Expertise in an uncertain world: The role of expert knowledge in addressing environmental and planning challenges

This special section addresses the geographies of knowledge and expertise across contemporary environmental and planning challenges. Understanding the changing role of expert knowledge and how it weaves its way into policy and decision-making is more important than ever given the mammoth challenges we face. Different forms of expertise can often be conflicting and competing with one another, reflecting the power relations underpinning their deployment. The four papers in this special section from geography and planning speak to the diverse knowledge claims and networks of expertise that shape and seek to challenge contemporary decision-making. The special section reflects on how embedded expertise operates across different sectors and scales. It pays attention to how expertise can become destabilized across particular geographies, as the mobility of knowledge generated in one context is deployed elsewhere. By attending to the multiplicities of knowledge at play across environmental and planning challenges, the papers break down the assumption that there is a single form of expertise.