Accountable Environmental Outcomes: Bridging Disciplinary Traditions on Collaborative Governance, Coproduction, and Comanagement for Organising Just and Effective Sustainability Transformations

Abstract

This chapter examines collaborative approaches to the production of knowledge, policy, and public management as means for creating more accountable environmental governance. Exploring and comparing the rich and salient concepts of coproduction and comanagement allows linkage across these conversations in different bodies of literature to elucidate important ingredients of successful collaborative environmental governance. Collaborative approaches to both science and policymaking contribute the most public value. Collaboration makes accountable to the public what used to be left to “expert” managers and improves outcomes, providing greater accountability to both policy and science. Different disciplinary understandings of coproduction and comanagement are compared, and the idea is proposed that coproduction and comanagement can be brought together in a holistic approach to collaborative governance, joining science with social justice. Examples of collaborative governance approaches to forest management on public lands in the USA and Indonesia are examined using a comparative small-N case study approach, with particular attention to public accountability and sustainability transformations, to explore the most important elements of collaborative approaches to environmental governance. The case studies show that more inclusive and effective management is possible with comanagement, and more actionable science is possible through knowledge coproduction. The most effective forms of collaborative governance should actively include both coproduction of knowledge and comanagement over the longer term.