Scholars publish more papers every year, but does that output actually add up to knowledge? In this episode, Michael sat down with three scholars who have been asking exactly that question within the field of environmental governance.

The guests are editors and contributors behind a special issue of Environmental Policy and Governance (Fall 2025), dedicated to the problem of scientific cumulation: whether research in this field is building on itself, or simply accumulating.

• Michael Rose — Senior Researcher, Leuphana University
• Jens Newig — Professor, Leuphana University
• Sina Leipold — Professor, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research

Michael Rose and Jens discuss their own contribution to the special issue, "How to Assess Knowledge Cumulation in Environmental Governance Research? Conceptual and Empirical Explorations," which analyzes the Earth Systems Governance (ESG) research community. Their findings are sobering: ESG research shows limited potential for knowledge cumulation, marked by a fragmented journal landscape, core-periphery citation structures, heterogeneous research questions, and few shared reference works, concepts, or frameworks.

The conversation also ranges across the special issue as a whole, which tackles the cumulation problem from several angles:

• Bibliometric analysis mapping how key concepts like "environmental governance process" are used inconsistently across research communities
• Methodology, including whether archetype analysis in social-ecological systems research can serve as a genuine building block for theory
• Why researchers chase novelty and what that costs the field
• Forest carbon offsetting in Uganda as a case study showing how even a small, focused body of literature can fail to accumulate when papers rest on incompatible theoretical assumptions
• Epistemological diversity, indigenous and local knowledge, and the role science-policy interfaces play in translating knowledge into practice in climate and biodiversity governance

Link to special issue:

Special issue: Knowledge Cumulation in Environmental Governance, Environmental Policy and Governance, Fall 2025

In this episode, Michael interviews organizers of the upcoming IASC 2027 conference: Yanti Kusumanto, Nurhady Sirimorok, and Micah Fisher. Together they discuss the conference's theme, sub-themes, and the significance of hosting it in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, a region with deep relevance to commons governance.

The conference website is live! For more information, go to https://2027.iasc-commons.org/

This is the first in a new series of episodes exploring each of the conference's subthemes, so stay tuned for more!

In this episode, Michael speaks with Thomas Falk, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Thomas works at the intersection of research and development, and for many years he has been designing and testing what he calls experiential learning games: structured, face-to-face exercises that help communities understand and address their shared resource challenges. Thomas employs games in the service of a key principle: that the best way to help communities manage their shared resources isn't to tell them what to do, but to create a space where they can figure it out for themselves. And that space, it turns out, can look a lot like a game.

In this conversation, Thomas discuss an important principle shared by many commons scholars: that communities are often better at identifying the right institutions for their own contexts than outside researchers are. The games he designs don't hand communities a solution. Instead, they help participants see the structure of their own collective problems clearly, often for the first time, and then work out the rules they want to live by together.

Michael and Thomas discuss how such games are run, the role of gender in collective decision-making, what it actually looks like to facilitate one of these sessions in a village in rural India, and what the evidence actually shows about whether any of this changes behavior in the real world.

Thomas would like to acknowledge the financial support for his work from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the CGIAR Policy Innovations Science Program, the CGIAR Gender Equality and Inclusion Accelerator, and the Co-Impact Philanthropic Funds.

References:

Falk, Thomas, Wei Zhang, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Lara Bartels, Richu Sanil, Pratiti Priyadarshini, and Ilkhom Soliev. 2023. “Games for Experiential Learning: Triggering Collective Changes in Commons Management.” Ecology and Society: A Journal of Integrative Science for Resilience and Sustainability 28 (1). https://doi.org/10.5751/es-13862-280130.

Janssen, Marco A., Thomas Falk, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, and Björn Vollan. 2023. “Using Games for Social Learning to Promote Self-Governance.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 62 (101289): 101289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101289.

Steimanis, Ivo, Thomas Falk, Lara Bartels, Vishwambhar Duche, and Björn Vollan. 2025. “The Role of Women in Learning Games and Water Management Outcomes.” PNAS Nexus 4 (8): pgaf243. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf243.