As the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) enters its implementation phase, its technical advisory bodies are endeavoring to define their purpose. Parties to the Convention have questioned the effectiveness and even the relevance of CCD science advice, recommended reforms, and estab-lished a new Group of Experts to support existing advisory processes. These efforts, however, are unlikely to bring about effective change because they overlook the mutually constitutive relationship linking natural and social order (i.e., co-production) evidenced by a century of intergovernmental cooperation on dryland degradation. Historically, knowledge about desertification has been integral to the locus of desertification governance, the definition and application of cognitive resources, and the design of policy remedies. In the CCD former sites of co-production are now sites of incongruous knowledge and policy. A comparison of past and present desertification initiatives illuminates these incompatibilities and points to ideas for fostering greater coherence in the CCD's expert advisory and implementation activities.

“Local,” “indigenous,” and “traditional” knowledge are emerging as important categories in environment-development policy-making. This paper provides an overview of international policies and programs for addressing these historically marginalized ways of knowing, and explores how the World Bank, and processes under the Convention to Combat Desertification , and the Convention on Biological Diversity are attempting to incorporate “other” knowledges and knowledge holders. The study argues that long-standing assumptions and practices of multilateral policy-making are often at odds with the new perspectives for which these knowledges presumably provide a vehicle. On the one hand, policy-making bodies cite “other” knowledges as alternatives to technocratic problem-solving methods of earlier decades because they are unique and situated, holistic and processual. On the other hand, international institutions are attempting to systematize “other” knowledges in ways that seem poised to render them standardized and universal, compartmental, and instrumental.