As part of the In-Forest project, we examine how international research collaboration may counteract or reproduce inequalities in global forest science. PhD researcher Camilla Tetley and Dr. Susanne Koch have now published a related analysis highlighting narratives of research collaborations mediated by global science-policy documents. 

Collaborative science has become a ‘gold standard’ in sustainability science, to address increasingly complex socio-environmental challenges and knowledge divides. Inequalities shaping research collaborations however remain unexplored in the science-policy interface. 

 To address this gap, Camilla Tetley and Susanne Koch have conducted a critical discourse analysis of texts by international policy and research actors engaged in the global discourse on science for sustainability. It shows that documents of United Nations bodies primarily mediate a deficit narrative, with focus on a lack of resources and innovation capacity in ‘less developed’ countries. The alternative transformation narrative mediated by reports of UNESCO and other science-policy institutions implementing science for the SDGs offers a more complex picture: it accounts for epistemic inequalities and frames research collaboration as essential to address global challenges. 

 The study has been published open access as part of a Special Issue on “Science as a Site of Inequality” in the journal Environmental Science & Policy. By highlighting how narratives of research collaboration at the policy level address or do not address inequalities in science, it provides important ground for the ethnography of research collaboration conducted as part of the In-Forest project.