Connecting Science and Policy to Tackle Global Challenges: The Role of Boundary-Spanners

As COVID-19 and climate change have shown, science is crucial to inform global policymaking related to wicked problems -from framing issues and setting agendas to generating evidence to inform policy options and assess the solutions implemented. The contribution of science to global governance is critical and institutional arrangements to facilitate this relationship have increased over the past few years. However, science-policy engagement is mainly a social process that involves individuals navigating often complex science-policy ecosystems. These individuals deploy a set of skills, knowledge and practical experience to establish productive interaction across boundaries, often with limited resources. Who are those science-policy boundary-spanners? Where do they operate? What challenges do they face and what does success look like for them? Is there a need to better support this field of practice and how? This session will shed light on the specific practice of science-policy boundary-spanning by showcasing and discussing three examples of practice in this field, from both academia and policy, and all related to the UN system, and motivating reflections among the audience.