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Actionable knowledge and the art of engagement
Abstract
What makes knowledge relevant to environmental sustainability actionable, and how can its societal impacts be evaluated? Scholars and practitioners have increasingly advocated that the traditional linear model of knowledge production, with its unidirectional flow of information from researchers to policy-makers, be replaced by a new approach in which researchers and knowledge-users meaningfully interact to co-create knowledge that is actionable in decision-making. This popular model — co-production — has advanced thinking on how to create usable knowledge. In practice, however, co-production has not been a single approach, but instead a diversity of forms of engaged research. Further, the jargon may both obfuscate governance dimensions and limit understanding of what works. Improved distinction among the different ways researchers and societal partners interact can enable attentive and effective engagement across contexts. Recognition of this diversity is necessary in advancing the processes and impacts of actionable knowledge for sustainability.
... There are many comprehensive examples of metrics used to evaluate climate and hydrological models (e.g., Ekström et al., 2018;Mizukami et al., 2019;Wagener et al., 2022), communicate the impacts of climate change (e.g., Reed et al., 2022), or identify decision-relevant metrics (e.g., Bremer et al., 2020;Mach et al., 2020;Underwood et al., 2018;Vano et al., 2014). However, very few have examined whether userdefined metrics can be reproduced reliably by ESMs (Mankin et al., 2020) and whether further model development and scale reduction are warranted instead of improved communication (Pacchetti et al., 2021). ...
... Participants in the NSF NCAR workshop (Tye, 2023) emphasized that the exact numbers produced by climate models are not very important for future decisions. Others have also emphasized the importance of well-represented processes in the model (Reed et al., 2022) and correlations with known experiences (Mach et al., 2020;Shepherd et al., 2018). Focusing on fidelity to the historical climate exaggerates the importance of model performance instead of robustness to different conditions without ensuring that model predictions are useful or reliable (Brunner et al., 2021;Wagener et al., 2022). ...
... As decision-makers have become more immersed in developing water management adaptation plans, the role of "climate services" in developing salient climate information has increased (Briley et al., 2020;Brugger et al., 2016;Dilling et al., 2019). We tested our hypothesis that recent improvements in ESMs can allow decision-relevant metrics to be produced directly by leveraging the combined experience of the author team, results from the NCAR workshop, and the wealth of literature on actionable knowledge (Bremer et al., 2020;Jagannathan et al., 2021;Mach et al., 2020;Vano et al., 2014). Given that no model can perfectly address all decision needs, we identified and evaluated multiple metrics that can frame specific water management decisions within the known constraints of the data (Lempert, 2021) or within the decision-makers' experiences (Austin, 2023;Clifford et al., 2020;Reed et al., 2022;Shepherd et al., 2018). ...
The large spatial scale of global Earth system models (ESMs) is often cited as an obstacle to using the output by water resource managers in localized decisions. Recent advances in computing have improved the fidelity of hydrological responses in ESMs through increased connectivity between model components. However, the models are seldom evaluated for their ability to reproduce metrics that are important for and resonate with practitioners or that allow practitioners to situate higher-resolution model outputs within a cascade of uncertainty stemming from different models and scenarios. We draw on the combined experience of the author team and water manager workshop participants to identify salient water management metrics and evaluate whether they are credibly reproduced over the conterminous USA by the Community Earth System Model v2 (CESM2) Large Ensemble. We find that, while the exact values may not match the observations, aspects such as interannual variability can be reproduced by CESM2 for the mean wet day precipitation and length of dry spells. CESM2 also captures the proportion of total annual precipitation that derives from the heaviest rain days in watersheds that are not snow-dominated. Aggregating the 7 d mean daily runoff to two-digit Hydrological Unit Code (HUC2) watersheds also shows that rain-dominated regions capture the timing and interannual variability of annual maximum and minimum flows. We conclude that there is potential for far greater use of large-ensemble ESMs, such as CESM2, in long-range water management decisions to supplement high-resolution regional projections.
... However, empirically documented descriptions of collaborative research processes between social scientists and environmental practitioners for the improvement of citizen science programs are relatively rare (Mach et al. 2020). This may be due to a few reasons. ...
... for these types of collaborative research relationships. There is scarce funding available to support the development of participatory research collaborations and the cocreation of research questions and methods between academics and practitioners (Mach et al. 2020). In the work described above, early attempts to obtain funding were denied due to the lack of predetermined research questions and methods to guide the work. ...
... Third, we recommend attention to the iterative nature of long-term research partnerships. Successful collaborative research relationships are long-term and cyclical, where initial activities may take a long time to get underway (Mach et al. 2020). Often there is a sense that in participatory research that all partners should be involved at all stages of the relationship, in which the "best" approaches are when nonacademic actors steer all decisions and are involved in all research activities, including data collection and analysis. ...
Citizen science is increasingly credited for promoting scientific literacy and having the potential to empower and engage local people in conservation. However, rigorous evaluation of citizen science outcomes is limited, particularly those related to social capital and environmental stewardship. Social science can help to address this gap as it can identify barriers that hinder the success of citizen science programs and drivers that promote positive outcomes, such as social norms, community engagement, and effective communication strategies. However, little has been written about how academic partners in social science fields can engage with citizen science practitioners. In this paper we describe seven design components essential to the success of a long-term research collaboration between academic social scientists and staff of Billion Oyster Project (BOP), a nonprofit environmental organization whose mission is to restore oyster reefs to New York Harbor through citizen science, restoration, and public education initiatives. We describe how over an eight-year period, social science methodologies and findings were used to inform BOP’s environmental citizen science and volunteer programing and management. We argue that collaborative research is essential for the advancement of our field, and that action-driven research partnerships should become a key component of effective citizen science programs.
... Knowledge co-production has emerged as an important and essential modality by which researchers can enable and inform such sustainability transitions at multiple societal scales. At its most fundamental level, knowledge co-production has been defined as: 'substantive interactions between producers and users of knowledge that results in knowledge that fits decisions contexts' (Mach et al 2020). Knowledge co-production can be implemented at different spatial scales-including participatory research with communities as well as engaged research with policy actors spanning scale from urban to national and even international arenas (Norström et al 2020, ACERE, 2022. ...
... Indeed, tackling climate change is the quintessential grand challenge because climate hazards impact different social groups differently, there is uncertainty in these impacts as well as the potential benefits of actions to address them, while simultaneously, there is also an urgency to act. In such cases, co-production enhances the credibility and legitimacy of the co-produced knowledge, which can facilitate society's adoption of the proposed socio-technical pathways towards sustainability and equity (Mach et al 2020, Ramaswami et al 2022. Thus, knowledge co-production is essential both to enable research on transition pathways and to rapidly scale-up transition pathways toward developing equitable, sustainable climate-resilient futures, particularly in urban areas that will be home to >66% of the world's population by 2050. ...
... Best practices supporting the credibility of an assessment, i.e., the perception by the relevant expert communities that the evidence presented is trustworthy and technically correct, were primarily related to the rigor of the knowledge synthesis, such as the treatment of uncertainty, protocols to address lack of consensus, and external peer-review by independent experts (Fig. 1). Lastly, best practices supporting the salience of an assessment were primarily related to the relevance and timeliness of the knowledge presented with regard to stakeholders' needs and agency 29 . Best practices supporting salience included the synthesis of knowledge that is spatially and temporally relevant to decision-making processes, critical evaluations of intervention options, and the presentation of knowledge in a digestible format for decision-makers (Fig. 1). ...
... Recommendation 1: Elevating co-production practices within GEA processes Ocean-focused assessments could increase their legitimacy by developing weakly-implemented legitimacy best practices, including co-production with decision-makers, engagement with stakeholders, and integration of diverse knowledge systems. Such co-production processes are essential to promote trust and ownership of GEAs' outputs amongst ocean stakeholders, foster a shared understanding of environmental issues, tailor context-relevant recommendations, and in turn ensure that the scope of assessments and policy endeavors are coordinated 7,29,43,44 . The prioritization of scientific knowledge over Indigenous and local knowledge still dominates the GEA modus operandi 45 . ...
... [36]), and the paucity of references to clear communication between the producers and potential users of environmental knowledge (contra e.g. [37,38]) all affirm the previous finding that learning in the papers in our dataset is discursive and performative rather than substantive. A similar overconfidence appears in scholars' statements with regard to the degree to which the lessons from the past apply to different present-day contexts (Q4). ...
... The establishment of a typology of approaches to learning is a key step in increasing the actionability of climate information [38]. To identify a typology of the main approaches to learning from the past we selected two key questions-Q2 and Q3A. ...
Environmental changes pose unprecedented risks to human societies worldwide. Over the past few decades, burgeoning academic literature argues or assumes that past societies’ responses to environmental impacts can provide valuable lessons to guide adaptation to contemporary environmental changes. The ancient Maya civilization, whose decline is often linked with historically unprecedented droughts, constitutes a major case study for extracting such lessons. To analyze these lessons, we conduct a meta-analysis of the discourse of learning from past Maya-environment interactions. We demonstrate that although studies often refer to learning from the Maya explicitly, the learning is primarily declarative and discursive rather than substantive, and lessons are often vague, misguided, or inapplicable. Only a few articles employ research designs conducive to learning from the past, and only a few reflect on the process of, or the problems associated with, learning from the past. On the other hand, many articles are content with reaching ‘inspirational’ lessons, calling, for example, for increasing resilience, while only a fifth of the papers drew more specific lessons that offer somewhat concrete recommendations and courses of action. Many studies also claimed that their findings are applicable to present-day societies far outside the core regions of Maya habitation, ignoring pertinent social and geographical differences. Although the paper does not preclude the theoretical possibility of learning from the past, it argues that such learning must undergo significant changes to achieve robustness and relevance for the present. This would also require a more open discussion between scholars of the past and adaptation practitioners.
... As a result, a wide array of best practices and recommendations are available on how to co-produce research, including building relationships across disciplines, sharing power between the partners involved, and investing in an ongoing dialogue between all partners (Beier et al., 2017;Chambers et al., 2021Chambers et al., , 2022Hickey, 2018). Despite the various practices and recommendations for facilitating co-production projects, there are limited empirical studies describing the approach and the results of co-production in practice, leaving the process and application of co-production unclear (Mach et al., 2020). Consequently, there is a need for evaluating processes and frameworks that promote co-production to gain a better understanding of its impact on conservation practices and outcomes. ...
... These foundational structures enabled CoP success by serving as a dedicated platform for labor division, improving relationships and communication, and providing informal learning opportunities among members. This discussion explores the CoP's role in navigating the research-implementation space, offering practical recommendations to facilitate co-production processes and addresses gaps in the literature regarding the application of co-production principles (Mach et al., 2020). ...
Effective conservation practices require addressing the divide between research and implementation. Co‐production, which emphasizes collaboration and diverse knowledge exchange, is increasingly recognized as valuable in conservation to address this challenge, yet empirical insights remain limited. This case study explores using a Community of Practice (CoP) as an avenue for facilitating co‐production in shorebird conservation. Centering researchers and practitioners within implementation initiatives, we evaluate factors enabling a successful CoP and barriers hindering members' experiences. Capacity emerged as the predominant barrier, while the leading factors contributing to CoP success were having a dedicated space to support labor division, relationship building, and informal learning among CoP members. Leveraging our evaluation insights, we offer practical recommendations for structuring a CoP to optimize these benefits and advance the integration of CoPs and co‐production principles in conservation practice.
... However, changes in participant responses or actions are often subtle, spread over long time periods, and difficult to link to specific boundary-spanning actions (Posner & Cvitanovic, 2019). Despite these challenges, evaluation is crucial because boundary-spanning work is thought to be foundational for developing and disseminating actionable science (Safford et al., 2017;Wall et al., 2017) and for building stronger, equitable relationships among people from different sectors (Mach et al., 2020). ...
