Although international actors operating under the United Nations umbrella put much faith in the possibility of bridging science and policy through various institutional arrangements, research in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition suggests that different civic epistemologies revolve around environmental degradation issues. Civic epistemologies, which imply peculiar understandings of knowledge across cultures, are not easily bridged. This paper contends that conflicting (civic) epistemologies inevitably emerge in epistemic debates at the intergovernmental level, with strong implications for how science and knowledge are dealt with and understood in environmental negotiations. Drawing on the experience of global soil and land governance and building on the idiom of civic epistemologies, the concept of intergovernmental epistemologies is introduced as an analytical tool to capture the diverging ways of appreciating and validating knowledge in intergovernmental settings. Placing state actors and their perspectives center stage, intergovernmental epistemologies account for the tensions, contestations and politicisation processes of international institutional settings dealing with environmental issues. The paper concludes discussing the consequences of intergovernmental epistemologies for the study of global environmental governance: it cautions about overreliance on approaches based on learning and all-encompassing discourses, emphasizing the value of using STS-derived concepts to investigate the complexity of international environmental negotiations.

尽管在联合国保护伞下运作的国际行动者非常相信通过各种制度安排将科学和政策联系起来的可能性，但科学技术研究 (STS) 传统的研究表明，不同的公民认识论围绕环境退化问题展开。公民认识论意味着对跨文化知识的特殊理解，不容易弥合。本文认为，相互冲突的（公民）认识论不可避免地出现在政府间层面的认识论辩论中，这对环境谈判中如何处理和理解科学和知识具有强烈的影响。借鉴全球土壤和土地治理经验公民认识论，政府间认识论的概念被引入作为一种分析工具，以捕捉在政府间环境中欣赏和验证知识的不同方式。政府间认识论将国家行为者及其观点置于中心位置，解释了处理环境问题的国际机构环境的紧张、争论和政治化过程。本文最后讨论了政府间认识论的后果对于全球环境治理的研究：它告诫人们不要过度依赖基于学习和包罗万象的话语的方法，强调使用 STS 衍生概念来研究国际环境谈判的复杂性的价值。