Governing a resilient ocean under uncertainty: Lessons from a Semantic Analysis of Knowledge Integration and Environmental Decision-Making in the Southern Ocean

The ocean, as the largest and most dynamic space on Earth, is both a critical area for scientific research and a complex geopolitical arena. This study explores the selective transmission of scientific conclusions as they are integrated into international policy, particularly in the context of Southern Ocean governance. It questions the frequent disconnect between scientific research and political frameworks, which hinders the full application of scientific knowledge in international negotiations, especially for environmental processes that are poorly understood but could have a major impact on ecosystem viability.

 

Biogeochemistry, essential to ocean protection, governs interactions among living organisms, chemical elements, and geological processes, shaping ecosystem health and resilience. Disruptions to these cycles, caused by local human impacts, or climate change, can affect carbon storage, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. The study focuses on how these complex insights, which have not traditionally shaped ocean conservation debates, can inform policy discussions and conservation strategies, particularly in the Southern Ocean—a key area for global climate adaptation and a model for governance of ocean commons.

 

To examine this process, the study uses a semantic analysis of grey literature from the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and the diverse stages of science integration (scientific academic articles, scientific working groups, scientific committee, commission). The methodology includes mass analyzing documents submitted prior to meetings and official reports to trace the evolution of scientific discussions and policy recommendations along these steps and along time. The semantic analysis of thousands of documents was conducted using the GarganText software from CNRS ISC-PIF, with an emphasis on keywords such as "carbon," "climate change," and "biogeochemical". This approach, computing order-one and order-two cooccurrences of a lexicon of about 500 followed terms tracks how the use and meaning of these terms evolves at each stage of science-policy integration, giving us the opportunity to quantify concepts diffusion at each step.

The study also enriches this analysis through observations of meetings and interviews with researchers and participants, providing insights into how scientific knowledge informs policy within CCAMLR.

 

In conclusion, CCAMLR serves as a unique case study for understanding the relationship between science and policy in complex environmental management. This work underscores the importance of transdisciplinary integration and dealing with uncertainties to preserve ecosystem resilience. It also proposes indicators to assess the capacity of ocean governance to integrate all the best available science and manage uncertainties, offering valuable lessons for the governance of international marine areas, particularly in the context of the BBNJ implementation.