ORIGINAL PAPER Framings of science-policy interactions and their discursive and institutional effects: examples from conservation and environmental policy Michael Pregernig Received: 29 April 2014 / Revised: 15 August 2014 / Accepted: 18 September 2014 / Published online: 25 September 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract The complex field of forest conservation, like many other areas of environ- mental policy and management, is considered to be in urgent need of sound scientific expertise. At the same time, the practice of linking scientific knowledge production to political and societal decision-making is a persistent challenge. Rather than attempting to illuminate the (problematic) interaction between science and policy-making in an empirical way, this study adopts a meta-perspective to investigate how the role of science in policy- making is discursively framed. To this end, seven established theoretical conceptualiza- tions of science-policy interactions are presented. For each conceptualization, the under- lying rationales are presented first. Then, the ensuing discursive and institutional effects— in the sense of proposed procedural and organizational measures—are discussed. Finally, the study reflects on the question of how practices of scientific policy advice could be shaped in a more productive way if—instead of taking single narrow framings for gran- ted—the role of science in policy-making were perceived, discussed and enacted in a more frame-reflective way. Keywords Science-policy interactions Á Linear model Á Knowledge utilization Á Socio-constructivism Á Environmental policy Introduction Forest conservation, like many other fields of environmental policy and management, is marked by high degrees of complexity, uncertainty and societal ambiguity (Cumming et al. Communicated by Georg Winkel. M. Pregernig (&) Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, Albert Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Tennenbacher Strasse 4, 79106 Freiburg, Germany e-mail: michael.pregernig@envgov.uni-freiburg.de 123 Biodivers Conserv (2014) 23:3615–3639 DOI 10.1007/s10531-014-0806-3