Knowledge Co-production Processes Research Articles

A multidimensional approach to knowledge coproduction in glaciology

Abstract This work presents a reflection on the meaning and significance of knowledge coproduction in the field of glaciology. We start by invoking the paradigm of Structure–Form–Environment Interplay (SFEI) to formulate a generalised definition of glaciology, which highlights the relevance of knowledge coproduction. The adoption of a relational view of glaciological knowledge leads us to identify five core dimensions of knowledge coproduction: purpose, ethics, ambiguity, inclusion/exclusion, and relationships. Based on those dimensions, we delve into the decisive methodological aspects of the coproduction process, namely the definition of its purpose, the identification of participants, the organisation of the process, the recognition of ambiguity in Ways of Knowing (WoKs), and the consideration of ethical implications. In addition to the already known three stages of knowledge coproduction process (codesign, codevelopment, and codelivery), we propose the inclusion of an additional preparation stage, which entails the acknowledgment of the identity and involvement of all human and nonhuman participants, their positionality, and means to ensure their cultural and ontological safety. We reason that knowledge coproduction does not replace the scientific method, but rather complements it, eliciting the possibility to unveil deeper insights that might be difficult to attain through unilateral means.

Patient engagement in drug development: dialogically problematizing participation

ABSTRACT For many years, the field of drug development remained insulated from patient engagement initiatives that became commonplace in healthcare, it is currently experiencing a participatory turn. This has been informed by a re-evaluation of the patients' insights and of the roles they can play in drug development, with both democratising and technocratic arguments invoked in support of their more substantial engagement. This article problematises the democratising potential of drug development through a knowledge co-production process between the authors of this paper - two scholars and two practitioners in this field. It scrutinises what patients can participate in drug development by zooming in on the Patient Expert Training provided by EUPATI, arguably the most influential and reputable patient education provider in Europe currently. Through their dialogue, the authors highlight the considerable epistemic requirements placed upon patients and warn about the risk of the emergence of participatory practices that rely exclusively on a narrow patient elite. They also reflect upon the benefits and challenges of close collaborations between researchers and practitioners and call for the systemic transformations needed for such knowledge co-production initiatives to become commonplace in academia.

Bridging the knowledge-action gap: A framework for co-producing actionable knowledge

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 transdisciplinary 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.

Designing for collective action: a knowledge co-production process to address water governance challenges on the island of Öland, Sweden

Enabling diverse actors to address interlinked sustainability issues is important and challenging. This paper focuses on how to design a dialogue-based knowledge co-production process to nurture collective action. Using the conceptualization of systems, target, and operational knowledge as the guiding framework, we designed and combined different complementary activities to invite actors to look at a wicked problem through multiple lenses and reflect on their own positions, perspectives, knowledge, and values. With a carefully documented workshop series held with local actors on Öland, Sweden, as our empirical case study, we demonstrate how we moved from exploring the multifunctionality of landscapes and understanding actors’ different values, preferences, and priorities, to developing four strategies for effectively accelerating and expanding efforts to adapt to climate change. Our study reveals how the process of mobilizing, articulating, and connecting individually held systems, target, and operational knowledge nurtures collective action. It also leverages dialogue-based processes as cornerstones in addressing sustainability challenges in an inclusive and equitable way.

How can bottom-up citizen science restore public trust in environmental governance and sciences? Recommendations from three case studies

Citizen science is currently at the forefront of environmental scientific research and public policy for its potential to improve environmental governance, restore epistemic trust and help address some of the most stressing environmental challenges. Although citizen science is gaining increasing popularity, there is little empirical evidence to support these claims and demonstrate how bottom-up citizen science shapes public trust in environmental governance and science. In this paper we reflect on three grassroot environmental citizen science initiatives in Cameroon, Japan, and the UK to identify and present an instrumental framework which includes trustee attributes and conditions that influence how epistemic trust is shaped, and which should inform citizen science and other participatory practices. We explain that citizen science is an approach which enables political processes through the construction of well-informed techno-scientific arguments, which expose deficit assumptions about the public’s ability to participate in knowledge co-production process. To avoid repeating the failures of the past and risk amplifying issues of public distrust further, we provide suggestions built around key trustee attributes which can be incorporated in citizen science practices and we urge that environmental policy needs to create clear policy frameworks to enable the generation of actionable data, especially when such approaches are initiated and implemented as instrumental public participation methods.