... NE RISCC also aims to motivate proactive management action, yet over 75% of invasive species work remains focused on managing already-established species rather than monitoring for species that pose future threats, suggesting that proactive monitoring has not yet been widely adopted. While early and iterative evaluation is important for building participant trust (Mach et al., 2020;Wall et al., 2017) and creating actionable knowledge (Dilling & Lemos, 2011), evaluating the effect of boundary spanning after 5 years may not have allowed sufficient time for information to translate into action (Bell et al., 2011). Moreover, respondents could be slow to take action due to barriers outside the scope of boundary-spanning impacts (e.g. ...
Challenges associated with global change stressors on ecosystems have prompted calls to improve actionable science, including through boundary‐spanning activities, which aim to build connections and communication between researchers and natural resource practitioners. By synthesizing and translating research and practitioner knowledge, boundary‐spanning activities could support proactive, research‐informed conservation practice, but the success of these efforts is rarely evaluated.
Using repeat survey data from the Northeast Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (NE RISCC) Management Network, a boundary‐spanning organization, we evaluate whether participating in NE RISCC affected practitioners' knowledge, actions and priorities related to invasive species management under a changing climate.
Our survey results suggest that practitioners who participate in NE RISCC have greater knowledge about invasive species and climate change and are incorporating climate change in more ways into their invasive species management. We also found NE RISCC membership affected the perceived usefulness of informational resources, with NE RISCC members more frequently identifying research syntheses and targeted workshops (both are common products used by NE RISCC to translate science into practice and share manager knowledge) as useful compared to non‐members.
Practitioners who participate in NE RISCC also identified somewhat different research priorities, with non‐members and short‐term members more frequently identifying range‐shifting neonative species and their impacts on native communities as higher priorities compared to long‐term NE RISCC members. NE RISCC research activities and outreach materials have consistently framed range‐shifting neonative species as comparatively low risk, suggesting that this information has influenced practitioner's perception of risk.
Practical implication: Although real‐world impacts of applied ecology are notoriously difficult to quantify, this analysis illustrates that if research results are actively translated, they can affect the knowledge and actions of natural resource practitioners. These impacts illustrate the potential for boundary‐spanning efforts to address other global change challenges to conservation.
... This study, therefore, assessed respondents' knowledge and understanding of some common community policing strategies as observed within or outside the research locations and as initiated by the community or the government. Respondents' knowledge of community policing strategies significantly contributes to effective and efficient co-production of community policing (Jagannathan et al., 2020;Khine et al., 2021;Mach et al., 2020). Specifically, Mach et al. (2020) indicate that relevant knowledge supports co-generating mutually beneficial coproduced outcomes, while Jagannathan et al. (2020) posit that an enhanced understanding of the strategies binding coproduction of public service delivery eases the extraction of expertise to foster desirable outcomes of the co-production process. ...
... Respondents' knowledge of community policing strategies significantly contributes to effective and efficient co-production of community policing (Jagannathan et al., 2020;Khine et al., 2021;Mach et al., 2020). Specifically, Mach et al. (2020) indicate that relevant knowledge supports co-generating mutually beneficial coproduced outcomes, while Jagannathan et al. (2020) posit that an enhanced understanding of the strategies binding coproduction of public service delivery eases the extraction of expertise to foster desirable outcomes of the co-production process. Furthermore, Khine et al. (2021) bring to the fore that knowledge and understanding of the elements of coproductive processes narrow misunderstandings and also enhance trust and confidence among stakeholders. ...
Global urban population growth appears to challenge governments’ ability to ensure access to essential urban services, such as policing. This situation is impeding the achievement of SDG target 11.1. However, citizens’ role in co-producing safe and secure neighbourhoods has been instrumental in augmenting limited governments’ efforts in the provision of adequate security. Acknowledging the relevance of co-producing community policing (CP) outcomes in neighbourhood crime management, this study critically examines the awareness, knowledge, understanding, and effectiveness of community policing strategies in North-Western Ghana. In a mixed methods research design, the study revealed a low level of awareness of community policing strategies in North-Western Ghana, which constrains the efforts to initiate and benefit from the outcomes of co-producing community policing. Consequently, knowledge, understanding, and effectiveness of community policing strategies appear very limited and, therefore, draw back the desire for inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities as detailed in SDG 11. Restoring community watch committees and enkindling effective co-production of community policing outcomes are critical parts to the global crime management strategies.
... While Indigenous people have a proven history of sustainable knowledge and practice in dealing with climate crisis through their Elders and Knowledge in Canada, there are still significant challenges and barriers that prevent Indigenous Elders and Knowledge-keepers 2 from landbased knowledge in Canada's climate change policy and practices, particularly in many Indigenous communities. Studies (Comberti et al., 2019;Jones et al., 2014;Mach et al., 2020;Thompson et al., 2020) have identified that many systematic barriers prevent Elders and Knowledge Keepers' land-based knowledge from fully integrating into Canada's climate change policy, including the historical marginalization of Indigenous voices and perspectives within policy-making processes, the legacy of colonization that excluded traditional governance structures, impeding the recognition of Indigenous knowledge as equally valuable in shaping environmental policies. Other barriers, such as limited resources, inadequate representation, and power imbalances, hinder effective collaboration between Indigenous communities and governmental bodies. ...
... Cultural and linguistic differences also contribute to misunderstandings, making it challenging for policymakers to fully grasp the nuanced insights offered by Elders and Knowledge Keepers (Reid et al., 2022). Studies also suggested that addressing climate change challenges requires a commitment to reconciliation, meaningful engagement, and recognizing Indigenous rights (Comberti et al., 2019;Jones et al., 2014;Mach et al., 2020). Indigenous Elders possess unique traditional knowledge deeply rooted in the land, offering invaluable insights into climate patterns and ecosystem dynamics; they should be strongly engaged in climate policy discussion and implementation (Berkes & Jolly, 2002;Cameron et al., 2021). ...
In this article, we explore the importance of incorporating Indigenous Elders’ perspectives in developing solutions to climate change. Following relational land-based theoretical frameworks, we learn from Indigenous Elders how they foster a strong sense of community and collective responsibility. Indigenous Elders prioritize inclusivity, social cohesion, and the interconnectedness of humans with nature. In our study, we focus on two main perspectives: how traditional land-based knowledge and practices held by Indigenous Elders contribute to the development of solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation. What lessons can be learned from Indigenous Elder perspectives that may guide global efforts in addressing climate change and creating a sustainable future for all? Our study suggests that recognizing and incorporating Indigenous Elder perspectives into climate change solutions is essential for addressing the complex and multidimensional challenges of the current climate crisis.
... Participants reported experiences related to externalization and combination across declarative, procedural, and relational learning domains, which suggests that adaptation workshops can help groups to create a shared body of actionable knowledge by transforming individual, tacit knowledge in each domain into shared explicit knowledge. Once rendered explicit, this knowledge can be combined with knowledge from other domains and enable groups to take more meaningful, informed, and effective action (Mach et al. 2020). Indeed, the presence of potential internalization knowledge conversions in our sample suggests that participants anticipated their ability to draw upon shared explicit knowledge and take action. ...
... However, decision making in climate adaptation workshops may be even more effective if the process is designed to attend to the full range of learning domains and dimensions. Such an approach could help to generate actionable knowledge and foster more equitable relationships in which non-dominant knowledge holders are better able to introduce and share their knowledge (Mach et al. 2020). The approach to learning we describe may be well suited to accommodating complementary knowledge forms such as traditional or local ecological knowledge and scientific knowledge (Reid et al. 2021). ...
... All too often, emphasis continues to be placed on generation of "better data" rather than more "useable" information with which to inform decision-making (Findlater et al. 2021). Knowledge co-production is a collaborative, iterative process that involves diverse types of expertise, knowledge and actors, wherein researchers and knowledge-users meaningfully interact to co-create context-specific knowledge and pathways that are usable and actionable in decision-making (Mach et al. 2020;Norström et al. 2020;Polk 2015;Vincent 2022). Effective practices embrace multiple knowledges (pluralism) with intellectual humility, being transparent about and owning the limitations of research, foregrounding flaws and uncertainty (and how to deal with them) (Hoekstra and Vazire 2021). ...
Rapid expansion in the availability of data derived from ground, airborne, and satellite remote sensing, and numerical modeling applications is transforming river science and management practices. This digital revolution has the potential to catalyze the uptake of a riverscapes approach to deliver proactive and adaptive management practices that work with each and every river. Practitioner readiness to interpret landscapes from a geomorphological perspective is a key consideration in operationalizing a riverscapes approach. Making the best use of the best available understandings merges insights derived from analyzes of digital rivers with field‐based interpretations. We contend that Communities of River Practitioners (CoRPs) are required to address concerns for digital and knowledge readiness in the design and uptake of a geoethical approach to geomorphologically informed river management. CoRPs share and learn effectively, upscaling from local experiences to facilitate healthier rivers and an expanded, less expert‐dependent practitioner base in the design and implementation of geomorphologically informed river management practices.
... Overall, the development of the tool represents an example of coproduction-an iterative process in which researchers and users interact to cocreate actionable knowledge for decision making, in contrast to the more unidirectional flow of information from researchers to users that typically characterizes research and policy interactions (Ankrah and Omar 2015;Jones and Coates 2020). While much of the pre-existing literature on the science-policy coproduction interface involves researchers and public policymakers, community members, or resource managers (Mach et al. 2020), this study is unique in its relatively rare documentation of a research-industry collaboration process. This study is also notable in that it documents both the coproduction process itself (e.g., focus groups to guide the tools' development, interviews to evaluate the tool and development process, acknowledgements of the tools' progression by participantssee Table S1) in addition to a final, working prototype, as opposed to one or the other. ...
Comprehensive resilience planning and resilience‐centered decision making at large, multinational companies is complex and not currently well‐served by publicly available tools. Over the course of a year, researchers collaborated with US‐based professionals from 14 global companies representing many different industries through a mixture of focus groups and individual meetings to co‐construct a resilience tool that would serve their common resilience planning needs. This interactive geospatial map of the United States visualized and made interoperable publicly accessible data sets relevant to the physical and transition risks of climate change. At the end of the development process, semistructured interviews were conducted with industry professionals about the state of US‐based industrial resilience planning in their respective companies and specific ways in which the tool could be used and further developed to assist such work. In this paper, we present a prototype of the tool and an overview of its development process. Through analysis of the tool's development and the post‐development interviews, we additionally outline some considerations shaping resilience planning at large, multinational organizations, as well as explore the benefits of coproduction between research and industry for addressing complex, interdisciplinary problems such as climate change.
... Knowledge co-production encompasses processes that enable multiple ways of knowing and acting, which can lead to reciprocal transformation of societal outcomes [32]. Through knowledge co-production processes, there is an opportunity to "(re)discover, (re)evaluate, and (re) negotiate principles and approaches" to find potential outcomes for a specific context [33,14]. In addition, co-production processes must be inclusive, incorporating a variety of actors to leverage the potential to produce science and knowledge that can inform policies and decision-making processes for complex socio-ecological ocean issues [33,12]. ...
The UN Ocean Decade has demonstrated its potential as a transformative platform for integrating traditional knowledge into ocean science and management. This paper highlights practical examples of how the Ocean Decade's efforts could be enhanced from local to global levels. Although the recognition of traditional knowledge within the Decade marks a significant step forward, there are still ways to further improve their engagement and participation. Many actions endorsed by the Ocean Decade acknowledge the importance of including traditional knowledge holders, yet only a few incorporate essential elements for effective knowledge co-production, such as co-design and co-management. Emphasizing knowledge co-production is crucial for developing innovative solutions to complex ocean management challenges. The Ocean Decade offers a valuable opportunity to address these obstacles by fostering a more participatory framework that actively engages diverse knowledge systems and stakeholders, promoting a way for more effective and sustainable ocean management solutions both locally and globally, and providing lessons for the implementation of policies and treaties such as the BBNJ Agreement
... However, scientists and science communicators increasingly recognize that a multifaceted approach can better address the research management gap. For example, the science of actionable knowledge centers knowledge development as a social process that occurs between scientists and managers rather than a material good to be transferred from scientists to managers (Mach et al. 2020). When public land managers and scientists learn from one another about their respective decision spaces and available science, they also develop invaluable interpersonal relationships that can be leveraged for improved management and research (Stern et al. 2018). ...
