Legitimate Knowledge Policy Co-Production towards Just Climate Action

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time. To address this complex and multifaceted issue, policymaking must be informed by knowledge. Despite the critical role of science policy interfaces (SPIs), which are institutions that connect knowledge and policymaking, in addressing climate change, existing approaches often fail to effectively integrate diverse knowledge systems and meaningfully engage stakeholders. Based on four publications, this dissertation explores how SPIs can be enhanced to foster more effective and just climate action. <br/> The first publication systematically reviews the existing literature on SPIs in the context of environmental sustainability. It identifies factors contributing to SPI effectiveness, including stakeholder participation, interdisciplinarity, and diverse expert backgrounds. In doing so, it sets the stage for examining how legitimacy can further strengthen SPIs’ capacity to advance more just climate action. <br/> Building on the systematic review, the second publication advocates a shift from effectiveness to legitimacy as a pathway for fostering just climate action. By integrating the literature on SPIs with scholarship on legitimacy through an integrative literature review, it is recognised that SPIs are inherently powerful and political rather than apolitical and neutral institutions, which forms the basis for a framework to evaluate the legitimacy of SPIs. This framework underscores how legitimacy can enhance SPIs’ role in addressing the justice challenges posed by climate change. <br/> Applying this legitimacy framework to local SPIs, the third publication examines the development of urban climate action plans (UCAPs) in Accra (Ghana), Bonn (Germany), São Paulo (Brazil), and Ahmedabad (India). It demonstrates how fostering co-productive, inclusive, and transparent processes can bridge knowledge gaps and enable legitimate, just urban climate action. <br/> Expanding the analytical lens from the local to the global scale, the fourth publication examines the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to identify pathways for enhancing its role in fostering just climate action. It reveals how modernist logics framing the IPCC as an apolitical and universal source of knowledge shape its operations, and identifies emerging efforts to unlearn these constraints by broadening disciplinary diversity, incorporating diverse epistemologies, and fostering co-productive collaborations. <br/> Synthesising the findings from the four publications, the dissertation proposes the concept of Legitimate Knowledge Policy Co-Production (LKPC), which combines co-production with principles of legitimacy. LKPC enhances both the epistemic and participatory quality of SPIs, ensuring more inclusive and accessible processes that bridge the gap between scientific expertise and meaningful stakeholder engagement. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that through legitimate co-production processes that bring together knowledge and policy, SPIs can bridge the gap between knowledge and action to enable justice-centred responses to the climate crisis.