Seminar: From design to evaluation; unpacking a knowledge co-production process

Aware of the signs of us leaving our ‘safe operating space’ on planet Earth, we need to better understand the complex relationships and interactions within and between diverse social-ecological systems and take action on local to global scales. With knowledge co-production as a promising approach for addressing sustainability challenges in inclusive and equitable ways, this presentation sets out to contribute insights on how to design, facilitate, document, and evaluate knowledge co-production processes to understand how and why intentional designs lead to intended outcomes. A workshop series centered around water and landscape governance onÖland, Sweden, presents the empirical case study. Using the conceptualization of systems, target, and operational knowledge as the guiding framework, she will demonstrate how local actors moved from exploring the multifunctionality of landscapes and understanding different values, preferences, and priorities, to developing four strategies for effectively accelerating and expanding efforts to adapt to climate change. She will outline how the process of mobilizing, articulating, and connecting individually held systems, target, and operational knowledge nurtures collective action. She will also provide a detailed account of how and why actors built and strengthened competencies in sustainability throughout the workshop series on Öland.