection between its different components. To study relational bridging within the IPCC, we created a unique database of all the individuals who have contributed to the organisation since its establishment. We investigate the general distribution and evolution of bridging in the IPCC, but also identify individuals who more actively provided connections between its authors and diplomats (functional bridges), its Working Groups (thematic bridges) and its assessment cycles (temporal bridges). Focussing on the role of key bridge individuals and their trajectories within the organisation, we provide insights on the IPCC as a network organisation.

Read the preprint version of my article

A short entry (in French) for the Encyclopedic and Critic Dictionary of Publics. The text discusses the relation between the IPCC and the scientific communities that support it, the policymakers to which it speaks, and the general publics that it increasingly tries to reach.

De Pryck Kari, « GIEC » Publictionnaire. Dictionnaire encyclopédique et critique des publics. Mis en ligne le 31 mai 2021. Dernière modification le 31 mai 2021. Accès : http://publictionnaire.huma-num.fr/notice/giec.

Read the entry here

Published in Global Environmental Politics in 2021.

This article investigates practices through which consensus is reached on policy-relevant scientific conclusions in intergovernmental assessment bodies. Using the case of the IPCC and the production of the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Synthesis Report published in 2014, it sheds light on the procedural, visual and rhetorical arrangements in the weaving of an intergovernmental expert consensus.

Read the preprint version of my article

Bounegru L. De Pryck K, Venturini, T., Mauri, M. “We only have 12 years”: YouTube and the IPCC report on global warming of 1.5°C. 2020. First Monday, 25 (2).

This article contributes to the study of climate debates online by examining how the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15) played out on YouTube following its release in October 2018. We examined features of 40 videos that ranked the highest in YouTube’s search engine over the course of four weeks after the publication of the report. We identified four main recurrent themes: disaster and impacts, policy options and solutions, political and ideological struggles around climate change and contested science. The discussion of policy options and solutions was particularly prominent.

Read my article in First Monday

De Pryck K., 2020. Le GIEC dans tous ses états. La vie des idées. Janvier, 2020.

The IPCC has become a central institution in the debate about the future of the climate and about the policies to reduce global warming. But how did this group come about? How is it organized? Where does his influence come from?

Read my paper on “La vie des idées”

De Pryck K., Vanderlinden J-P., Billaud J-P., L’animation scientifique dans la pratique interdisciplinaire : l’expérience du GIS CES (2007-2015). 2018. Natures Sciences Sociétés, 26 (1), pp. 76 – 83.

While calls for interdisciplinarity are increasing, especially in the study of climate change and its impacts, many researchers are still unfamiliar with such approach. Defining interdisciplinarity as a practice based on interactions and dialogues, this article proposes to reconsider the role of scientific facilitation in the construction of interdisciplinary approaches. It draws on the experience of the GIS CES (Groupement d’intérêt scientifique Climat Environnement Société), a French interdisciplinary consortium focused on the study of climate change and its impacts.

Read my paper in Natures Sciences et Sociétés

De Pryck K., Wanneau K., 2017. (Anti)-boundary work in global environmental change research and assessment. Environmental Science & Policy, 77, pp. 203-210.

In the 1990s, a discourse emerged within global environmental change research underlining the need to go beyond previously held boundaries between science and society. While not entirely new, this discourse has however reached the highest levels of scientific cooperation embodied among others in the Future Earth (FE) platform and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Using the concept of (anti)-boundary work developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS), we trace shifts in discourses about the boundaries between social and natural disciplines; between scientists and societal actors; and finally, between the definition of problems and the provision of solutions.

Read my paper in Environmental Science & Policy

De Pryck K., Gemenne, F. 2017. The Denier-in-Chief: Climate Change, Science and the Election of Donald J. Trump. Law and Critique, 28, pp. 119–126.

The election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States reminded us that climate deniers are anything but endangered species. In this short paper, we discuss President Trump’s position on climate change in the wider context of climate controversies and denial. In particular, we put it into perspective with other notorious contrarian leaders and their influence on national and international climate politics. Finally, we provide a brief analysis of President Trump discourses on climate change and discuss them in light of reflections about post-truth politics.

Read my paper in Law and Critique

De Pryck K., 2015. Le Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat, ou les défis d’un mariage arrangé entre science et politique. CERISCOPE.

This article addresses the issue of the co-production of science and politics within a unique organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose legitimacy and authority is based on the association of the scientist and the politician in its organizational structure. It draws on the scientific literature published on the IPCC, on an analysis of IPCC procedures, on interviews with members and experts of the IPCC and on an ethnographic fieldwork in the organisation.

Read my paper in the CERISCOPE

De Pryck K., 2015. Focus. La production de l’expertise sur le climat dans un “univers controversé”. In F. Gemenne, ed. 2015. L’enjeu mondial. L’environnement, Presses de Sciences Po, 2015, p. 154.

Read my contribution to L’enjeu mondial. L’environnement

Venturini, T., Baya Laffite, N., Cointet, J.-P., Gray, I., Zabban, V., and De Pryck, K., 2014. Three maps and three misunderstandings: A digital mapping of climate diplomacy. Big Data & Society, 1(1), pp. 1-19.

This article proposes an original analysis of the international debate on climate change through the use of digital methods. Its originality is twofold. First, it examines a corpus of reports covering 18 years of international climate negotiations, a dataset never explored before through digital techniques. This corpus is particularly interesting because it provides the most consistent and detailed reporting of the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Second, in this paper we test an original approach to text analysis that combines automatic extractions and manual selection of the key issue-terms.

Read my paper in Big Data & Society