Public land management decisions rely on science but there is a disconnect between research and practical application; this is referred to as the research–management gap. Within the context of the United States (US) National Wilderness Preservation System, this gap has implications across 111 million acres of land managed by four federal agencies. To better understand how to bridge research with management within the US wilderness context, we conducted facilitated conversations with 68 wilderness managers using interactive virtual whiteboards to guide conversations around decision contexts, the role of science in wilderness management decision-making, and opportunities to improve the use of science in wilderness management. We found that wilderness managers operate within four main decision contexts (operational, relational, informational, and policy), and that they rely on a variety of sources of information, with science as one of many sources, to guide management action and decisions, both directly and indirectly. Bridging the research–management gap requires a two-tiered approach: (1) bottom-up, working with local managers to develop, apply, and interpret relevant science in a co-produced manner; and (2) top-down, working with agency and wilderness leaders to champion the integration of research into policy and management directives. Better working relationships between managers and scientists could improve the adoption of science in wilderness management as well as improve how scientists understand the range of competing policies, programs, and priorities that guide wilderness managers.
... Many settler scientists have come to recognize that TEK offers distinct perspectives that can enhance and at times complement Western scientific thought and inquiry, leading to more objective and culturally appropriate understanding and restoration strategies (Robinson et al. 2021;Uprety 2012). More and more interest and investment in participatory or community-engaged environmental research, increasingly framed as the "co-production" of knowledges (Djenontin and Meadow 2018) have led to detrimental conceptual ambiguity (Mach et al. 2020;Norström et al. 2020) Robinson et al. 2021). Participation can thus be extractive of time and knowledge, as well as a weapon. ...
This article examines ecological restoration as a possible transformative and reparative practice amid ongoing colonial racial capitalist environmental destruction. While restoration—traditionally focused on repairing damaged landscapes—has increasingly recognized the importance of Indigenous knowledges, community engagement, and environmental justice, this article brings together critiques of normative restoration and critical discussions on reparations to locate environmental restoration within a broader ecology of reparations, or repair, for colonial violence that has disproportionately hurt Indigenous and Black communities. We consider how ideas and activities focused on “reparation ecology” offer new terrain upon which to foreground the interconnectedness of ecological and social repair through land rights, relationality, epistemic diversity, and solidarity. Drawing on case studies across geographies, we highlight how ecological restoration is at a crossroads for either internalizing or confronting injustices perpetrated through colonization and racism.
... community partners, nonacademic partners, stakeholders) work together to generate useful and usable research evidence. The process of engagement between researchers and practitioners, when done well, supports the movement of research into action by ensuring that the research responds to the questions and priorities of those who need the findings (Dilling and Lemos, 2011;Cash et al., 2003); draws upon the multiple knowledges required to address complex problems (Ellis-Soto et al., 2023;Norström et al., 2020); fits the decision contexts in which it will be used (Cairney, 2019;Mach et al., 2020); builds trust in the research (Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998;Cvitanovic et al., 2024) and the researchers (Stern et al., 2021), which is central to uptake and use of evidence (Metz et al., 2022); and makes the findings more accessible to users . ...
The largely negative impacts of human activities on social-ecological systems are becoming increasingly apparent. Efforts to address these impacts require effective knowledge exchange among researchers and decision-makers to facilitate evidence-informed decision-making processes. Despite this, however, examples of achieving effective knowledge exchange in practice are few. One solution to reducing barriers to knowledge exchange and building capacity for evidence-informed decision-making is through the use of knowledge brokers. Recognition of the role and value of knowledge brokers is becoming increasingly common in the environmental sector, but there are important gaps in understanding the divergent practices of knowledge brokers working to inform solutions to environmental challenges that hinder their successful implementation. To this end, we undertake a systematic map of the peer-reviewed and grey literature on knowledge brokering at the interface of environmental science and policy. We find that traditional conceptualisations of knowledge brokers are insufficient for capturing the true diversity of practices and identities that knowledge brokers can take. Instead, we show that within the environment sector, knowledge brokers, and the work they do, can take a variety of forms that are influenced by (among other things) the processes through which brokering roles were created, their mission, their budgets, and the contexts in which they work. In doing so, we also emphasize the 'invisible' work that knowledge brokers do, seeking to bring to the fore the range of activities that are central to supporting knowledge exchange, but often go unnoticed and are almost impossible to quantify. Drawing on our results and our collective knowledge, we outline a research agenda that articulates the most critical remaining knowledge gaps relating to knowledge brokering. Bringing these together, a core goal of this paper is to support and serve a growing global community of practice (both in theory and application) on knowledge brokering at the interface of environmental science and policy.
... While climate data in its raw format may be accessible to environmental scientists and experts trained in climatology, it can be challenging for most non-expert users to manage and interpret (Lemos et al. 2012;Hewitt et al. 2017). Conversely, climate scientists often have a limited understanding of user needs and how to translate climate information into actionable knowledge for local and regional planning and decision-making (Mach et al. 2020). This apparent gap between knowledge production and its application (Kirchhoff et al. 2013) National Research Council 2010) has spurred numerous studies on the co-design and co-production of climate services (Vincent et al. 2018;Bremer et al. 2019;Daniels et al. 2020;Steynor et al. 2020;Neset et al. 2021, André et al. 2021Jagannathan et al. 2023). ...
This study investigates the role of climate information tools in promoting awareness of climate risks and facilitating comprehension of long-term climatic changes. Focusing on the needs of a variety of user groups like decision-makers, educators and the general public, it addresses the demand for reliable, tailored and comprehensible climate information. A cross-national survey involving 343 users in five countries (Estonia, Germany, Poland, Sweden and Ukraine) elucidates the varied skills, qualifications and preferences of users regarding data visualisation, information depth and language. The findings underscore that users have limited awareness of existing climate information tools and that they prefer information accessibility in native languages, revealing the significance of bridging language gaps, particularly in Eastern Europe. User-friendly tools are highlighted as essential, as complexity may deter non-experts. The study concludes by emphasising the need to enhance climate information availability and presentation, as well as the importance of collaboration and co-development efforts to overcome language barriers and link real-time weather events with long-term climatic trends. Overall, the research underscores the demand for adaptable, user-friendly climate information tools, offering valuable insights for mitigating climate risks and supporting adaptation efforts.
... The proenvironmental behavior has been extensively studied over the past century using a variety of behavioral theories (Liobikiene and Poškus, 2019). Scientists, practitioners and research funding agencies across the globe are focusing on generating meaningful research outputs that are useful from an environmental perspective (Mach et al., 2020). This study examines whether imparting environmental values or knowledge can influence the role of individuals' proactive steps for environmental conservation by drawing on planned behavior theory (Zhuang et al., 2021). ...
Purpose
The study aims to investigate the mediating role played by environmental attitude and environmental sensitivity in the influence of environmental knowledge on pro-environmental behavior. Specifically, the study examined whether both environmental attitude and environmental sensitivity act as serial mediators between environmental knowledge and pro-environmental behavior. This study also explored whether there are gender differences in how environmental knowledge affects pro-environmental behavior through environmental attitude and environmental sensitivity.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey tool was distributed to university students in the northern region of India who had studied environmental studies as a compulsory subject during one of their semesters in their higher education program. A total of 558 responses were analyzed through nonparametric partial least squares multigroup analysis using PLS-SEM.
Findings
The results indicated that environmental knowledge significantly affected pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, environmental attitude and environmental sensitivity played significant mediating roles between environmental knowledge and pro-environmental behavior. Additionally, the results showed that the serial mediation effect of environmental attitude and environmental sensitivity in the relationship between environmental knowledge and pro-environmental behavior was significant. However, the findings did not show any significant gender difference in how environmental knowledge influences pro-environmental behavior, mediated serially by environmental attitude and environmental sensitivity.
Originality/value
Although vast literature is available on the relationship between environmental knowledge and pro-environmental behavior, a few studies have shown environmental attitude and environmental sensitivity as mediators. In addition, this study fills the gap in the existing research by exploring how environmental attitude and sensitivity serially mediate the nexus between environmental knowledge and pro-environmental behavior, particularly across genders.
... Advocates often draw on such narratives to humanize health issues. The arts thus bridge the headiness of health professionals with the hearts of everyday people [5,6]. A more complex but influential interpretation of this intersection of health and art is that the arts can bring different sets Page | 2 of people and their varied perspectives to the same dialogue table. ...
The paper investigates the critical role that the arts play in health policy advocacy, focusing on how artistic expression improves communication, encourages emotional engagement, and boosts public health programs. Health policy advocates can use artistic disciplines such as visual arts, theatre, and dance to engage with various audiences, highlight serious health challenges, and catalyse societal change. The arts provide a unique platform for marginalised people to express their health experiences, bridging the divide between public health data and community awareness. This paper examines successful case studies and discusses the obstacles to incorporating artists into health policy advocacy, specifically issues about tokenism and budget restrictions. Finally, this interdisciplinary approach shows how art can influence health policy and public perception.
... Art can, therefore, be used as an effective tool for the delivery of health services. Second, art and policy can be used in combination to test innovations in health policy, such as by using participatory work with communities by artists to develop new strategies [11,13]. We recommend that future research evaluates both these purposes of arts and policy relationships in health in more detail, particularly in partnership with arts groups, to use art to develop new and effective health interventions. ...
Art, in its various forms, has increasingly become a powerful tool for shaping health policy and driving social change. This review examined the multifaceted impact of artistic expression on health policy development by offering historical context, analyzing case studies, and discussing the interdisciplinary relationship between art and public health. Art’s role in influencing public sentiment, raising awareness, and inspiring policy reform is examined through visual, literary, and performing arts. Case studies demonstrate how artistic interventions have been instrumental in addressing health disparities, particularly in marginalized communities. The paper further reviews the methodologies used to evaluate art’s impact on health policy, emphasizing the need for mixed-method approaches that balance qualitative and quantitative research. Ultimately, the paper recommends future avenues for integrating art into health policy to foster community-driven innovation and more inclusive healthcare interventions. Keywords: Art and health policy, public health, social change, artistic intervention, community health, health disparities.
... This success was acutely dependent on expertise and data provided by volcanic risk subject matter experts, local context experts and international science networks (Fig. 2). The importance of building multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams of science, practice and policy actors to address complex disaster risk challenges is well-evidenced in the literature (Barton et al. 2020;Cash et al. 2003;Mach et al. 2020;Wyborn et al. 2017). In other contexts, where international networks and relationships between science, practice and policy are less well established, the methodology adopted here may not be practicable. ...
When disasters occur, rapid impact assessments are required to prioritise response actions, support in-country efforts and inform the mobilisation of aid. The 15 January 2022 eruption of Hunga volcano, Tonga, and the resulting atmospheric shockwave, ashfall, underwater mass disturbance and tsunami, caused substantial impacts across the Kingdom of Tonga. Volcanic impacts on the scale observed after the eruption are rare, necessitating a reliance on international advice and assistance. The situation was complicated by the loss of Tonga’s international submarine fibreoptic cable (causing a complete loss of communications for approximately 20 days) along with border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A need emerged for a rapid remote volcanic impact assessment and provision of specialist advice to help inform the response of international partners. Here we present a novel methodology for conducting rapid remote volcanic ashfall impact assessments, conducted over a 10-day period following the eruption. We used three different hazard models for ashfall thickness across the main island of Tongatapu and available asset information and vulnerability functions for buildings, agriculture, electricity networks, water supply and roads, to provide initial estimates of losses due to ashfall from the 15 January eruption. For buildings, we estimated losses both as total losses and as percentages of the total replacement cost of buildings on Tongatapu. For agriculture, we made probabilistic estimates of production losses for three different crop classes. For ashfall clean-up, we estimated ranges of ashfall volumes requiring clean-up from road surfaces and roofs. For water supply, electricity networks and roads, our analysis was limited to assessing the exposure of important assets to ashfall, as we had insufficient information on system configurations to take the analysis further. Key constraints on our analysis were the limited nature of critical infrastructure asset inventories and the lack of volcanic vulnerability models for tropical regions including Pacific Island nations. Key steps towards iteratively improving rapid remote impact assessments will include developing vulnerability functions for tropical environments as well as ground-truthing estimated losses from remote approaches against in-person impact assessment campaigns.
