Practices in co-production, integration and weaving knowledge

March 17th, 2021

Environmental decision-making is increasingly involving multiple voices and knowledge via deliberative processes. Extractive research methods that capture stakeholder information and knowledge without involving them in the design and application of the research are being replaced by practices in co-production, integration and knowledge-weaving. Co-production is important for environmental governance and knowledge production, but creating enabling environments that attend to the political and power dimensions of co-production are not trivial.

Trust building

Trust between participants in a multi-stakeholder, multi-discipline engagement is core to enabling the sharing of knowledges and perspectives in order to create a foundation to support transdisciplinary research or engagements.

Trust can be partially built through demonstrating respect and appreciation of what each discipline/sector/partner brings to the engagement. Likewise, appreciating and respecting that different disciplines, and indeed individuals, bring non- negotiable aspects to a partnership (e.g. certain quality standards, and/or disclosure requirements etc.) will also help to build trust and a foundation of understanding from which a collaborative endeavour might build.

The ability to facilitate positive interactions between diverse partners, their interests and perspectives, is a key aspect to enabling trust building within a diverse multi-stakeholder group. Establishing rules of engagement is a successful method for bringing one interdisciplinary group into a more cohesive working arrangement, acting to reconfigure interactions between industry partners and researchers, and rebalancing any power differential that had arisen.

Also read about the importance of trust for working in interdisiciplinary and transdisciplinary teams.

Creating boundary objects

Boundary objects are tools that form a bridge of communication across different world views, knowledge systems and cultures, and can be used very effectively to communicate across disciplines as well as to facilitate stakeholder engagement.

Examples of boundary objects might include posters, 2D or 3D maps, or co-created seasonal calendars.

Knowledge co-production and weaving knowledge

Many different knowledge systems exist in Australia, reproduced from Our Knowledge Our Way in caring for Country (Woodward et al., 2020)

Equitable and empowering processes that enable engagement of diverse actors and institutions in knowledge-sharing processes are critical to enhance knowledge, practice, and ethics to move towards sustainability at multiple scales.

Indigenous Australians live in, manage and own vast areas of land and sea that is often rich in biodiversity and critical for ecosystem services. Methods and processes that facilitate the bridging of Indigenous knowledge systems with scientific knowledge systems can enable the co-production of knowledge that strives for new and innovative management of ecosystems and the values they support.

This might be described as the weaving of knowledge: collaborations that respect the integrity of each knowledge system. Five key steps have been identified as necessary to support the weaving of knowledge systems, in support of knowledge co-production:

  1. Mobilise: develop knowledge-based products or outcomes through a process of innovation and/or engaging with past knowledge and experience
  2. Translate: adapt knowledge products or outcomes into forms appropriate to enable mutual comprehension in the face of difference between actors
  3. Negotiate: interact among different knowledge systems to develop mutually respectful and useful representations of knowledge
  4. Synthesise: shape broadly accepted common knowledge bases for a particular purpose
  5. Apply: use common knowledge bases to make decisions and take actions, and to reinforce and feedback into the knowledge systems.

The concept of weaving knowledge systems (Tengö et al., 2017, 2014)

 

Also read about the role of knowledge brokering in transdisciplinary research.

Suggested reading

 

Latulippe, N., Klenk, N., 2020. Making room and moving over: knowledge co-production, Indigenous knowledge sovereignty and the politics of global environmental change decision-making. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 42, 7–14.

Tengö, M., Brondizio, E., Elmqvist, T., Malmer, P., Spierenburg, M., 2014. Connecting Diverse Knowledge Systems for Enhanced Ecosystem Governance: The Multiple Evidence Base Approach. AMBIO 1–13.

Tengö, M., Hill, R., Malmer, P., Raymond, C.M., Spierenburg, M., Danielsen, F., Elmqvist, T., Folke, C., 2017. Weaving knowledge systems in IPBES, CBD and beyond—lessons learned for sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Open issue, part II 26–27, 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2016.12.005

Turnhout, E., Metze, T., Wyborn, C., Klenk, N., Louder, E., 2020. The politics of co-production: participation, power, and transformation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 42, 15–21.

Woodward, E., Marrfurra McTaggart, P., 2019. Co-developing Indigenous seasonal calendars to support ‘healthy Country, healthy people’ outcomes. Glob Health Promot 26, 26–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1757975919832241

Woodward, E., Hill, R., Harkness, P., Archer, R., 2020. Our Knowledge Our Way in caring for Country: Indigenous-led approaches to strengthening and sharing our knowledge for land and sea management. Best Practice Guidelines from Australian experiences. NAILSMA and CSIRO.