Co-producing Environmental Knowledge with Community Stakeholders

Abstract

To generate robust and integrated solutions to complex sustainability problems requires the co-production of environmental knowledge. Co-production focuses on the socio-ecological contexts and knowledge forms of diverse actors in iterative dialogue to collectively generate new knowledge and practices relevant to societal challenges and decision-making. Despite its growing popularity, there remain a range of challenges and structural barriers obstructing the inclusion of local communities and place-based knowledge in co-producing environmental research and management. This thesis presents results from a comprehensive review of the co-production literature in general and focuses in particular on case studies where local environmental knowledge and stakeholders are included within the co-production process. Key findings suggest that additional attention to institutional capacity constraints, such as socio-political processes, space, funding, timing, and facilitation, as well as power and inclusion constraints, such as representation and knowledge, provide opportunities for increased integration of local environmental knowledge in the co-production process.