The Tyranny of Metrics, the Power of Stories and Epistemic Diplomacy

The document argues that climate-risk mapping in the global South is currently split between 'precisionism'—the reliance on standardized indices and models—and 'groundtruthing'—the use of lived narratives and ethnography. Precisionism often creates a 'metrics mirage' that obscures social inequalities and justice claims, while groundtruthing struggles to gain policy traction in indicator-driven bureaucracies. To resolve this, the authors introduce 'epistemic diplomacy,' a power-aware procedural approach for integrating mixed evidence. This framework includes five guiding principles, a ten-step operating model, and specific governance safeguards to ensure community co-production and prevent knowledge extraction. The paper provides practical method pairings, such as combining heat sensors with social diaries, to create 'boundary objects' that maintain both technical precision and social meaning for policymakers.

• Climate-risk mapping in the global South is characterized by a tension between 'precisionism' and 'groundtruthing'. Precisionism privileges standardized metrics like composite vulnerability scores and risk dashboards, which can create a 'metrics mirage' that depoliticizes inequality and misdiagnoses needs, particularly for marginalized populations in informal settlements.
• Groundtruthing—using ethnography, participatory mapping, and lived narratives—restores meaning and accountability but often fails to scale or influence policy because bureaucratic systems are designed for indicators, audits, and performance regimes.
• The authors propose 'epistemic diplomacy' as a framework to integrate quantitative and qualitative evidence. This approach is defined as a 'power-aware, procedural approach' that uses negotiated rules and joint interpretation to ensure that evidence is transparent about uncertainty and positionality.
• The epistemic diplomacy framework is built on five core principles: pluralism, power-awareness, procedural clarity, proportionality, and public value.
• The proposed operating model consists of three phases and ten steps: (I) co-frame & design, (II) generate, document & adjudicate, and (III) make sense, decide & learn. This process includes specific steps for triangulation, conflict mediation, and equity filters to prevent tokenism.
• To prevent the extractive use of local knowledge, the paper advocates for governance safeguards, including joint authorship, iterative consent (re-consent), and the use of 'anti-tokenism rules' such as requiring co-interpretation workshops before finalizing maps.
• The paper suggests specific practical pairings of methods to create 'boundary objects' for policy, such as pairing hydraulic models with community story-maps for informal settlement flooding, or heat sensors with social diaries for urban heat health.

APA

Bhanye, J., & Paradza, G. (2025). The Tyranny of Metrics, the Power of Stories and Epistemic Diplomacy. Public Affairs Research Institute. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251205_The-Tyranny-of-Metrics__Working-Paper.pdf

Chicago

Bhanye, Johannes, and Gaynor Paradza. The Tyranny of Metrics, the Power of Stories and Epistemic Diplomacy. Public Affairs Research Institute, 2025. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251205_The-Tyranny-of-Metrics__Working-Paper.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bhanye |first1=Johannes |last2=Paradza |first2=Gaynor |title=The Tyranny of Metrics, the Power of Stories and Epistemic Diplomacy |publisher=Public Affairs Research Institute |date=December 2025 |url=https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251205_The-Tyranny-of-Metrics__Working-Paper.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bhanye2025tyranny, author = {Bhanye, Johannes and Paradza, Gaynor}, title = {{The Tyranny of Metrics, the Power of Stories and Epistemic Diplomacy}}, institution = {Public Affairs Research Institute}, year = {2025}, month = dec, url = {https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251205_The-Tyranny-of-Metrics__Working-Paper.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }