Knowledge Governance for Sustainable Development: A Review

Lorrae Van Kerkhoff

doi:10.12924/cis2013.01020082

Abstract

Sustainable development is a knowledge intensive process, but plagued by persistent concerns over our apparent inability to connect what we know with more sustainable practices and outcomes. While considerable attention has been given to ways we may better understand and enhance the knowledge-based processes that support the governance of social-ecological systems, relatively few have examined the governance of knowledge itself. The institutions—rules and norms—that govern knowledge may shed light on the persistence of 'gaps' between knowledge and action. In this review I seek to answer the question: can interdisciplinary knowledge governance literature contribute to understanding and analysing the institutional knowledge-based dimensions of sustainable development? I present and analyse the concept of knowledge governance as it is emerging in a range of disciplines and practice areas, including private sector management literature and public regulation theory and practice. I then integrate the findings from this review into a model of sustainable development proposed by Nilsson et al. [1]. I show that knowledge governance (as a scale above knowledge management) can inform Nilsson et al.'s three "nested" dimensions of sustainability: human wellbeing (through access to knowledge and freedom to exercise informed choice); resource-base management (though enhancing regulation and innovation and transitions from exclusive to inclusive knowledge systems); and global public goods (by balancing public and private interests and fostering global innovation systems). This review concludes by presenting a framework that places sustainable development in the context of broader socio-political struggles towards more open, inclusive knowledge systems.

Highlights

Public debates and political struggles over how to achieve sustainability, from climate change and biodiversity conservation to genetically modified organisms and food security, have been characterised by clashes and controversies over knowledge [2,3]— what do we need to know to meet sustainability challenges? Who should know it? Where should that knowledge come from? Who has authority or should be believed? How can different forms of knowledge be harnessed more effectively for action towards sustainability? Yet despite substantial work in these areas [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] there remains a view that efforts to improve the application of knowledge to inform sustainable development have fallen short of the urgent and compelling need
Other authors have highlighted the need for a range of knowledges to be brought together to address complex sustainability challenges, including contributions from local stakeholders, and dynamic and 'polycentric' governance arrangements to support adaptive management of "socio-ecological systems" [17,18]
The aim of this review was to answer the question: "can interdisciplinary knowledge governance literature contribute to understanding and analysing the institutional knowledge-based dimensions of sustainable development?" By analysing the existing knowledge governance literature through the construct of Nilsson et al.'s sustainability model [1], I have shown that knowledge governance offers a conceptual basis from which to think critically about knowledge processes as foundational to sustainable development, and to consider how they are shaped and influenced by formal and informal institutions

Summary

Introduction

Despite substantial work in these areas [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] there remains a view that efforts to improve the application of knowledge to inform sustainable development have fallen short of the urgent and compelling need This is so in relation to science; for example, a United Nations Environment Program Foresight report released in 2012 ranked "Reconnecting Science and Policy" as the fourth highest priority of 21 top challenges for sustainability in the 21st century. Many believe the linkage between the policy and science communities is inadequate or even deteriorating, and that this 'broken bridge' is hindering the development of solutions to global environmental change This problem requires a new look at the way science is organized and how the science-policy interface can be improved" [11]. The overall picture is that better understanding and enhancing the role of knowledge in sustainable development decision-making is widely held to be important, but there is a need for fresh insights and new ideas to 'bridge the gaps' between knowledge and action [21]

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