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AbstractDespite increased popularity of knowledge co-production as a research approach to address contemporary environmental issues, its implementation in science–policy contexts is not self-evident. In this paper, we illustrate how researchers at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (in Dutch: Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL)) ensured a fit between key features of knowledge co-production and conventional norms and customs for knowledge production processes at the science–policy interface while simultaneously challenging those norms to create space for knowledge co-production. Drawing on implementation science, we analyzed two types of alignment activities: negotiation of normative and relational norms and modification of co-production features. Based on three policy evaluation cases, we show that PBL researchers developed co-production capacity over time. They became more skilled at recognizing (un)conducive structures to knowledge co-production, negotiating such structures, and modifying co-production features without compromising co-production integrity. We argue that investment in these skills is required to negotiate space for knowledge co-production in science–policy settings.

This Special Issue aims to reflect on knowledge co-production and transdisciplinarity, exploring the mutual interaction between water governance and water research. We do so with contributions that bring examples from diverse parts of the world: Bolivia, Canada, Germany, Ghana, Namibia, the Netherlands, Palestine, and South Africa. Key insights brought by these contributions include the importance of engaging the actors from early stages of transdisciplinary research, and the need for an in-depth understanding of the diverse needs, competences, and power of actors and the water governance system in which knowledge co-production takes place. Further, several future research directions are identified, such as the examination of knowledge backgrounds according to the individual and collective thought styles of different actors. Together, the eight papers included in this Special Issue constitute a significant step toward a better understanding of knowledge co-production and transdisciplinarity, with a common thread for being reflective and clear about their complexity, and the political implications and risks they pose for inclusive, plural and just water research and governance.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M ; This paper examines alliances between scientists and local groups in the context of environmental justice conflicts. We analyze the trajectories of two white male scientific experts collaborating with activist groups in mining and nuclear conflicts around the world. We posit the knowledge co-production processes that take place in these collaborations can challenge (internal and external) power relations and hegemonic discourses around pollution. These collaborations can entail three types of co-production: (i) co-production of knowledge where new technical knowledge is co-created; (ii) co-production of interpretation through which knowledge is contextualized technically and politically; and (iii) the co-production of the mobilization of knowledge where different expertise collaborate in the elaboration of strategies based on their (scientific, local, Indigenous, traditional or experiential) knowledges and networks. Whilst knowledge co-production provides legitimacy and confidence to local groups; knowledge interpretation and its mobilization provide public legitimacy, visibility, and political leverage. This paper unsettles seemingly colonial processes pointing to the importance of locally driven alliances, the collaborative dynamics at play merging local and scientific expertise as well as the motivations and trajectories of scientists and local groups. Our approach makes visible how these alliances are the result of supra-local networks of support that connect scientists with local groups struggling against extractive activities.

The governance of modern science requires a heightened sensitivity to societal issues in relation to, and in particular within, the life sciences. Current opinion about practices, potential achievements and applications of genomics research oscillates between hope and fear; promise and realization; intended and unintended consequences; knowledge and non-knowledge; understanding and misunderstanding - on all sides, including scientists. Governments, research funding agencies and industry seem to have learnt, to some extent, that what was once fittingly called "organized irresponsibility" (Beck, 1995) must be transformed into 'organized responsibility' if scientific research, new therapies and diagnostics, improved health care, and new consumer products and services are to stand any chance of being accepted by society.

The governance of modern science requires a heightened sensitivity to societal issues in relation to, and in particular within, the life sciences. Current opinion about practices, potential achievements and applications of genomics research oscillates between hope and fear; promise and realization; intended and unintended consequences; knowledge and non-knowledge; understanding and misunderstanding—on all sides, including scientists. Governments, research funding agencies and industry seem to have learnt, to some extent, that what was once fittingly called "organized irresponsibility" (Beck, 1995) must be transformed into 'organized responsibility' if scientific research, new therapies and diagnostics, improved health care, and new consumer products and services are to stand any chance of being accepted by society.

