Paper long abstract:

The IPBES is a diplomatic initiative led by the united nations organization. its origin dates back from the beginning of the XXIst century. It focuses on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services as a discussion and negotiation level whose purpose is to set up rules for the international representation of these natural realities and mechanisms. Through the ethnography and semantic analysis of the discourse production of that level of negotiation, we have singled out a few operations of translations of data, like quantification, peer review, objectivation etc.; they are controversial and describe the flow of information between local knowledge and international arenas. These focal points of controversy are key moments, referring back to the level of the person, and the deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of accounts on the surrounding world. They are grounded in processes both subjective and objective in the making; the paper will analyze the choices discussed for the IPBES setting, in order to regulate this data framing and flow linked to diplomatic stakes and concerns between contradictory solutions.