Convergence research as transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction within cases of effective collaborative governance of social-ecological systems

Abstract

Successful collaborative governance (CG) of social-ecological systems (SES) involves multiple stakeholders convening iteratively over the long term to reach a commonly held vision. This often involves building knowledge for social learning processes induced to come to collective decisions about managing complex systems in flux. Because of the complexity of any SES in the Anthropocene, this coproduced knowledge is frequently transdisciplinary, using a convergence of applied and scientific knowledge from a variety of disciplines and stakeholders outside academia. We find evidence that these cases of effective SES CG involve both knowledge coproduction and convergence research. We evaluated seven case studies of CG across four continents using criteria (principles and methods) developed to facilitate and describe convergence research on SES and found them to be largely present. We also assess these CG cases using indicators of knowledge coproduction, and show that they all involved transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction, which can provide an informative lens for deepening our shared understanding of convergence and its application to complex adaptive systems. All the cases selected for this paper are examples of CG of SES in which research was conducted as part of a collaborative effort to improve the social-ecological conditions in a particular place, and several incorporate various forms of knowledge and ways of knowing. We suggest that these cases demonstrate both convergence research and knowledge coproduction because of the overlap and similarity of these concepts, providing a brief comparison and contrasting of these approaches to addressing sustainability problems collaboratively.

Keywords

• collaborative governance
• convergence research
• interdisciplinary research
• knowledge coproduction
• social-ecological systems
• transdisciplinary research