Making knowledge usable. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary challenges for international environmental expertise

Current environmental problems are complex and multidimensional, demanding expert knowledge from different fields, natural science and social science, but also other kinds of knowledge. By investigating IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), an international expert organization that most ambitiously work to produce and distribute this kind of knowledge, the project studies how expertise is mobilized and knowledge shaped in order to develop usable knowledge, i.e. trusted, relevant and legitimate knowledge. In particular, the project focuses on the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary challenges of making use of, bridge and synthesize different scientific disciplines as well as different knowledge systems.