Abstract: Multilateral efforts are essential to an effective response to climate change, but individual nations define climate action policy by translating local and global objectives into adaptation and mitigation actions. We propose a conceptual framework to explore opportunities for polycentric climate governance, understanding polycentricity as a property that encompasses the potential for coordinating multiple centers of semiautonomous decision-making. We assert that polycentrism engages a diverse array of public and private actors for a more effective approach to reducing the threat of climate change. In this way, polycentrism may provide an appropriate strategy for addressing the many challenges of climate governance in the Anthropocene. We review two Chilean case studies: Chile's Nationally Determined Contribution on Climate Change and the Chilean National Climate Change Action Plan. Our examination demonstrates that Chile has included a diversity of actors and directed significant financial resources to both processes. The central government coordinated both of these processes, showing the key role of interventions at higher jurisdictional levels in orienting institutional change to improve strategic planning and better address climate change. Both processes also provide some evidence of knowledge co-production, while at the same time remaining primarily driven by state agencies and directed by technical experts. Efforts to overcome governance weaknesses should focus on further strengthening existing practices for climate change responses, establishing new institutions, and promoting decision-making that incorporates diverse social actors and multiple levels of governance. In particular, stronger inclusion of local level actors provides an opportunity to enhance polycentric modes of governance and improve climate change responses. Fully capitalizing on this opportunity requires establishing durable communication channels between different levels of governance.

Abstract: The importance of science for climate governance has strengthened over time and the topic inspires prolific academic writing on the influence of scientists and scientific knowledge on policy decisions. One of the streams of research in the field is inspired by Cash ' s (2003) seminal work highlighting how the role of scientists depends on perceptions of salience, credibility and legitimacy. Other views call for attention to the politics involved in scientific performance while influencing policy and on the local circumstances, considering the many ways in which societies relate to science and expertise. The role of scientists in climate governance is a contested issue, relevant for many research centres aiming to influence policy decisions given the urgency of the climate crisis. To better understand this role, we reviewed mainstream international literature and identified four main ap-proaches, which we label: scientific usable knowledge, politics of science, critical approaches and hybrid ap-proaches. We contrasted the results with the experience of scientists from a Chilean climate research centre, to provide a view from the South on the role of scientists in climate governance. Our results show that Cash ' s approach was a common ground for Chilean climate scientists, upon which they build ideas on the importance of building long-term relationships between scientists and policy makers. However, they also acknowledged the need to take into consideration the role of politics in climate-related decisions and the power relations and actor ' s interests.

Abstract: Connecting the discussions on resilience and governance of social-ecological systems (SESs) with the sociological analysis of social controversies, we explore a major red tide crisis on Chiloe Island, southern Chile, in 2016. Theoretically, we argue that controversies not only are methodological devices for the observation of the complex relations between nature and society in moments of crisis, but also are materially embedded in the SES dynamics and can work for or against systemic resilience. Empirically, we show that Chiloe's SES is an unstable regime prone to sudden shifts and identify the configuration of different lock-in mechanisms expressed in the reproduction of structural fragilities over the last three decades. From the examination of the social controversies on the 2016 red tide crisis, we draw several lessons. First, there is a complex interplay of visible and hidden fragilities of Chiloe's SES that, while being ignored or their resolution postponed to the future, materialize in the daily experience of inhabitants as a series of historical disappointments. Second, the unfolding of Chiloe's social-ecological crises involves epistemic disputes not only over concrete events but also on the very construction of the SES as a social-natural reality. In turn, this creates conditions for the emergence of strategic alignments between local, national, and transnational actors and shows the extent to which the socio-political articulation of knowledge may contribute to either improve or block the governance of the SES. Third, the social resources that came to light with the controversies reveal pathways for improving the governance regime of Chiloe Island's SES. This dimension highlights the normative relevance of commitments to recognize multiple scales of knowledge and articulate a plurality of actors in a nonhierarchical logic of cooperation.