Participant Diversity
Adam Standring
Abstract
Diversity has become increasingly important as an analytic concept and organising principle in the general scientific community. Advancing diversity is seen to be even more essential in a global science-policy interface such as the IPCC. Being able to claim to speak from a broad perspective of geographies, genders and experiences is considered to be important if the IPCC is to produce legitimate and authoritative climate knowledge for policy. This chapter applies a critical lens to examine the IPCC's procedures and practices in selecting its authors with respect to securing a diverse base of expertise across gender, geography and experience. It then considers how diversity is important, identifying different logics – substantive and instrumental – that have guided the IPCC's efforts to date. The chapter concludes by considering why diversity should matter and what possibilities are opened for global climate knowledge-making through enhanced capacity building.