This article explains the emergence of civil society movements around deforestation issue in Indonesia as contestation over knowledge claims that defines 'deforestation' as a political term. The term 'deforestation', which is translated into 'perusakan hutan' in Indonesian forestry laws and regulation, is a product of political epistemology that serve the needs to sustain state-reinforced developmentalism. It is imposed by valorization of modern scientific and technocratic values as well as bureaucratization of the forestry sector. Engaging with critical political ecology literatures, this study unpacks the constitutive interactions among various ways of seeing that redefine state forestry and its implications to the reproduction of political order. 'Perusakan hutan' is continuously re-negotiated in the relations between the state and its formative societal elements. Knowledge on addressing deforestation is organized around three contesting epistemologies: conservation, redistribution, and indigeneity. Each epistemology seeks to claim political space in the institutionalization of knowledge that fortifies state's policies in the forestry sector. Politics of knowledge co-production operates at two levels: between hegemonic knowledge construct and its counter knowledge formation, and within the formation of counter-knowledge through alternative epistemologies.

AbstractIn this article, we aim to describe and demonstrate the use of a methodology for using arts-based techniques to co-produce knowledge with community members, thus making it accessible at both the theoretical and practice levels for social workers and social work educators. In this methodology, the arts are used not as a diagnostic tool or as fine art, but rather as a trigger for a reflective and socially critical dialogue with community members, with the aim of understanding how they experience their life situation. The proposed methodology includes three central compositional elements of art analyses: the inter-relationship between figure and background within a composition, the recourses and obstacles included in the picture background and the use of symbols and metaphors. The present manuscript illustrates this innovative analytical prism, providing examples of images and explanatory narratives of engaged and married young Muslim women in Israel, as self-defined by the participants rather than as an external anthropology. We further outline the implications of this methodology for other cases.

This book addresses the gap in the existing literature on the governance of transdisciplinary research partnerships in transformational sustainability research by exploring the governance of knowledge co-production in coupled socio-ecological system dynamics. Multiple social and ecological crises raise new cross-sectoral research questions that call for an evolution in contemporary science in the direction of society-wide knowledge co-production on sustainability transformations of interdependent social and ecological systems. This book proposes a new approach to this based on enabling capacities for collaboration among scientific researchers and societal actors with diverse values, perspectives, and research interests. By drawing upon the thriving literature on the conditions for community and multistakeholder-driven collective action, the analysis sheds new light on the governance arrangements for organizing so-called transdisciplinary research partnerships for sustainability. This book identifies robust conditions that lead to effective collaborative research with societal actors and digs deeper into capacity building for partnership research through fostering social learning on sustainability values among research partners and organizing training and knowledge exchange at institutions of higher education. The book proposes solutions for addressing collective action challenges in transdisciplinary partnerships in an accessible and broadly interdisciplinary manner to a large audience of sustainability scholars and practitioners. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of sustainable development, social ecological transitions, and science policy, while also being a useful resource for engineers, QSE managers, and policymakers.

Confronted with the complex environmental crises of the Anthropocene, scientists have moved towards an interdisciplinary approach to address challenges that are both social and ecological. Several arenas are now calling for co-production of new transdisciplinary knowledge by combining Indigenous knowledge and science. This book revisits epistemological debates on the notion of co-production and assesses the relevant methods, principles and values that enable communities to co-produce. It explores the factors that determine how indigenous-scientific knowledge can be rooted in equity, mutual respect and shared benefits. Resilience through Knowledge Co-Production includes several collective papers co-authored by Indigenous experts and scientists, with case studies involving Indigenous communities from the Arctic, Pacific islands, the Amazon, the Sahel and high altitude areas. Offering guidance to indigenous peoples, scientists, decision-makers and NGOs, this book moves towards a decolonised co-production of knowledge that unites indigenous knowledge and science to address global environmental crises.