... In order to foster competences, boosts typically impart knowledge-but their focus is on actionable and procedural, rather than declarative, knowledge (see the related distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that"; Ryle 1945Ryle -1946. The notion of actionable knowledge has taken on different meanings over time (see Mach et al. 2020); we use the term here to indicate that information about relevant action is embedded within the knowledge (e.g., instead of simply being Review in Advance. Changes may still occur before final publication. ...
Behavioral public policy came to the fore with the introduction of nudging, which aims to steer behavior while maintaining freedom of choice. Responding to critiques of nudging (e.g., that it does not promote agency and relies on benevolent choice architects), other behavioral policy approaches focus on empowering citizens. Here we review boosting, a behavioral policy approach that aims to foster people's agency, self-control, and ability to make informed decisions. It is grounded in evidence from behavioral science showing that human decision making is not as notoriously flawed as the nudging approach assumes. We argue that addressing the challenges of our time—such as climate change, pandemics, and the threats to liberal democracies and human autonomy posed by digital technologies and choice architectures—calls for fostering capable and engaged citizens as a first line of response to complement slower, systemic approaches.
... We then critically assess the role of this soil information in knowing the soil types of a locality, the condition of the soil under various land uses and associated management and its role in informing sustainable land management. We take a governance perspective to discuss what soil information is created and used for, who are the actors involved and how soil information is contributing (or not) to the creation of actionable knowledge (Mach et al., 2020). ...
Promoting sustainable land management is key to addressing land degradation but its progress is impeded by the availability and accessibility of the ‘right’ soil data and information. We focus on government‐funded data collection or publicly collected soil data as it is central to effective soil governance. Taking a governance perspective, we discuss what soil information is created and used for, who are the actors involved and how soil information is contributing (or not) to the creation of actionable knowledge. We investigated two countries in depth through a desk‐based review and consultation with 40 key informants, collating which soil data and information is collected, analysed, stored, retrieved and used in the UK and Australia. We present a comprehensive overview of public soil databases, including location, year established, stated purpose, current governing institution, accessibility, digital product/s available, cycle of assessment, scale of sampling, soil data presented and depth of soil assessment. The analysis highlights that current shortcomings in soil governance are a result of not adequately valuing legacy soil data and information, and with the loss of human capital, diminished accessibility to soil information leads to disrupted information flows. A critical assessment suggests that available soil information plays a limited role in knowing the soil types of a locality, the condition of soil under various land uses and associated management, which limits its potential for informing sustainable land management. In both countries, there is a mismatch in scale and intention of use for the soil information between the provider and the user: information is currently held at the scale for regional‐ or nation‐level reporting on targets to meet national and international obligations rather than improving soil health or SLM at the farm scale. In addition, available soil data repositories only partially meet accessibility criteria (discoverability, language applicable to audience, open source and interpretative layer for land management implications). We outline steps to improve soil information and knowledge exchange embedded in effective governance arrangements to ensure that soil data and information can become actionable knowledge for SLM. Applying principles and strategies for facilitating knowledge exchange is of particular relevance to this process.
... Furthermore, in line with the actionable metrics objectives (Mach et al. 2020), GHSL is designed as an integrated spatiotemporal information system, allowing for causal hypothesis testing across socio-environmental scopes . It is crucial to identify computationally simple model solutions that facilitate the multilateral democratization of information production and the principles of collective knowledge building (Pesaresi 2018). ...
The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) project fosters an enhanced, public understanding of the human presence on Earth. A decade after its inception in the Digital Earth 2020 vision, GHSL is an established project of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and an integral part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. The 2023 GHSL edition, a result of rigorous research on Earth Observation data and population censuses, contributes significantly to understanding worldwide human settlements. It introduces new elements like 10-m-resolution, sub-pixel estimation of built-up surfaces, global building height and volume estimates, and a classification of residential and non-residential areas, improving population density grids. This paper evaluates the key components of the GHSL, including the Symbolic Machine Learning approach, using novel reference data. These data enable a comparative assessment of GHSL model predictions on the evolution of built-up surface, building heights, and resident population. Empirical evidence suggests that GHSL estimates are the most accurate in the public domain today, e.g. achieving an IoU of 0.98 for the water class, 0.92 for the built-up class, and 0.8 for the non-residential class at 10 m resolution. At 100 m resolution, we find that the MAE of built-up surface estimates corresponds to 6% of the grid cell area, the MAE for the building height estimates is 2.27 m, and we find a total allocation accuracy of 83% for resident population. This paper consolidates the theoretical foundation of the GHSL and highlights its innovative features for transparent Artificial Intelligence, facilitating international decision-making processes.
... Knowledge is a complex construct, combined with experience and expertise, that predicts decision-making and involves several dimensions, means, organizations, and social actors [4]. Environmental management is undeniably often based on interactions between different stakeholders, using diverse means, with different types of knowledge supporting the decision context [5]. This is true regarding the management of natural resources in general and forest resources management, in particular. ...
Stakeholder involvement can foster more socially and environmentally sustainable management of natural resources, including forests. However, few studies have approached the effect of knowledge on stakeholders’ involvement in forest management. This study intends to contribute to filling this gap by exploring the relationship between access to knowledge, involvement, stakeholders’ profiles, and levels of influence and interest regarding public forest management strategies. To this end, this article examines the data collected through a questionnaire directed to all the stakeholders potentially interested in the management of the Matas do Litoral. Matas do Litoral are part of the 3% of publicly managed forests in Portugal. The results reveal a discrepancy between the high levels of interest regarding Matas do Litoral management, and low levels of influence on those processes. Most of the stakeholders surveyed know forest management strategies, and their involvement in those strategies is limited. The proximity and role of governmental organizations are key factors underlying knowledge levels among the various stakeholders. Furthermore, knowledge acts as a critical factor in encouraging the stakeholders’ influence and involvement in management strategies and policies. This study gives insights regarding the need for knowledge management as a tool for empowering local stakeholders and promoting their involvement in bottom-up forest management strategies.
... Regional and global networks are needed, to develop middle-range theories which account for context specificities but are generalizable (Meyfroidt et al., 2018). We hope the insights generated from the challenges and successes of WNBR will help further inter-and transdisciplinary intergovernmental and intercultural scientific approaches that can generate actionable knowledge (Mach et al., 2020) 'just in time' to advance much-needed sustainability transformations. ...
... Such practices arise under conditions of technological mediation, commodification, or other forms of sociopolitical constraint. Without negating the potential contributions of individuals, collaborative art production is broadly defined as forms of art-making in which the contributions of more than one person are significant in the conceptualization, development, execution, and reception of artworks [15]. Representational art encourages interaction among multiple participants in designating what is represented. ...
This paper explores the development and impact of artist collectives in Europe and Australia, focusing on their strategies to create resilience against contemporary political, economic, and cultural challenges in the art world. Through a detailed examination of several thematic groups and their particular practices, the study highlights the potentialities of playtime as an artistic experience and the complex dynamics of collaborative creativity. The text addresses ambiguous power relations, questions of representation, difference, authorship, and commodification within collaborative settings. The historical overview traces the evolution of artist collectives, while case studies of notable collectives provide insights into their unique approaches to art-making and social engagement. Theoretical frameworks and methodologies for studying these collectives are also discussed, offering a comprehensive understanding of collective art practices and their relevance in today's art world. Keywords: Artist collectives, Collaborative art practices, Playtime in art, Power relations in art, Authorship and commodification. INTRODUCTION A series of art practices developed by artist collectives are explored in this text. A focus is placed on a few thematic groups of case studies and the particularities of the practices of these groups. Spotlighting artist collectives from Europe and Australia, the difference in development in two distinct geographical areas is outlined. Artist-led temporary spaces are discussed as resilience strategies against the current political, economic, and cultural environment in the art world. Playtime is investigated as an artistic experience gaining a new meaning and dimension in the hands of artists. The potentialities of the ludic capacity of the art experience are examined [1, 2]. Collaborative practices in a more general context are also reflected on, stressing a few questions that cross the text. A concern for the ambiguous power relations in collaborative settings is discussed. Questions about representation, difference, authorship, artistic merit, access to means, and commodification surfaces. A context for interpretation and viewing each of the practices is tendered. Discourse, references, manifestos, and the artists' ideals underpinning the case studies shared by each collective are also commented on. This text proposes to reflect on the affair of artist collectives through personal experiences with art practices located in the juncture between artist collectives and collective art practices. Considering the discourses produced by each collective, the relational artworks produced, and the location of these practices in the art world, wider theoretical and poetic questions arise. Another goal is to give an overview of artist collectives/collective practices and their particularities and relevance in the current art world [3, 4]. An individual and collective project, artist collectives, conceptual and practical possibilities, "the collective" as a utopic notion, avant-gardes and their failure are first addressed. The influences of these concepts on a few collective practices of a younger generation of contemporary artists are outlined. This younger generation is proposed to reacquaint with the artist collective due to what are perceived as renewed conditions for collective practices in the art world. The following chapter outlines an overview of collective art practices. A few thematic groups are focused on, emphasizing their particularities. Presenting historical examples and wider reflections on the affairs of each group are also contemplated [5].
... Responding to pressing issues such as climate change (Barnes et al., 2022), fisheries conflict (Spijkers et al., 2019), and the transition to low-carbon energy (Virdin et al., 2021) requires scientists and policymakers to work with communities to find solutions Norström et al., 2020). Critical scholars argue that scientists have a moral duty to engage distinct publics and those influencing policy formation (Chambers et al., 2022;Mach et al., 2020), as well as improve the use of research evidence Tseng et al., 2022). Here, distinct publics refer to the many audiences that engage with scientists about different aspects of our changing world (Murunga et al., 2024). ...
There is an increasing expectation for more scientists to engage with industry, government, and communities to solve climate change. A group for whom these calls are now prevalent are marine (natural and social) scientists working on environmental change, including climate change. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence of what drives them to embrace or avoid engaging distinct publics, including policymakers. Here, we examined via twenty-eight in-depth qualitative interviews factors affecting how Australian scientists engage the public about climate change. We found that nineteen contextual variables constrain and enable public engagement by scientists. These variables co-occur and interact at the individual, organizational, and systemic levels to affect how they prioritize, mobilize resources, and decide to engage the public. We found that while the scientists saw it rewarding to share their findings with others, they found it hard to deal with conflict, face skeptics, and navigate organizational politics and structures to engage others in a public-facing role. Also, a lack of institutional support and engagement culture, role ambiguity, unequal power relations, and a legacy of past encounters led many scientists to engage in tokenism. These findings and insights have implications for individual scientists, institutional policy, and the practice of engaging others about global environmental change. They reveal why scientists might not engage others in a public-facing role and what might be needed to transform engagement.
... In contrast, more severebleeding required complex interventions, substantial resources and coordination with multiple professionals, posing challenges to prompt decision-making. Similarly, more experienced nurses demonstrated an ability to influence and elevate the level of actionability through their expertise and strategic interventions, underscoring the critical role of nursing expertise in managing such complications.Actionability has been explored in diverse fields like management, quality improvement, genomics and knowledge mobilization.[45][46][47][48][49][50] It is typically defined as a property of knowledge that informs decisions and promotes change.51 ...
Background
Bleeding following cardiac surgery is common and serious, yet a gap persists in understanding how experienced intensive care nurses identify and respond to such complications.
Aim
To describe the clinical decision‐making of experienced intensive care unit nurses in addressing bleeding after cardiac surgery.
Study Design
This qualitative study adopted the Recognition‐Primed Decision Model as its theoretical framework. Thirty‐nine experienced nurses from four adult intensive care units participated in semi‐structured interviews based on the critical decision method. The interviews explored their clinical judgements and decisions in bleeding situations, and data were analysed through dimensional analysis, an alternative to grounded theory.
