Rethinking livestock production systems on the Galápagos Islands: Organizing knowledge-practice interfaces through reflexive interactive design

Abstract

Different economic interests and frames of meaning around livestock production and environmental management usually lead to controversies. This is also the case on the Galápagos Islands. The literature usually focusses on Galápagos’ ecosystems and wildlife. However, less attention is given to livestock production systems on the archipelago. In this article, we introduce an initiative to redesign the livestock (i.e., pigs and poultry) production systems on the Galápagos Islands to achieve a higher degree of socio-ecological sustainability by deploying the first phase of the ‘reflexive interactive design’ (RIO) approach. On the basis of an interactive system analysis, this article answers the following question: What redesign options can be coproduced, and how, to enable a change towards sustainable livestock production systems? To analyse this (re)design process this article deploys and further elaborates the concept of knowledge-practice interfaces.