Since its emergence, the contemporary environmental problem has become an object of analysis and intervention both for ecology (area of biology) and for different intergovernmental organizations with a global reach. In both fields, a series of conceptual frameworks have been developed aimed at addressing ecological changes, that is, those alterations that affect units that are the object of study of ecology. The aim of this paper is to clarify and contrast the ways in which disturbance ecology (a recent field within (...) ecology) and different intergovernmental organizations conceptualize and approach ecological change. To do this, we make an analytical comparison between the ecological concept of ‘disturbance’ and the notion of ‘driver’ coming from intergovernmental organizations. In the comparison, we observe that these concepts seek to explain similar processes of ecological change under the same causal logic, although they show important differences in the treatment of the initial conditions that allow them to be studied. We conclude that the notion of ‘driver’ leads to an epistemological impoverishment in relation to the concept of ‘disturbance’. Finally, we discuss some implications of this epistemological problem, given that it is the impoverished notion of ‘driver’ that is imposed on the international context when explaining an ecological change, and materialized in guidelines which are recognized by nations around the world. Thus, this impoverishment is transferred to the field of public policy. It is urgent to rethink to what extent we are contributing to the construction and reproduction of an epistemologically impoverished environmental problem. (shrink)