Results
Participants maintained consistent vigilance towards post‐cardiac surgery bleeding, recognizing it through a haemorrhagic dimension associated with blood loss and chest drainage and a hypovolemic dimension focusing on the repercussions of reduced blood volume. These dimensions organized their understanding of bleeding types (i.e., normal, medical, surgical, tamponade) and necessary actions. Their decision‐making encompassed monitoring bleeding, identifying the cause, stopping the bleeding, stabilizing haemodynamic and supporting the patient and family. Participants also adapted their actions to specific circumstances, including local practices, professional autonomy, interprofessional dynamics and resource availability.
Conclusions
Nurses' decision‐making was shaped by their personal attributes, the patient's condition and contextual circumstances, underscoring their expertise and pivotal role in anticipating actions and adapting to diverse conditions. The concept of actionability emerged as the central dimension explaining their decision‐making, defined as the capability to implement actions towards specific goals within the possibilities and constraints of a situation.
Relevance to Clinical Practice
This study underscores the need for continual updates to care protocols to align with current evidence and for quality improvement initiatives to close existing practice gaps. Exploring the concept of actionability further, developing adaptability‐focused educational programmes, and understanding decision‐making intricacies are crucial for informing nursing education and decision‐support systems.
Explore a new resource for the transdisciplinary community of educators, trainers, change agents, curriculum planners, and more!
Download the guide and additional resources here: https://itd-alliance.org/resources/design-guide/
What’s in the guide? You will find sections on training design, essential concepts and practices of trandisciplinarity, qualities of leadership, and proficiencies. The guide is intended to enable you to make decisions about all the components you will want to consider for your intended audience and purpose.
The TD Training Collaboratory funded in 2021 by the US National Science Foundation brings together pioneering researchers and trainers from regional centers across the globe. Drawing upon their collective experience, the group developed the guide, and pilot tested its use at various conferences and institutes: Sustainability Research and Innovation conferences in Panama (2023) and Helsinki (2024), Australia National University (Canberra, Australia), Future Africa (Pretoria, South Africa) and Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (Kyoto, Japan).
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Co‐production of knowledge (CPK) is a process of bringing together diverse perspectives from researchers, agency, and community partners to achieve a shared research goal. The main objective of this article is to provide tools for achieving CPK in research projects, especially with Alaska Native and Arctic Indigenous communities. Team members need to understand their positionality and be aware of assumptions and biases to come to jointly agreed upon project priorities. To assist researchers in reflecting on their positionality, we present research paradigm dispositions from commonly trained methodologies and academic norms. Differences across the dispositions are highlighted in decision‐making, success metrics, evaluation, and validation of outputs. Factors of Success were synthesized from existing literature on CPK, boundary spanning, the science of team science, convergence, Indigenous methodologies, and best practices to understand the CPK process. These Factors of Success are presented in a typical project life cycle logic model, categorized into inputs, process, and outcomes. Given the limited time and resources of research projects and activities, some factors will be given stronger emphasis over others. This article provides tools for transparent communication between researchers and community or agency partners.
Knowledge co‐production is a collaborative approach to research that seeks to enable transformative societal change and improve outcomes in natural resource management and sustainable development. Instituting knowledge co‐production requires that researchers, decision‐makers, and stakeholders be willing to work together towards shared goals. In the context of fisheries management, co‐production represents a significant departure from the technocratic discourses and governance practices that have characterized decision‐making for decades. Moreover, some fisheries contexts have been plagued by persistent and seemingly intractable epistemological conflicts between stakeholders and decision‐makers. Such situations complicate the implementation of co‐production and raise questions about the extent to which researchers can achieve the aims of co‐production in situations of distrust, amenity, and entrenched positions. We use the case study of Northern Cod, a stock of Atlantic Cod ( Gadus morhua ) governance in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, a case of long‐standing conflict between the regulator, fishers, Indigenous peoples, and industry parties, to explore whether and how co‐production can enable collaborative research leading to “transformative societal change.” We find five factors complicating uptake of co‐production in the governance of Northern Cod: (i) competing perspectives exist regarding the relative worth of different types of knowledge; (ii) links between epistemic preferences and interests; (iii) barriers related to access and inclusion in governance spaces; (iv) barriers related to institutional design; and, (v) conflict‐ridden stakeholder relations. In a context of persistent epistemological conflict and distrust, we propose that knowledge co‐production focus on diplomacy through science with an aim to repair relationships rather than produce new knowledge that can serve as evidence in decision‐making as the primary goal of the co‐production process.
This chapter explores the psychological and social dimensions of environmental leadership for Generation Alpha, examining the unique traits, influences, and challenges that define this emerging cohort of leaders. It discusses the impact of their psychological traits, such as increased environmental concern and eco-anxiety, and the social factors that shape their perspectives, including family, education, and media. The chapter also addresses the role of technology, education, and global interconnectedness in fostering leadership skills. Highlighting strategies to support Generation Alpha's environmental leadership, the chapter emphasizes the importance of mentorship, intergenerational collaboration, and inclusive solutions. Despite the challenges they face, including mental health concerns and climate-induced stress, Generation Alpha holds the potential to drive significant change through innovation, activism, and sustainable practices. This future-oriented analysis offers insights into preparing and empowering this generation for environmental leadership.
There is broad recognition of the essential requirement for collaboration and co-producing knowledge in addressing sustainability crises and facilitating societal transitions. While much effort has focused on guiding principles and retrospective analysis, there is less research on equipping researchers with fit-for-context and fit-for-purpose approaches for preparing and implementing engaged research. Drawing on literature in co-production, collaboration and transdisciplinary science, we present an operationalising framework and accompanying approach designed as a reflexive tool to assist research teams embarking in co-production. This framework encourages critical evaluation of the research contexts in which teams are working, examining the interactions between positionality, purpose for co-producing, contextual and stakeholder power, and the tailoring of co-production processes. We tested this diagnostic approach with four interdisciplinary research teams preparing for co-production in sustainability research in Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. Data collected during and after these applications, indicate that the approach effectively stimulated a greater understanding and application of a critical co-production lens in the research team’s engagement planning. Workshop discussions revealed opportunities for reflexivity were generated across four learning domains; cognitive, epistemic, normative and relational. We argue that fostering opportunities for reflexivity across these learning domains strengthens teams’ abilities to apply a critical co-production lens, in their engagement work. While this approach has been tested only in the initial preparatory phase for research teams, the framework and diagnostic questions are likely applicable to later work with collaborators and could support iterative re-application of the critical lens at important times during or throughout the life of a project.
Over the past two decades, transdisciplinarity has been cited increasingly by policymakers and university actors as a means to reshape learning and research processes to improve society’s potential to tackle grand societal challenges. Most recently, the Earth-Humanity Charter calls for the co-creation of a worldwide network of thousands of transdisciplinary hubs that will be active at local, national, and global levels, with a function to address the existential challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. To date, the majority of research published on transdisciplinarity focuses on the transdisciplinary research process. The transdisciplinary learning process i.e., how researchers, students, academic and extra-academic actors can develop their capacity for transdisciplinarity, is under-researched. As a result, many practitioners find themselves designing transdisciplinary learning experiences without an evidence base regarding the learning process, the learning gains of those involved or learning design principles. Based on the results of a literature review of transdisciplinarity, this article proposes that transdisciplinary practice requires two capacities: knowledge integration and actionable knowledge (closing the knowledge-action gap). These capacities are supported by the development (or presence) of intra-personal, interpersonal and cognitive competencies. The results suggest that a U-shaped model of transdisciplinary learning is evident in practice. This conceptual model also potentially enables the measurement of learning gains in transdisciplinary education.
Globally, populations are increasingly located in areas at high risk of frequent, extreme weather events. Some exposed populations have the ability to move to safer places; others are unable to get out of harm’s way. The climate risks facing these involuntary immobile populations are not often addressed by local and national authorities, despite increasing recognition by international development agencies and humanitarian actors. Here we discuss when and how climate and extreme weather events lead to involuntary immobility by considering the influence of political, socioeconomic, and environmental factors. Addressing barriers in policy and disaster planning, early warning systems and anticipatory action could be tailored to support involuntarily immobile communities. While policy and planning should be data-informed, lack of appropriate data quality should not limit governments and institutions from taking action. Immobility needs to be aligned with the broader sustainable development objectives which entail climate justice and orderly migration.
For environmental governance research (EGR) to be actionable to catalyze solutions for environmental challenges in policy and praxis, it must allow for knowledge cumulation that demonstrates the applicability of EGR to existing and future issues, improves the robustness and validity of EGR, and identifies conditions, causal mechanisms and other underlying features of environmental governance. It is recognized that EGR cannot produce such knowledge without integrating various disciplines to connect environmental issues with their political dimensions and implications. Yet, EGR resembles a “fragmented adhocracy” that lacks standardized theoretical frameworks, concepts, and research approaches. To overcome this disciplinary fragmentation and develop mechanisms to effectively aggregate environmental governance evidence, it is critical to understand knowledge cumulation processes and identify research practices that can impede the integration of knowledge. This narrative review examines the dimensions of EGR to argue that (1) knowledge cumulation in EGR lies in interdisciplinary knowledge integration; and (2) EGR will only fulfill its goals of informing policy and praxis if knowledge cumulation between researchers is considered as a precondition of actionable knowledge.
As human societies have grown and diversified, so the need for institutions like universities, adaptable to a wide range of social needs, arose. We argue that these inherently flexible organisations have become constrained in their functions because of an increasing tendency by governments to fund them for exclusively delivering on their own priorities, because of a persistent colonial mentality and because of a dramatic increase in the uptake of student numbers. The dominant priority required from academics has emerged as research, partly because of a view that it is essential to economic progress and partly because of a branding and ranking mentality. We argue that these priorities run counter to the challenges that face modern society, namely the need for deeper and more diverse modes of learning provided by its universities. A major issue for both the colonised and the coloniser is the post-colonial dilemma of how to re-imagine the roles of universities in the Global South and Global North as distinctive parts of a rich global tapestry. Can we develop an approach to a new era of Open Science that enriches this tapestry as one of its priorities?
Cities are concentrators of complex, multi‐sectoral interactions. As keystones in the interconnected human‐Earth system, cities have an outsized impact on the Earth system. We describe a multi‐lens framework for organizing our understanding of the complexity of urban systems and scientific research on urban systems, which may be useful for natural system scientists exploring the ways their work can be made more actionable. We then describe four critical dimensions along which improvements are needed to advance the urban research that addresses urgent climate challenges: (a) solutions‐oriented research, (b) equity‐centered assessments which rely on fine‐scale human and ecological data, (c) co‐production of knowledge, and (d) better integration of human and natural systems occurring through theory, observation, and modeling.
Rapidly increasing knowledge on environmental problems and their potential solutions is underused by policy and practice. This mismatch constitutes a knowledge-action gap. To bridge the gap, the concept of actionable knowledge has been proposed, which is often understood as outputs, data, policy briefs, or other types of products. We instead propose to understand actionable knowledge as a process that has (1) cumulative and stepwise, (2) iterative and cyclical, and (3) coevolutionary characteristics. These characteristics are often considered in isolation or even to be in contradiction with each other. We integrate these three characteristics in an analysis of transdisciplinary project developing a catchment-scale land use roadmap and catchment coordination in the Kiiminkijoki river catchment, northern Finland. Our analysis is based on four general phases in a knowledge co-production process (making sense together, knowledge validation, usable outputs, boundary spanning), which are concretized through nine practical steps. We find that collection, analysis, and usage of the knowledge has been even more important for action than the final output (i.e., the roadmap). Furthermore, the process of actionable knowledge does not end with the project but continues with negotiations to establish a catchment coordinator position. Our major finding is that there is no single point in time during a trans-disciplinary project to bridge the knowledge-action gap but multiple planned and surprising opportunities emerge during the process. Overall, our approach contributes to advance sustainability transformations in catchment management and governance by understanding how transdisciplinary projects can initiate and are a part of evolving knowledge-action processes.