Ethnobiology's Contributions to Sustainability Science

Progress toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is insufficient at a global scale. A thorough and interdisciplinary understanding of barriers and levers to sustainability, including synergies and trade-offs between SDGs, is utterly important but still limited. Ethnobiology is often advocated as a key discipline to address this research gap. We conducted a systematic literature review to explore (i) the visibility of ethnobiology within sustainability science, (ii) how ethnobiology understands the notion of sustainability, (iii) if ethnobiology literature on sustainability issues engages differently with nonacademic knowledge and people compared to other types of ethnobiology research, and (iv) which SDGs are addressed (explicitly or implicitly) by ethnobiology. Our study reveals a minimal overlap between sustainability science and ethnobiology literature. The articles reviewed never mention the SDGs explicitly, but often address them implicitly. Reviewed ethnobiological articles addressed themes of relevance to almost all SDGs, especially the linkages between SDGs 1–3 and 15, but always implicitly. Biodiversity's understanding (SDG 15) provides the basis for culture and Indigenous and local knowledge and ensures communities’ food security (SDG 2), health and well-being (SDG 3), and prosperity (SDG 1). We found that ethnobiology does not examine sustainability through the lens of the global sustainability agenda, and that knowledge coproduction processes are rarely reported. While ethnobiology demonstrates its relevance to address SDGs and contribute to transformative change, this potential is not fully realized because of a persisting decoupling between place-based research and global sustainability frameworks.

Understanding the science-policy interface in urban climate governance from a co-production perspective: Insights from the cases of Hamburg and São Paulo

Urban governance, the interplay of governmental bodies with other actors shaping decision-making and its implementation, plays a key role for mitigation and adaptation measures in cities. While knowledge co-production is advanced as an instrumental approach to support climate action, a gap between knowledge and implementation persists. The objective of the article is to better understand the complex nature of urban climate governance with which science – through data and people – is expected to interplay with. We introduce a framework, based on the analytical lens of co-production, to unpack the entanglements of rules and norms, interests and visions, knowledge and capacities in a particular local context in order to identify aspects that may encourage meaningful knowledge co-production. We build upon two cities as case studies: Hamburg, Germany and São Paulo, Brazil. We present the results of interviews in dialogue with insights from city documents and an online workshop. We found that even though data and expertise is available, its use remains unsystematic, while climate action is mostly hampered by missing political capacity, silo mentalities, and a structural lack of resources. We identified a paradox where social transformation is addressed by technocratic solutions and a high appreciation for mutual learning in knowledge co-production processes. We conclude that to make use of its transformative potential, the implementation of knowledge co-production for climate action in practice needs to become more holistic. This includes the integration of non-climate information linked to local concerns and values as well as a shift in focus from output to its procedural benefits.

Assessing the Adoption of One Health Approaches in National Plans to Combat Health Threats: The Pilot of a One Health Conceptual Framework in Armenia.

Due to several factors, such as environmental and climate changes, the risk of health threats originating at the human-animal-environment interface, including vector-borne diseases (VBDs) and zoonoses, is increasing. Low-resource settings struggle to counter these multidimensional risks due to their already-strained health systems and are therefore disproportionally affected by the impact caused by these changes. Systemic approaches like One Health (OH) are sought to strengthen prevention and preparedness strategies by addressing the drivers of potential threats with a multidisciplinary and multisectoral approach, considering the whole system at the human-animal-environment interface. The integration of OH in national plans can be challenging due to the lack of effective coordination and collaboration among different sectors. To support the process of knowledge coproduction about the level of OH integration in prevention and preparedness strategies against health threats in Armenia, a situation analysis was performed on Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever/virus and anthrax (identified by local stakeholders as priorities to be addressed with the OH approach), and actions to strengthen the national OH system were identified with the support of a OH conceptual framework. The study highlighted that multidisciplinary and multisectoral efforts towards prevention and preparedness against VBDs and zoonoses threats need to be strengthened in Armenia, and priority actions to integrate the OH approach were identified.