Introduction: Africa's urban challenge / Sylvia Croese -- The formal-informal interface through the lens of urban food systems : the Soweto Food Market in Lusaka, Zambia / Gilbert Siame, Douty Chibamba, Progress H. Nyanga, Brenda Mwalukanga, Beverly Musonda Mushili, Wiza Kabaghe, Garikai Membele, Wilma S. Nchito, Peter Mulambia & Dorothy Ndhlovu -- Formal-informal interface : comparative analysis between three Egyptian cities / Omar Nagati and Beth Stryker -- Dialogues on informality : land sharing as a sustainable approach to tenure security in Kiandutu informal settlement in Thika town, Kenya / Peter Ngau and Philip Olale -- Urban Infrastructure and Inequality : lessons from Cairo and Johannesburg / Deena Khalil and Margot Rubin -- Weathering the storm : reflections on a community-based approach to flood-risk management in Kumasi, Ghana / Divine Ahadzie, Irene-Nora Dinye and Rudith Sylvana King -- Housing for whom? Rebuilding Angola's cities after conflict and who gets left behind / Allan Cain -- Conclusion: Towards a research agenda for knowledge coproduction in urban Africa / Sylvia Croese.

This book explores the changing dynamics and challenges behind the rapid expanse of Africa's urban population. Africa's urban age is underway. With the world's fastest growing urban population, the continent is rapidly transforming from one that is largely rural, to one that is largely urban. Often facing limited budgets, those tasked with managing African cities require empirical evidence on the nature of demands for infrastructure, escalating environmental hazards, and ever-expanding informal settlements. Drawing on the work of the African Urban Research Initiative, this book brings together contributions from local researchers investigating key themes and challenges within their own contexts. An important example of urban knowledge coproduction, the book demonstrates the regional diversity that can be seen as the main feature of African urbanism, with even well-accepted concepts such as informality manifesting in markedly different ways from place to place. Providing an important nuanced perspective on the heterogeneity of African cities and the challenges they face, this book will be an important resource for researchers across development studies, African studies, and urban studies.

Regional economies are continuously evolving shifting from more traditional manufacturing toward more service-oriented production systems. Despite the increasing relevance of services, however, the analysis of innovation at the regional aggregate level has mainly focused on manufacturing, gathering the attention on the role of R&D expenditure as input in the production process and, in some cases, accounting for research-based knowledge externalities. In this paper the role of Knowledge Intensive Business Services is studied and their contribution to the regional aggregate innovation is evaluated. The aim is twofold. First is to provide insights on the role covered by KIBS as a second knowledge infrastructure. Second is to examine the extent to which KIBS operate as bridges between the general purpose analytical knowledge produced by scientific universities and more specific requirement of innovative firms. A role commonly acknowledged to KIBS is in fact that of knowledge transferors. If on the one side it is however clear to whom they transfer knowledge, their client firms, on the other it is not as clear from whom the knowledge is originally transferred. For this reason a major attention in this work is dedicated to scientific universities considered as a primary source of knowledge. Being this knowledge analytical and highly codified, it probably can be more easily accessed by nearby located firms having higher opportunities of research collaboration and less easily by firms located in different regions. It is argued that KIBS, in transferring knowledge from universities to firms, are therefore specially important in the latter case. To test hese hypothesis a knowledge production function is estimated for a sample of 200 EU NUTS II regions including also information of university research and KIBS concentration. Parameters are estimated using the heteroschedasticity-consistent G2SLS estimator for spatial models and the evidence suggests that the contribution of KIBS to regional innovation is considerable. In fact accounting for the knowledge embedded in business services can considerably contribute to explain the cross-regional variation in innovative activities. Furthermore it is find that the KIBS contribution is more sizeable in regions in which there are not scientific universities. The highlighted results have important policy implications asking to rethink to how much effective an R&D-centered innovation strategy could be, at least in some regions.