Navigating the Great Lakes during icy conditions poses significant safety challenges for the shipping sector. Available ice information is uncertain and fragmented, and navigators must seek out multiple sources for information at the spatial and temporal scales they require, if the information is available at all. Navigators have expressed that they require more highly localized and easily usable information for current and predicted ice conditions to support decision-making. In this study, we seek to meet this information need by applying a boundary organization chain (BOC) approach to facilitate the coproduction of an actionable short-term Great Lakes ice forecast. We focus on two main aspects of this research: 1) producing an actionable decision-support product that meets the needs of Great Lakes ice navigators and 2) contributing to the knowledge coproduction scholarship on BOCs by providing a detailed account of our methods to create a BOC and coproduce an actionable ice forecast. Our results support incorporating existing communities of practice (COPs) into BOCs to enhance the coproduction of actionable knowledge, specifically through increasing their complementarity and embeddedness. COPs are informal networks of users that meet voluntarily to share knowledge and develop professional skills, which we found naturally builds the coproduction capacities of participants (e.g., embeddedness and complementarity). We also find that COP members are well positioned to disseminate coproduced knowledge across wider user groups.
Significance Statement
In this study, we identified critical gaps in available ice information to support Great Lakes winter navigation, including predictions of current ice concentration and thickness at localized spatial scales and predicted ice movement. We coproduced an ice forecast with a format that is accessible and usable for navigators, while increasing crew and vessel safety by enabling more informed decisions regarding where and when to travel. We also contributed to theoretical understanding of how boundary organization chains work in context to coproduce actionable knowledge. This is a burgeoning area of research with a small number of empirical studies. By expanding both its thematic breadth (e.g., ice forecasting) and methodological approach (an in-depth account of our engagement efforts), we believe we critically contribute to the existing literature.
Calls for the co‐production of climate knowledge and services are increasingly prominent in research and funding proposals, including within federally funded programs. While co‐production has led to more accessible and relevant climate services for frontline communities, scholars have identified numerous barriers to equitable relationships and outcomes within co‐production partnerships. In an effort to support the development of climate services through equitable research partnerships, the Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast, a NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnership team, collaboratively designed and launched the Community Climate Resilience (CCR) Grant competition in 2022. The CCR program serves to provide funding and build capacity among community‐based organizations (CBOs) responding to climate variability in historically disinvested communities in the urban Northeast, as well as foster co‐production partnerships between the organizations and local university‐based researchers. This paper assesses the design and implementation of the program based on data collected through a survey of research partners, discussions with key stakeholders, and observation of relevant project meetings. Despite the incorporation of lessons from similar co‐production projects, program designers found several persistent impediments to equitable partnerships, including time constraints, funding limitations, and burdensome institutional requirements. We reflect on these challenges and offer strategies for overcoming barriers to equitable partnerships, including streamlining funding pass‐through structures, increasing transparency in funding competitions, promoting flexible funding options, and fostering communities of practice among CBOs and university partners. The findings are relevant for researchers and practitioners implementing equity‐focused co‐production partnerships and small grant programs in climate services and related fields.
When disasters occur, rapid impact assessments are required to direct response priorities, support in-country efforts and inform the mobilisation of aid. The 15 January 2022 eruption of Hunga volcano, Tonga, and the resulting atmospheric shockwave, ashfall, underwater mass disturbance and tsunami, caused substantial impacts across the Kingdom of Tonga. Volcanic impacts of the scale observed after the eruption are rare, necessitating a reliance on international advice and assistance. The situation was complicated by the loss of Tonga’s international submarine fibreoptic cable, causing a complete loss of communications for approximately 20 days, along with border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A need emerged for a rapid remote volcanic impact assessment and provision of specialist advice to help inform the response of international partners.
Here we present a novel methodology for conducting rapid remote volcanic ashfall impact assessments, conducted over a 10-day period following the eruption. We used three different hazard models for ashfall thickness across the main island of Tongatapu and available asset information and vulnerability functions for buildings, agriculture, electricity networks, water supply and roads, to provide initial estimates of losses due to ashfall from the 15 January eruption.
For buildings, we estimated losses, both as total losses and as percentages of the total replacement cost of buildings on Tongatapu. For agriculture, we made probabilistic estimates of production losses for three different crop classes. For ashfall cleanup, we estimated ranges of ashfall volumes requiring cleanup from road surfaces and roofs. For water supply, electricity networks and roads, our analysis was limited to assessing the exposure of important assets to ashfall, as we had insufficient information on system configurations to take the analysis further. Key constraints to our analysis were the limited nature of critical infrastructure asset inventories, and the lack of volcanic vulnerability models for tropical regions including Pacific Island nations. Key steps towards iteratively improving rapid remote impacts assessments will include developing vulnerability functions for tropical environments, including Pacific islands, as well as ground-truthing estimated losses from remote approaches against in-person impact assessment campaigns.
There is widespread belief that meaningful interaction between scientists and practitioners, or co-production, increases use of scientific knowledge about sustainability and environmental change. Although funders are increasingly encouraging co-production, there have been few empirical studies assessing the outcomes of these efforts in shaping knowledge use. In this study, we systematically analyze research project reports (n = 120) and interview project participants (n = 40) funded by the U.S. National Estuarine Research Reserve System from 1998 to 2014 to support coastal management. Our analysis shows that escalating funding requirements for collaboration with users change research practice and strengthen connections between research outcomes and knowledge use. In consequence, a new model for science funding emerges, where sponsor, researcher, and user are more interactive with one another.
Impact is increasingly important for science policy-makers. Science policy studies have reacted this heightened urgency by studying these policy-interventions meaning that policy has developed more quickly than theory. This has led to the prevalence of a 'common sense' impact definition: research's societal impact are direct economic effects, such as income generated by licenses, patents , and spin-out companies. These indicators are recognized as weak proxies for research's societal benefits, and in response, science policy has undertaken a huge descriptive effort to more precisely define impact. Social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines have been highly active in this because economic metrics are very poor measures of their societal impact. One interesting theoretical development describing diversity was Spaapen and Van Drooge's 'productive interactions' concept. In this article, we seek to realize the potential that Spaapen and Van Drooge's productive interactions concept offers, but which we argue has been lost through its operationaliation as a process of 'counting interactions'. We address the need to pay attention not only to productive interactions , but to the changes they mediate. Therefore, we ask the following research question: how can we develop a typology that captures the diversity of the mechanisms by which SSH research leads to societal impact? Drawing on a comparative analysis of 60 examples of SSH impact, we develop a typology of SSH pathways to societal impact. Considering that the absence of societal impact of research is not necessarily a sign of uselessness of research in impact assessment, we address the importance of paying attention also to the conditions supporting impact processes.
Researchers, stakeholders and funding organizations have embraced co-production of knowledge to solve sustainability problems. Research focusing on the practice of co-production can help us understand what works in what contexts and how to avoid potentially undesirable outcomes.
Co-produced climate services are increasingly recognised as a means of improving the effective generation and utilisation of climate information to inform decision-making and support adaptation to climate change, particularly in developing countries. There is a rich literature outlining the theoretical and conceptual evolution of co-production, and experiences of it in a variety of decision contexts – in different sectors and at different scales. However, the extent to which the producers of climate services have engaged with this literature varies. Reflecting the emerging interest and application, particularly in developing countries, this paper reviews the co-production literature to distil some key principles to inform climate services. Whilst we aim to be neither comprehensive nor prescriptive, these principles can inform a normative and pragmatic approach to co-produced climate services. A co-produced climate service product should be decision-driven, process-based and time-managed. The process of co-producing a climate service should be inclusive, collaborative and flexible. Illustrations are also provided of how these principles may be engaged in practice. Evaluation of these emerging examples will help further inform co-production of climate services.
For millennia Indigenous communities worldwide have maintained diverse knowledge systems informed through careful observation of dynamics of environmental changes. Although Indigenous communities and their knowledge systems are recognized as critical resources for understanding and adapting to climate change, no comprehensive, evidence-based analysis has been conducted into how environmental studies engage Indigenous communities. Here we provide the first global systematic review of levels of Indigenous community participation and decision-making in all stages of the research process (initiation, design, implementation, analysis, dissemination) in climate field studies that access Indigenous knowledge. We develop indicators for assessing responsible community engagement in research practice and identify patterns in levels of Indigenous community engagement. We find that the vast majority of climate studies (87%) practice an extractive model in which outside researchers use Indigenous knowledge systems with minimal participation or decision-making authority from communities who hold them. Few studies report on outputs that directly serve Indigenous communities, ethical guidelines for research practice, or providing Indigenous community access to findings. Further, studies initiated with (in mutual agreement between outside researchers and Indigenous communities) and by Indigenous community members report significantly more indicators for responsible community engagement when accessing Indigenous knowledges than studies initiated by outside researchers alone. This global assessment provides an evidence base to inform our understanding of broader social impacts related to research design and concludes with a series of guiding questions and methods to support responsible research practice with Indigenous and local communities.
Local, lay, and traditional ecological knowledge (LTK) is widely discussed in academic studies of climatic and environmental change. Here, we report on a systematic literature review that examines the role of such factors as gender, age, and scholarly networks in shaping LTK research. We focused on research in the circumpolar North, where LTK research has been ongoing for at least four decades. We explored how recruitment approaches and research methods can circumscribe local expertise and found that much of the literature fails to adequately report sampling and participant demographics. There is an apparent bias towards male knowledge-holders, usually hunters and Elders, over women and youth. Studies were largely led by male authors, and male authors outnumbered female authors 2:1. We also identified two potential “invisible colleges” in the literature—communities of practice linked by one or a few authors. We discuss our findings through the lens of “intersectionality”, which captures how power differences at play within communities, whether around age or gender or some other social categorization, contribute to the creation of multiple kinds of knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of how we can improve this area of research by challenging assumptions and collaborating with a wider range of individuals.
In the field of sustainability, scholars, and policy-makers herald the transformative power of participation in knowledge production. However, a discrepancy between these expectations and the limited understanding of the complex interactions constituting participation processes can be observed. With the aim of critically analysing these complex interactions, this paper develops a conceptual perspective on participation as a relational space which is formed in the interplay of structures and processes. This perspective is applied to the analysis of empirical literature in sustainability research, development research, and science and technology studies. The literature review guided by the proposed conceptualisation systematically draws together the rich experience with participation in knowledge production. Elements constituting participation spaces along the dimensions ‘structures’ and ‘actors’ are identified and discussed in relation to ‘processes’ of space-making: (i) (in)coherences with reference system, (ii) resources, (iii) timing, (iv) expectations, (v) mutual trust, and (vi) worldviews and values. Power relations are found to pervade the three dimensions. Enhanced conceptual-analytical clarity of the elements constituting participation spaces provides a differentiated basis for discussing the transformative power of participatory knowledge production. By stimulating reflexivity on the making of participation, this approach contributes to better understanding when spaces of participation have the capacity to become spaces of transformation.
There is a call for more transdisciplinary (TD) research, from academia, society, and funding agencies. Consequently, the field of TD research is searching for ways of proving the value and providing evidence to support the effectiveness of such research. The main challenge for evaluating TD research is attribution, that is how to link societal change to the TD research process. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between the quality of the research process and the effects and impacts that are being evaluated. Building upon earlier attempts at evaluating TD research, this article tests three key aspects of effective sustainability research: its relevance, credibility, and legitimacy. To explore the link between the quality of process and societal effects, we analyze and compare outputs, outcomes, and impact of five TD projects. Overall, our analysis shows that while relevance, credibility, and legitimacy gave important insights regarding the links between process and impacts, they are not adequate for evaluating TD research impact. Process qualities such as practitioner motivation and perceived importance of the project, together with breadth of perspectives, the openness/flexibility of participants, and in-depth exchanges of expertise and knowledge, contributed to producing internally relevant, credible, and legitimate results. However, we also saw a need to develop the relevance, credibility, and legitimacy framework, in relation to the external dynamics of the project process, heterogeneous stakeholder groups, and the credibility of practice-based knowledge, which together with institutional factors and the political context significantly shape the possibility of impact.