Reflexive use of methods: a framework for navigating different types of knowledge and power in transformative research

AbstractIn transformative sustainability science, reflexivity is considered critical for ethically sound and socially relevant research. In practice, many transdisciplinary knowledge co-production processes have faced problems in mitigating power hierarchies among the participating actors and the different types of knowledge. In this paper, we develop and test a reflexive framework that enables transdisciplinary researchers to convey more explicitly how their methodological choices play a role in im/balancing power relations in knowledge co-production. The reflexive framework allows researchers to distinguish the different types of knowledge co-produced by the methods, as well as tracking the movements between them. We utilize the framework to reflect upon the methodological choices made through the application of three different transformative methods, namely the Transition Arena, Theory of Change, and Participatory Food Sustainability Assessment and Transformation Framework in different contexts. The results illuminate how the agility between the knowledge types is critical for navigating tensions in power imbalances, as well as producing transformative knowledge. Moreover, the results call further attention to the co-production of critical knowledge in sustainability science.

Knowledge co-production around the cormorant-fishing conflict using a joint fact-finding approach

The great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) has been a persistent source of human–wildlife conflicts in the Baltic Sea area. Fishers have perceived cormorants as competitors for fish resources, while conservationists have resisted mass hunting of the birds. In this paper, we analyse the cormorant conflict in Finland, with a special focus on its factual dimensions and the previous attempts to address the conflict at the national and regional levels. We also present the results from a knowledge co-production process, structured as a joint fact-finding process to address the contested knowledge claims concerning cormorant-fishing interactions. The results suggest that the factual controversy about the cormorant effect on fishing livelihood is essentially a frame conflict resulting from different scales of analysis. Our findings support the assumption that knowledge co-production processes have the potential to address science-intensive environmental conflicts and create practically useful and contextually appropriate knowledge, which integrate scientific knowledge with place- and practice-based knowledge. The process developed a shared understanding of the fishers’ practical wildlife-induced problems and several other questions, including cormorant impacts on migratory fish in Finland. A key to generating shared information was that the participants had control over information used in the process. Furthermore, third-party facilitation was important to ensure effective dialogue. While interpersonal conflicts have not been the original source of the impasse, they have become an important part of it and prevented efforts to constructively address the conflict.

Reflexivity, embodiment, and ethics of care in rangeland political ecology: reflections of three feminist researchers on the experience of transdisciplinary knowledge co-production

Although there is a growing interest in transdisciplinary knowledge co-production approaches applied to rangeland political ecology, the research paradigms and methodologies still dominating this field of research leave little room for equitable engagement with research participants and genuine action-oriented research. In this article, we provide a reflection on new practices grounded in feminist studies of science and care ethic literature to orient transgressive and engaged transdisciplinary political rangeland ecology research. Feminist epistemologies call for reflection on who produces knowledge and how such knowledge is used and shared. Feminist practices, such as reflexivity, embodiment, reciprocity, and care, cultivate awareness of the power dynamics embedded in the research process and motivate researchers to counteract asymmetrical or extractive relationships when we identify them. We first introduce the scholarship that inspires key principles of our feminist research approach and then reflect on our experiences as researchers and as activists working with Spanish and Catalan networks of women pastoralists. Three research questions guide our reflective process: (i) how can feminist theories of knowledge co-production contribute to rangeland political ecology; (ii) how can feminist methodologies be applied in practice so that collaboration between women pastoralists, their organizations, and researchers is mutually reinforcing, care-full, and action-oriented; and (iii) what are the challenges and limitations of our experiences to foster transformation and emancipation in knowledge co-production processes?

Workflows for Knowledge Co-Production—Meat and Dairy Processing in Ohio and Northern California

Solving the wicked problems of food system sustainability requires a process of knowledge co-production among diverse actors in society. We illustrate a generalized workflow for knowledge co-production in food systems with a pair of case studies from the response of the meat and dairy production sectors in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first case study serves as an example of a scientific workflow and uses a GIS method (location allocation) to examine the supply chain linkages between meat and dairy producers and processors in Ohio. This analysis found that meat producers and processors are less clustered and more evenly distributed across the state than dairy producers and processors, with some dairy processors potentially needing to rely on supply from producers up to 252 km away. The second case study in California adds an example of a stakeholder workflow in parallel to a scientific workflow and describes the outcome of a series of interviews with small and mid-scale meat producers and processors concerning their challenges and opportunities, with the concentration of processors arising as the top challenge faced by producers. We present a pair of workflow diagrams for the two case studies that illustrate where the processes of knowledge co-production are situated. Examining these workflow processes highlights the importance of data privacy, data governance, and boundary spanners that connect stakeholders.

