What Counts as Local Knowledge in Global Environmental Assessments and Conventions?

mental managerialism” wherein the “Western scientist continues to speak for the Earth” (1995, 194). In its very conception, however, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) represents a challenge to such a business-as-usual approach, and the current volume clearly shows this. One defining characteristic of the MA is a concern to link scales of analysis by integrating local/indigenous knowledge into global scientific assessments. At the same time, it represents an effort to create a scientific assessment process designed to meet the needs of decision makers (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2003; Reid 2000). Taken together, these two characteristics present several challenges to those involved in the MA process and to those responsible for translating MA outputs into policy. In this chapter, I explore these challenges by examining how “local knowledge” is constituted in global environmental assessments and conventions, and I argue for a more expansive conception. My argument assumes that bridging scales requires more than bridging epistemologies. Across a range of disciplines, the theoretical landscape today is defined by a concern with questions of power, and the boundaries between the epistemological and the political are not as clear as we once took them to be. In making this argument, I follow two trajectories. First, I consider the constitution of the “local” and the politics of translation. Specifically, I examine how local perspectives are elicited and presented in various mediated forms. Chapter 7