This review paper addresses the challenging question of “how to” design and implement co-production of knowledge in climate science and other environmental and agricultural sciences. Based on a grounded theory review of nine (9) published case studies of transdisciplinary and collaborative research projects, the paper offers a set of common themes regarding specific components and processes for the design, implementation, and achievement of co-production of knowledge work, which represent the “Modus Operandi” of knowledge co-production. The analysis focuses on practical methodological guidance based on lessons from how different research teams have approached the challenges of complex collaborative research. We begin by identifying broad factors or actions that inhibit or facilitate the process, then highlight specific practices associated with co-production of knowledge and necessary competencies for undertaking co-production. We provide insights on issues such as the integration of social and professional cultures, gender and social equity, and power dynamics, and illustrate the different ways in which researchers have addressed these issues. By exploring the specific practices involved in knowledge co-production, this paper provides guidance to researchers on how to navigate different possibilities of the process of conducting transdisciplinary and co-production of knowledge research projects that best fit their research context, stakeholder needs, and research team capacities.
Stakeholder interactions are increasingly viewed as an important element of research for sustainable development. But to what extent, how, and for which goals should stakeholders be involved? In this article, we explore what degrees of stakeholder interaction show the most promise in research for sustainable development. For this purpose, we examine 16 research projects from the transdisciplinary research programme NRP 61 on sustainable water management in Switzerland. The results suggest that various degrees of stakeholder interaction can be beneficial depending on each project’s intended contribution to sustainability, the form of knowledge desired, how contested the issues are, the level of actor diversity, actors’ interests, and existing collaborations between actors. We argue that systematic reflection about these six criteria can enable tailoring stakeholder interaction processes according specific project goals and context conditions.
Keywords: Stakeholder collaborations, Transdisciplinary research, Co-production of knowledge, Evaluation of stakeholder interaction designs
Rapid urbanisation generates risks and opportunities for sustainable development. Urban policy and decision makers are challenged by the complexity of cities as social–ecological–technical systems. Consequently there is an increasing need for collaborative knowledge development that supports a whole-of-system view, and transformational change at multiple scales. Such holistic urban approaches are rare in practice. A co-design process involving researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders, has progressed such an approach in the Australian context, aiming to also contribute to international knowledge development and sharing. This process has generated three outputs: (1) a shared framework to support more systematic knowledge development and use, (2) identification of barriers that create a gap between stated urban goals and actual practice, and (3) identification of strategic focal areas to address this gap. Developing integrated strategies at broader urban scales is seen as the most pressing need. The knowledge framework adopts a systems perspective that incorporates the many urban trade-offs and synergies revealed by a systems view. Broader implications are drawn for policy and decision makers, for researchers and for a shared forward agenda.
Understanding and transforming how cities think is a crucial part of developing effective knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene. In this article, we review knowledge co-production as a popular approach in environmental and sustainability science communities to the generation of useable knowledge for sustainability and resilience. We present knowledge systems analysis as a conceptual and empirical framework for understanding existing co-production processes as preconditions to the design of new knowledge infrastructures in cities. Knowledge systems are the organizational practices and routines that make, validate, communicate, and apply knowledge. The knowledge systems analysis framework examines both the workings of these practices and routines and their interplay with the visions, values, social relations, and power dynamics embedded in the governance of building sustainable cities. The framework can be useful in uncovering hidden relations and highlighting the societal foundations that shape what is (and what is not) known by cities and how cities can co-produce new knowledge with meaningful sustainability and resilience actions and transformations. We highlight key innovations and design philosophies that we think can advance research and practice on knowledge co-production for urban sustainability and resilience.
This empirical study explored how research can generate impacts by investigating different sorts of impacts from one academic field-mathematics-and the diverse mechanisms generating them. The multi-method study triangulated across: (1 and 2) content analysis of impact case studies and environment descriptions submitted to the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessment; (3 and 4) a survey and focus group of heads of mathematics departments; and (5) semi-structured interviews. Mathematics has had a full range of impact types, particularly conceptual impacts, although more tangible instrumental impacts were prioritized for REF. Multiple mechanisms were utilized, but seldom appeared in REF case studies. Long-term relationship building and interdisciplinarity are particularly important. Departmental culture and certain knowledge intermediaries can play proactive roles. In sharp contrast to simplistic linear narratives, we suggest that appreciation of diverse impact types, multiple, often informal, mechanisms and dynamic environments will enhance the likelihood of meaningful impacts being generated.
[A more updated version of this paper is also in researchgate with a PDF] Indigenous and allied scholars, knowledge keepers, scientists, learners, change-makers, and leaders are creating a field to support Indigenous peoples’ capacities to address anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. Indigenous studies often reflect the memories and knowledges that arise from Indigenous peoples’ living heritages as societies with stories, lessons, and long histories of having to be well-organized to adapt to seasonal and inter-annual environmental changes. At the same time, our societies have been heavily disrupted by colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization. As a Potawatomi scholar-activist working on issues Indigenous people face with the U.S. settler state, I perceive at least three key themes reflected across the field that suggest distinct approaches to inquiries into climate change:
1. Anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is an intensification of environmental change imposed on Indigenous peoples by colonialism.
2. Renewing Indigenous knowledges, such as traditional ecological knowledge, can bring together Indigenous communities to strengthen their own self-determined planning for climate change.
3. Indigenous peoples often imagine climate change futures from their perspectives (a) as societies with deep collective histories of having to be well-organized to adapt environmental change and (b) as societies who must reckon with the disruptions of historic and ongoing practices of colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization.
In engaging these themes, I will claim, at the end, that Indigenous studies offer critical, decolonizing approaches to how to address climate change. The approaches arise from how our ways of imagining the future guide our present actions. The article is forthcoming in English Language Notes.
Forthcoming in "Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices of Environmental Sustainability" edited by Melissa K. Nelson and Dan Shilling.
Resource managers often need scientific information to match their decisions (typically short-term and local) to complex, long-term, large-scale challenges such as adaptation to climate change. In such situations, the most reliable route to actionable science is coproduction, whereby managers, policy makers, scientists, and other stakeholders first identify specific decisions to be informed by science, and then jointly define the scope and context of the problem, research questions, methods, and outputs, make scientific inferences, and develop strategies for the appropriate use of science. Here, we present seven recommended practices intended to help scientists, managers, funders and other stakeholders carry out a coproduction project, one recommended practice to ensure that partners learn from attempts at coproduction, and two practices to promote coproduction at a programmatic level. The recommended practices focus research on decisions that need to be made, give priority to processes and outcomes over stand-alone products, and allocate resources to organizations and individuals that engage in coproduction. Although this article focuses on the coproduction of actionable science for climate change adaptation and natural resource management, the approach is relevant to other complex natural-human systems.
Increasingly, ‘co-design’ is a key concept and approach in global change and sustainability research, in the scholarship on science–policy interactions, and an expressed expectation in research programs and initiatives. This paper situates co-design and then synthesizes insights from real-life experiences of co-developing research projects in this Special Issue. It highlights common co-design elements (parameters and considerations of co-design and purpose-driven engagement activities); discusses challenges experienced in co-design and then emphasizes a range of rarely articulated benefits of co-design for both researchers, societal partners and the work they aim to do together. The paper summarizes some of the knowledge gains on social transformation to sustainability from the co-design phase and concludes that co-design as a process is an agent of transformation itself.
The impacts of global environmental change create new challenges and opportunities for indigenous peoples worldwide. Yet, there remains limited recognition that indigenous knowledge frameworks could (and should) influence the processes and outcomes of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This paper presents insights relating to indigenous issues in a global environmental change context from two workshops, which were held in Brisbane, Australia, and Umeå, Sweden. These workshops were attended by more than 30 indigenous and non-indigenous researchers, natural resource managers, policy-makers, and representatives from government and non-governmental organizations from across Asia, Oceania, and Scandinavia. This paper builds on workshop participants’ insights and illuminates key components of the process of co-creation of knowledges for and with indigenous communities, and describes some of the main challenges to, and opportunities for, transdisciplinary and cross-cultural knowledge production. We argue that indigenous methodologies offer important lessons for current efforts within global sustainability research to integrate different knowledges and design and conduct research in culturally and ethical respectful manner.
Resource managers and decision-makers are increasingly tasked with integrating climate change science into their decisions about resource management and policy development. This often requires climate scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers to work collaboratively throughout the research processes, an approach to knowledge development that is often called "coproduction of knowledge." The goal of this paper is to synthesize the social science theory of coproduction of knowledge, the metrics currently used to evaluate usable or actionable science in several federal agencies, and insights from experienced climate researchers and program managers to develop a set of 45 indicators supporting an evaluation framework for coproduced usable climate science. Here the proposed indicators and results from two case studies that were used to test the indicators are presented, as well as lessons about the process of evaluating the coproduction of knowledge and collaboratively producing climate knowledge.
This paper distills core lessons about how researchers (scientists, engineers, planners, etc.) interested in promoting sustainable development can increase the likelihood of producing usable knowledge. We draw the lessons from both practical experience in diverse contexts around the world, and from scholarly advances in understanding the relationships between science and society. Many of these lessons will be familiar to those with experience in crafting knowledge to support action for sustainable development. But few are included in the formal training of researchers. As a result, when scientists and engineers first venture out of the lab or library with the goal of linking their knowledge to action, the outcome has often been ineffectiveness and disillusionment. We therefore articulate here a core set of lessons that we believe should become part of the basic training for researchers interested in crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. These lessons entail at least four things researchers should know, and four things they should do. The “knowing” lessons involve understanding the coproduction relationships through which knowledge making and decision making shape one another in social-environmental systems. We highlight the lessons that emerge from examining those coproduction relationships through the ‘ICAP’ lens, viewing them from the perspectives of Innovation systems, Complex systems, Adaptive systems, and Political systems. The “doing” lessons involve improving the capacity of the research community to put its understanding of such systems into practice. We highlight steps though which researchers can help build capacities for stakeholder collaboration, social learning, knowledge governance, and researcher training.
(This paper is part of a PNAS Special Feature on "Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development", available here: http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication?i=305487 ).
There is increasing emphasis from funding agencies on transdisciplinary approaches to integrate science and end-users. However, transdisciplinary research can be laborious and costly and knowledge of effective collaborative processes in these endeavors is incomplete. More guidance grounded in actual project experiences is needed. Thus, this article describes and examines the collaborative process of the Ecological Effects of Sea Level Rise in the Northern Gulf of Mexico transdisciplinary research project, including its development, implementation, and evaluation. Reflections, considerations, and lessons learned from firsthand experience are shared, supported with examples, and connected to relevant scholarly literature.
Coproduction of knowledge is believed to be an effective way to produce usable climate science knowledge through a process of collaboration between scientists and decision makers. While the general principles of coproduction - establishing long-term relationships between scientists and stakeholders, ensuring two-way communication between both groups, and keeping the focus on the production of usable science - are well understood, the mechanisms for achieving those goals have been discussed less. It is proposed here that a more deliberate approach to building the relationships and communication channels between scientists and stakeholders will yield better outcomes. The authors present five approaches to collaborative research that can be used to structure a coproduction process that each suit different types of research or management questions, decision-making contexts, and resources and skills available to contribute to the process of engagement. By using established collaborative research approaches scientists can be more effective in learning from stakeholders, can be more confident when engaging with stakeholders because there are guideposts to follow, and can assess both the process and outcomes of collaborative projects, which will help the whole community of stakeholder-engaged climate-scientists learn about coproduction of knowledge.
Scientists often lament their lack of influence on environmental policy-making. Some proposed solutions, like teaching scientists
to communicate more effectively, can be helpful, but are not necessarily sufficient. Instead, connecting science and policy
may often require a separate kind of expert: full-time intermediaries who facilitate the complicated exchange of information
among scientists, policy-makers, and other stakeholders. In this paper, we describe intermediary efforts by the Lenfest Ocean
Program, a grant-making program that funds peer-reviewed research and connects scientists and decision-makers who can take
action on an issue. We present case studies of intermediary work on three topics: first, sustainable methods of harvesting
bull kelp in the US Pacific Northwest; second, the design of catch share programs in US fisheries; and third, management of
forage fish. These case studies suggest that science-policy intermediaries can help scientists make meaningful contributions
to public discourse.
