Systemic barriers to sustained academic participation in the activities of international science–policy organizations undermine equitable knowledge co-production — a collaborative multi-actor creation of knowledge. We outline institutional reforms to tackle such barriers to the benefit of researchers, organizations and society at large.
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Acknowledgements
All authors served as coordinating leading authors or co-chairs for the IPBES Transformative Change and Nexus assessments. We thank the editorial committee from IPBES, particularly A. Larigauderie, D. Obura, L. Dziba and S. Hashimoto for their suggestions. We also thank F. Ballejo for helping to design the original Fig. 1 and K. Speziale for her comments. D.L. thanks the grant awarded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada, and the Central American University Council (CSUCA) to the Red Centroamericana de Ciencias sobre Cambio Climático RC4 project (CR-66, SIA 0054-23). The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of IDRC, CSUCA or the Board of Governors. S.V. acknowledges the financial support from EQUALSEA (Transformative adaptation towards ocean equity) project, under the European Horizon 2020 programme, ERC Consolidator (grant agreement no. 101002784) funded by the European Research Council. L.S. acknowledges financial support from One Ocean Hub, a collaborative research programme for sustainable development funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) (grant reference: NE/S008950/1). D.S.T.H. thanks the donors who support the Percival Carmine Chair in Epidemiology and Public Health through the Massey Foundation. H.G. and P.M. acknowledge financial support from USGCRP.
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S.A.L. conceived the article. S.A.L. led the initial draft with N.F. All of the authors provided suggestions that contributed to further drafts, the development of concepts and the preparation of the final manuscript.
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Nature Sustainability thanks J. Nicolas Hernandez-Aguilera and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Lambertucci, S.A., Frantzeskaki, N., Villasante, S. et al. Supporting researchers’ engagement in international science–policy bodies. Nat Sustain 8, 982–985 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01612-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01612-x
