Knowledge Cumulation at Science-Policy Interfaces: Opportunities for Environmental Governance Research

To increase the societal impact of environmental governance research, scholars have called for knowledge cumulation, meaning that scientific evidence builds more systematically on previous findings. Our article develops the perspective that such knowledge cumulation takes place not only within academia but also at science-policy interfaces (SPIs). Drawing on literature on knowledge integration, synthesis, and use as well as science-policy literature, we outline five opportunities for knowledge cumulation at SPIs: (1) proximity to democratic discourse and decision-making; (2) suitability for inter- and transdisciplinary integration; (3) combined problem and solution focus; (4) potential to increase the generality of scientific findings; and (5) creation of targeted synthesis products. We illustrate their respective benefits and challenges with empirical examples from SPIs for climate change, biodiversity and natural resources, and food systems. We conclude that SPIs are an important locus for cumulating knowledge used in complex environmental governance and that future research could explore how this interacts with knowledge cumulation in the academic realm.