This article aims to explore what is understood by the term ‘research impact’ and to provide a comprehensive assimilation of available literature and information, drawing on global experiences to understand the potential for methods and frameworks of impact assessment being implemented for UK impact assessment. We take a more focused look at the impact component of the UK Research Excellence Framework taking place in 2014 and some of the challenges to evaluating impact and the role that systems might play in the future for capturing the links between research and impact and the requirements we have for these systems.
Social impact of research is difficult to measure. Attribution problems arise because of the often long time-lag between research
and a particular impact, and because impacts are the consequences of multiple causes. Furthermore, there is a lack of robust
measuring instruments. We aim to overcome these problems through a different approach to evaluation where learning is the
prime concern instead of judging. We focus on what goes on between researchers and other actors, and so narrow the gap between
research and impact, or at least make it transparent. And by making the process visible, we are able to suggest indicator
categories that arguably lead to more robust measuring instruments. We propose three categories of what we refer to as ‘productive
interactions’: direct or personal interactions; indirect interactions through texts or artefacts; and financial interactions
through money or ‘in kind’ contributions.
Social science research undoubtedly does impact on public policy and practice but such non-academic impacts are rarely amenable
to precise, quantitative metrics. In the interests of accountability, it is however possible to find proxy indicators of connectivity
with research users and these may form steps toward impacts. Understanding these connections can lead to a deeper appreciation
of the factors that shape the processes leading to research uptake. This study adopted a detailed and largely qualitative
approach to identify the flows of knowledge, expertise and influence that take place during the process of knowledge transfer
in order to trial a method for assessing policy and practice impacts from social science research. As a corollary to this
assessment, the study further identified five factors that can influence and enhance the process of knowledge exchange between
researchers and users.
This essay explores what is impact, why it matters and how it may be demonstrated through management scholarship that integrates both rigour and relevance. Attention is drawn to the importance of understanding the dynamic nature of practice and practising as critical processes that set important foundations for extending both the questions we ask and the ways in which we ask the questions that shape scholarship. A central message from this analysis is the importance of unlearning asking questions with research users so that the knowledge co-created can be actionable. The author illustrates how these issues can support management scholarship to deliver the impact it can have and highlights the importance of capturing the process of co-creating knowledge and facilitating knowledge integration as two areas for future Management and Organizational Learning scholarship. Possible avenues in which Management Learning can support the demonstration of impactful scholarship are also proposed.
Decades of research has generated new scientific understanding and technologies aimed at better managing environmental change in estuarine and coastal regions. Yet many across the communities of coastal and estuarine research, management, and funding believe that progress has been too slow in applying this research in practice. This essay reviews how the National Estuarine Research Reserve System’s funding program evolved over the past two decades to improve how researchers and users of research work together to increase the uptake of science to achieve resource management and conservation goals. Incremental innovation in the design of the NERRS funding program enabled more intensive and multiway engagement between funders, researchers, and users, which created new pathways for applying science in practice. Furthermore, these interactions stimulate reflection and adaptation within each separate institutional setting, supporting changes that may science to better support environmental problem solving.
A focus on research impact is influencing the way research is undertaken in Australian higher education institutions. Research activities are planned, funded, conducted, assessed and reported in a way that highlights the real-world impact of research on society. The contemporary prioritisation of research impact, beyond scholarly contribution, reflects a logic model approach to understanding impact that may not adequately reflect the entwined nature of how research achieves impact within and outside academia. This article presents the results of a study conducted with researchers in a regional Australian university to explore the lived experience of research impact. The findings suggest a new definition of research impact as the process whereby research knowledge makes a difference to the knowledge beneficiary. Reconceptualising research impact as a process presents an alternative perspective for explaining how research achieves real-world impact, and helps to address the limitations of logic model approaches. A process-orientation to understanding how research achieves impact acknowledges the indirect, intangible, unexpected and endless influences of research that may be difficult to anticipate and demonstrate.
Co-production is one of the most important ideas in the theory and practice of knowledge and governance for global sustainability, including ecology and biodiversity conservation. A core challenge confronting the application of co-production has been confusion over differences in definition and practice across several disciplinary traditions, including sustainability science, public administration, and science and technology studies. In this paper, we review the theoretical foundations of these disciplinary traditions and how each has applied co-production. We suggest, at the theoretical level, the differences across disciplines are, in fact, more apparent than real. We identify several theoretical convergences that allow us to synthesize a strong conceptual foundation for those seeking to design and implement co-production work in programs of global sustainability research and policy.
Through integrative assessment, experts evaluate the state of knowledge on complex problems relevant to societies. In this review, we take stock of recent advances and challenges, rooting our analysis in climate change assessment. In particular, we consider four priorities in assessment: (a) integrating diverse evidence including quantitative and qualitative results and understanding, (b) applying rigorous expert judgment to evidence and its uncertainties, (c) exploring widely ranging futures and their connections to ongoing choices and actions, and (d) incorporating interactions among experts and decision makers in assessment processes. Across these assessment priorities, we survey past experiences, current practices, and possibilities for future experimentation, innovation, and learning. In our current era of climate and broader global change, integrative assessment can bolster decisions about contested and uncertain futures. We consider both opportunities and pitfalls in synthesizing and encompassing evidence and perspectives. Our aim is to advance transparent assessment for a sustainable future.
Notions of ‘co‐production’ are growing in popularity in social science and humanities research on climate change, although there is some ambiguity about the meanings of the term and how it is being used. It is time to critically and reflexively take stock of this expanding area of scholarship. A comprehensive review of over 130 scientific publications first mapped the scholars using co‐production, relative to characteristics like their discipline, nationality, and research themes. Second, it looked at how this diversity of scientific perspectives has opened up a multiplicity of meanings of co‐production. While most discussions of co‐production stop at a basic distinction between descriptive and normative uses of the term, this review unpacked eight conceptual lenses on co‐production, each discernible by its particular emphases, academic traditions, logic, and criteria of success. There are two important implications of this work. On one hand, it urges self‐reflexive transparency when using co‐production concepts. The multiple meanings attached to co‐production add richness to the concept and open it up to different uses. However, it is important that scholars clearly communicate how they use the term and are mindful of what they ‘buy into’ by using the concept in certain ways. On the other hand, there are tensions between the different perspectives as well as opportunities for combining them into a compound concept of co‐production. In this way, co‐production is reconceptualized as a prism, where each aspect allows different but complimentary insights on the relationship between science, society, and nature. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e482. doi: 10.1002/wcc.482
This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice
Sociological critiques of scientific research processes and their application have developed nuanced understandings of the social, cultural and political forces shaping relationships between science and decision-making. Simultaneously, environmental researchers have sought to construct more engaged, dynamic modes of conducting research to facilitate the application of science in decision-making and action. To date, however, there are relatively few theoretically-oriented approaches that have been able to draw productive connections between the sociological critique and the practical applications that can aid in navigating this complex and diverse milieu. In this article, we propose that the concept of “knowledge governance” can bring together targeted inquiry into the socio-political context in which environmental science is situated, alongside analysis of specific interventions that change knowledge-to-action relationships. Drawing together Jasanoff’s (2005) concept of civic epistemology with Cash et al.’s (2003) knowledge systems for sustainability approach, this knowledge governance inquiry framework offers an integrative lens through which to critically reflect on knowledge-based processes, and incorporate that deeper understanding into intervention efforts. We briefly illustrate its application with reference to a pilot project examining conservation decision-making in the Western Pacific island nation of Palau.
Conclusion: Indigenous knowledge systems, and the processes for their evolution over time, can support rapid adaptation to complex and urgent crises. Rather than encouraging these knowledge systems to become more “scientific,” we urge a respectful acknowledgement of their distinctiveness and epistemology. We suggest that any effort to solve real-world problems should first engage with those local communities that are most affected, beginning from the perspective of indigenous knowledge and then seeking relevant scientific knowledge—not to validate indigenous knowledge, but to expand the range of options for action. This would make scientific knowledge more acceptable and relevant to the societies that it seeks to support, while critically promoting social justice and establishing self-determination as a key principle of engagement.
“Indigenous planning” is an emergent paradigm to reclaim historic, contemporary, and future-oriented planning approaches of Indigenous communities across western settler states. This article examines a community planning pilot project in eleven First Nation reserves in Saskatchewan, Canada. Qualitative analysis of interviews undertaken with thirty-six participants found that the pilot project cultivated the terrain for advancing Indigenous planning by First Nations, but also reproduced settler planning processes, authority, and control. Results point to the value of visioning Indigenous futures, Indigenous leadership and authority, and the need for institutional development.
Transdisciplinary research is often promoted as a mode of knowledge production that is effective in addressing and solving current sustainability challenges. This effectiveness stems from its closeness to practice-based/situated expertise and real-life problem contexts. This article presents and tests one approach within transdisciplinary research, which specifically focuses on increasing the participation of actors from outside of academic in knowledge production processes, called transdisciplinary (TD) co-production. The framework for TD co-production focused on five focal areas (inclusion, collaboration, integration, usability, and reflexivity) in three research phases (Formulate, Generate, Evaluate). This paper tests and evaluates the use of this framework in five research projects. The results discuss how the focal areas and research phases dealt with many crucial issues in transdisciplinary knowledge production. They stimulated a high level of stakeholder participation and commitment to the research processes, and promoted knowledge integration and reflexive learning across diverse sectors and disciplines. The approach, however, came up against a number of practical barriers stemming primarily from institutional, organizational and cognitive differences of the participating organizations. While TD co-production increased the usability of the results in terms of their relevance and accessibility, it paradoxically did not ensure their anchoring in respective institutional and political contexts where societal change occurs.
Many reports and studies have noted that a significant portion of problem-oriented coastal science does not actually link to decisions. Here, three competitively funded project case studies are studied to determine what funders can and should do to better link science with decisions. The qualitative analysis used for this study indicates that the studied program was seen as being unusually attentive to the issue of linking science to decisions, as opposed to simply generating new knowledge. Nevertheless, much of the data indicate that funders can and should do more. Three ideas figured most prominently in the qualitative data: (1) funders should do more to ensure that the problem itself is defined more thoroughly with people who are envisioned as potential users of the science; (2) funders need to allocate more resources and attention to communicating effectively (with users) throughout the project; and (3) funders need to demand more engagement of users throughout the project. These findings have important implications for how funders review and support science, especially when competitive processes are used. Most importantly, funders should adjust what kind of science they ask for. Secondly, funders need to change who is involved in the review process. Currently, review processes focus on knowledge generation, which means that the reviewers themselves have expertise in that area. Instead, review panels should be balanced between those who focus on knowledge generation and those who focus on linking knowledge to decisions; this is a separate but critical discipline currently left out of the review process.
This article addresses three questions: What is the extent of instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic use of university research in government agencies? Are there differences between the policy domains in regard to the extent of each type of use? What are the determinants of instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic use of university research? Based on a survey of 833 government officials, the results suggest that (1) the three types of use of research simultaneously play a significant role in government agencies, (2) there are large differences between policy domains in regard to research utilization, and (3) a small number of determinants explain the increase of instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic utilization of research in a different way.
Negotiating the challenges of participatory action research: relationships, power, participation, change and credibility
- J Grant
- G Nelson
- T Mitchell
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To co-produce or not to coproduce
- M C Lemos
- J S Arnott
Lemos MC, Arnott JS et al.: To co-produce or not to coproduce. Nat Sustain 2018, 1:722-724.
How knowledge enables governance: the coproduction of environmental governance capacity
- van der Molen
van der Molen F: How knowledge enables governance: the
coproduction of environmental governance capacity. Environ
Sci Policy 2018, 87:18-25
Ruling nature and indigenous communities: renewed senses of community and contending politics of mitigation of climate change in the northern Sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico
- Centeno
Negotiating the challenges of participatory action research: relationships, power, participation, change and credibility
- Grant