Knowledge flow analysis of knowledge co-production-based climate change adaptation for lowland rice farmers in Bulukumba Regency, Indonesia

To increase the resilience of farmers' livelihood systems, detailed knowledge of adaptation strategies for dealing with the impacts of climate change is required. Knowledge co-production approach is an adaptation strategy that is considered appropriate in the context of the increasing frequency of disasters caused by climate change. Previous research of knowledge co-production on climate change adaptation in Indonesia is insufficient, particularly at local level, so we examined the flow of climate change adaptation knowledge in the knowledge co-production process through climate field school (CFS) activities in this study. We interviewed 120 people living in Bulukumba Regency, South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, involving 12 crowds including male and female farmers participated in CFS and not participated in CFS, local government officials, agriculture extension workers, agricultural traders, farmers' family members and neighbors, etc. In brief, the 12 groups of people mainly include two categories of people, i.e., people involved in CFS activities and outside CFS. We applied descriptive method and Social Network Analysis (SNA) to determine how knowledge flow in the community network and which groups of actors are important for knowledge flow. The findings of this study reveal that participants in CFS activities convey the knowledge they acquired formally (i.e., from TV, radio, government, etc.) and informally (i.e., from market, friends, relatives, etc.) to other actors, especially to their families and neighbors. The results also show that the acquisition and sharing of knowledge facilitate the flow of climate change adaptation knowledge based on knowledge co-operation. In addition, the findings highlight the key role of actors in the knowledge transfer process, and key actors involved in disseminating information about climate change adaptation. To be specific, among all the actors, family member and neighbor of CFS actor are the most common actors in disseminating climate knowledge information and closest to other actors in the network; agricultural trader and family member of CFS actor collaborate most with other actors in the community network; and farmers participated in CFS, including those heads of farmer groups, agricultural extension workers, and local government officials are more willing to contact with other actors in the network. To facilitate the flow of knowledge on climate change adaptation, CFS activities should be conducted regularly and CFS models that fit the situation of farmers’ vulnerability to climate change should be developed.

A practical framework to guide collaborative environmental decision making among Indigenous Peoples, corporate, and public sectors

Resource extraction activities in Indigenous traditional territories require decision making that provides equitable and effective engagement with Indigenous communities, as rights holders rather than stakeholders. Through a knowledge co-production process in Canada involving corporate actors, settler government agencies, and Indigenous nations, we developed an empirically-grounded framework that articulates values, principles, and good practices to guide collaborative environmental decision-making. The framework rests on a core value calling for a recognition and honouring of Indigeneity and Indigenous self-determination and contains four central non-hierarchical and interrelated principles: mutual respect and commitment, effective communication, social and economic inclusion, and reciprocal relationships. Each principle supports specific practices. We also identified systemic and technical barriers to effective engagement and examined how the framework can address these barriers. Our framework illustrates an approach to and the value of knowledge co-production by providing a concrete, accessible, and practical tool that can promote engagement of and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. The principles, while developed in a particular context, may spur positive transformation in relationships by encouraging cross-cultural understanding, building ethical relations between resource developers and Indigenous Peoples, supporting economic and social capacity for all parties, and strengthening Indigenous political authority through respectful recognition.

Citizen energy lost in sustainability transitions: Knowledge co-production in a complex governance context

Countries are moving towards renewable energy systems, which creates new requirements and pressures for the established energy policy frameworks. One emerging issue is citizen energy production in community level that has been given a central role also in recent policy reforms in the EU. However, one understudied topic is how the decision-making and action in the existing and potential citizen energy communities connects to broader energy governance. In this paper, we focus on one such type of actor, housing companies in Finland, in which mobilising collective energy action has become a policy priority. We build empirically and methodologically on a facilitated knowledge co-production process utilising mid-range transition arena method to understand the main challenges in engaging citizen energy action in the Finnish policy context. The process was organised with central government authorities, and it involved a diverse mix of stakeholders from housing companies, business, knowledge production and different levels of administration. The analysis shows how different types of knowledge from system knowledge to target knowledge and transformative knowledge are generated in transition arena process, and how the shared production of knowledge increases on each step, which is necessary for drawing systemic lessons in sustainability transitions context. Therefore, we learn that the enhanced role of citizen energy communities requires active and simultaneous coordination of multiple policy pathways, illustrated as digital information, policy coordination, energy service and neighbourhood collaboration pathways. We also conclude that the traditional roles given to citizen energy agency become transformed and require more nuanced conceptualisation.

Guest Editorial: Ecological knowledge co‐production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia

Guest Editorial: Ecological knowledge co‐production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia

Addressing Fragmentation of Health Services through Data-Driven Knowledge Co-Production within a Boundary Organization

Behavioral healthcare services involve multiple disconnected sectors and providers serving the same populations. Efforts to identify and address service delivery problems are hampered by fragmentation of datasets. We conducted an engaged research project in which we formed a boundary organization and developed a knowledge co-production process centered on collaborative data sharing and visualization. Multisector participants in [location] worked to access and share data and to collectively interpret the resulting integrated data through visualizations using four knowledge co-production practices: collective interaction with data, perspective taking, reflection & debrief, and iteration of visualizations. The knowledge co-production process was evaluated using qualitative methods. This research extends sociotechnical research on knowledge co-production by proffering collaborative data sharing and visualization as a knowledge co-production process that can extend across disconnected and disparate social groups and contributes to community informatics by highlighting the role boundary organizations can play in facilitating data sharing and data-driven problem solving between fragmented sectors.

Weaving Together Knowledge Through Collaborative Archaeological Research in the Shúhtagot'ine Cultural Landscape

We describe collaborative archaeological research on caribou hunting sites in the homeland of the Shúhtagot'ine in the central Mackenzie Mountains of Canada's Northwest Territories. Shúhtagot'ine Elders and cultural resource managers are working together to investigate important cultural places that are at risk of destruction from climate-driven landscape changes. We use 3 case studies to illustrate how knowledge production in the context of long-term, place-based research has led to key insights about ancestral caribou hunting sites, including perennial alpine ice patches and wood hunting structures, and how that knowledge is being mobilized to help conserve important values in the Shúhtagot'ine cultural landscape. Archaeological research promotes the sustainability of Indigenous cultural landscapes through the preservation of cultural heritage, via the recall of “landscape memories,” and by unlocking archives of ancient biological material. The process of knowledge coproduction is mutually beneficial for all participants, especially when Indigenous Elders and youth are brought together in fieldwork settings.

Participatory scenario planning: Participatory research methods for sustainability ‐ toolkit #3

Achieving sustainable and equitable futures requires a sense of what those futures might look like, and how to get there. Participatory scenario planning (PSP) explores diverse future scenarios in a stakeholder-engaged process of knowledge co-production. PSP makes use of different methods to identify relevant stakeholders, create a set of scenarios, and explore ways to connect those future visions to the present.

Knowledge co-production in the Helge å catchment: a comparative analysis

ABSTRACT Addressing sustainability challenges in landscape management requires processes for co-producing usable knowledge together with those who will use that knowledge. Participatory futures methods are powerful tools for attaining such knowledge. The applications of such methods are diverse and understanding the intricacies of the knowledge co-production process is important to further develop these research practices. To improve participatory futures methods and contribute to systematic and critical reflections on methodology, we present a comparative analysis of four research projects that applied participatory futures methods in the same study area. Conducted between 2011 and 2020, these projects aimed to co-produce knowledge about the future provision of ecosystem services in the Helge å catchment area in southern Sweden. For structuring the post-hoc, self-reflexive analysis, we developed a framework dividing the knowledge co-production process into three dimensions: settings, synthesis and diffusion. We based the analysis on documentation from the projects, a two-step questionnaire to each research team, a workshop with co-authors and interviews with key participants. The comparison highlights steps in project decision-making, explicit and implicit assumptions in our respective approaches and how these assumptions informed process design in the projects. Our detailed description of the four knowledge co-production processes points to the importance of flexibility in research design, but also the necessity for researchers and other participants to adapt as the process unfolds.